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The Miles M52 accelerating to Mach 1 over the Solent mid October 1946 .
Sadly the above never took place as the project was cancelled earlier in the same year with the protoype 82% complete. One year later Chuck Yeager took the rocket powered Bell X1 through the sound barrier taking the "prize" for America.
Modeled and rendered in Modo
Textures and comp in Photoshop.
Background image by roen911.deviantart.com/art/Abo… and there is other good stuff there as well as some of the best 3D renders you will find on the net.
For those who care...........
The British air ministry awarded the Miles Company the contract to build a supersonic research aircraft in October 1943 and the specification was for a 1000MPH aircraft - quite a specification for 1943. The M52 was not rocket powered and would have made use of a Wittle W.2/700 turbo jet fitted with an afterburner. Other features include exceptionally thin wings, so thin that they were nicknamed Gillette’s after the famous safety razor blade. The aircraft also included a fully flying tail which Miles considered a fundamental requirement right from the start. A version of the flying tail was experimentally fitted to a Spitfire and flown from Farnborough in early 1945. Incidentally, that Spitfire achieved Mach 0.86 (659.85MPH) in dive. The Spitfire wing had an exceptionally high limiting Mach number - not bad for a mid-1930's design and higher than some early jet wings.
The M52 wings were also clipped to keep them clear of the nose generated shockwave which goes to show the level of high speed flight knowledge at the Miles company. Until this time Miles had been known for light and training aircraft although they had done a good deal of research work and had submitted several advanced designs to the Air Ministry, but had never undertaken anything like this project.
To continue development after the ministry cancellation would have involved a prohibitively high cost for Miles. I have often wondered what may have happened if a larger company such as De Havilland had been involved. They had the economical means to have undertaken the project as a private venture which was something they had done before when the air ministry declined the Mosquito.
It is said that cancelation of the M52 set back Britain’s supersonic design project by a good 10 years.
A scale model M52 achieved Mach 1.38 (1058MPH) in October 1947. So it’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination that if there been no cancellation in 1946, that in 1947 while the Bell X1 was closing in on the speed of sound with rockets, Britain would have been closing in on 1000MPH with a turbojet....... perhaps
Sadly the above never took place as the project was cancelled earlier in the same year with the protoype 82% complete. One year later Chuck Yeager took the rocket powered Bell X1 through the sound barrier taking the "prize" for America.
Modeled and rendered in Modo
Textures and comp in Photoshop.
Background image by roen911.deviantart.com/art/Abo… and there is other good stuff there as well as some of the best 3D renders you will find on the net.
For those who care...........
The British air ministry awarded the Miles Company the contract to build a supersonic research aircraft in October 1943 and the specification was for a 1000MPH aircraft - quite a specification for 1943. The M52 was not rocket powered and would have made use of a Wittle W.2/700 turbo jet fitted with an afterburner. Other features include exceptionally thin wings, so thin that they were nicknamed Gillette’s after the famous safety razor blade. The aircraft also included a fully flying tail which Miles considered a fundamental requirement right from the start. A version of the flying tail was experimentally fitted to a Spitfire and flown from Farnborough in early 1945. Incidentally, that Spitfire achieved Mach 0.86 (659.85MPH) in dive. The Spitfire wing had an exceptionally high limiting Mach number - not bad for a mid-1930's design and higher than some early jet wings.
The M52 wings were also clipped to keep them clear of the nose generated shockwave which goes to show the level of high speed flight knowledge at the Miles company. Until this time Miles had been known for light and training aircraft although they had done a good deal of research work and had submitted several advanced designs to the Air Ministry, but had never undertaken anything like this project.
To continue development after the ministry cancellation would have involved a prohibitively high cost for Miles. I have often wondered what may have happened if a larger company such as De Havilland had been involved. They had the economical means to have undertaken the project as a private venture which was something they had done before when the air ministry declined the Mosquito.
It is said that cancelation of the M52 set back Britain’s supersonic design project by a good 10 years.
A scale model M52 achieved Mach 1.38 (1058MPH) in October 1947. So it’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination that if there been no cancellation in 1946, that in 1947 while the Bell X1 was closing in on the speed of sound with rockets, Britain would have been closing in on 1000MPH with a turbojet....... perhaps
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Comments25
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I hate to say it but after the Second World War the United States and the Soviet Union overtook the British -- and the French and the Germans -- as innovators in aviation. I think a lot of it came down to economics, but a few bad designs as well (e.g. a lot of aircraft built by Blackburn).