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The story of the Miles M52 aircraft is an intriguing tale of what might have been. In September 1946, The Engineer published a feature based on details that had recently been released by the Ministry of Defence. Just a few months earlier, the British government had cancelled the programme due to budget constraints, despite the design of the supersonic research aircraft being almost complete, and the construction of the first of three prototypes well underway.

Miles Aircraft of Reading had been tasked with building the turbojet-powered M52, which was intended to fly at 1,000 mph and reach a height of 36,000ft within 90 seconds. To achieve this, the engineers at Miles came up with a radical design more reminiscent of a piece of weaponry.
“Resembling a winged bullet, the overall dimensions were to have been 33ft long and 27ft wing span, the wings being somewhat shorter than those of aircraft of similar length,” The Engineer wrote 70 years ago.
“As a step towards producing a wing shape which has a low drag in the supersonic speed range and yet permits low speed flight with good control, Miles Aircraft Ltd designed a bi-convex wing, with very sharp leading and trailing edges.”
This bi-convex wing was tested on a standard Miles Falcon and then later in combination with a moving tailplane, proving the design’s stability at low speeds. The power plant, which would have produced 17,000 horsepower at full-speed flight, was to be supplied by Power Jets (Research and Development) Ltd. Alongside the fuel tank and flight controls, the engine would have taken up almost the entire fuselage.
“It can be described as a three-stage unit, the first stage consisting of an ordinary jet engine with centrifugal blower,” our predecessors wrote. “Gases from this engine pass through a turbine, which also serves as a ducted fan, bringing in an additional supply of air, which is mixed into the main stream.
“The mixture then passes through an ‘athodyd’ (aero-thermo-dynamic duct), into which fuel is injected and burnt, thereby increasing still further the speed of the gases, which are finally ejected by a nozzle in the tail. The power plant is 3.5ft in diameter and 23ft long.”
With all that power just inches from the pilot, as well as the extreme heights the M52 would be operating at, it’s no surprise that an ejection system was in place. The pressurised cockpit was designed to be completely jettisoned by detonating charges of plastic explosive in the tubular structures that connected the cabin to the fuselage. In theory, the air pressure would force the cockpit clear of the aircraft, and a parachute would help it descend gradually.
Once the cabin had slowed to a reasonable speed and descended to a designated height, the pilot would then bale out using a parachute of his own. If you were lucky enough to make it back to Earth in a fully intact aircraft, landing sounds like it could have been almost as terrifying as a bale-out.
“For the undercarriage special tyres and wheels had to be designed, as the touch-down speed was likely to have been about 170mph, with a two-mile run before stopping. The designed all-up weight is about 8,200lb at take-off, giving a wing loading of 58lb per square foot.”
Although a piloted M52 never took to the skies, an unmanned version roughly 30 per cent the original scale did. It launched from a modified de Havilland Mosquito on 8 October 1947, but its rocket exploded shortly after release. Six days later Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier for the first time in the Bell X-1, an aircraft that shared many similarities with the British design. In October 1948, an unmanned M52 reached Mach 1.38 in stable level flight.
Dennis Bancroft, chief aerodynamicist at Miles, later claimed Bell Aircraft was given access to the drawings and research on the M52, but that the US reneged on its side of a knowledge-sharing agreement made in 1944, and that no US data came back in return. At this point, the X-1 was supposedly struggling with conventional tail designs, and the variable incidence tail used on the M52 is said to have inspired a similar device on the record-breaking US craft.
Unsurprisingly, claims of British influence on the iconic Bell X-1 are widely disputed in the US, and history is generally written by the victors. But perhaps with a little more funding on this side of the Atlantic, the M52 just might have given Chuck Yeager and the X-1 a run for their money.
Pilot would have been Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown RN……
For extensive information about Miles aircraft including the M52 and well worth a visit. http://museumofberkshireaviation.co.uk/
Perhaps with some similarity with this subject, the Canadian “Arrow” was cancelled and every one on the project was thrown out by their own government “bean counters”…
Oh, and I was forgetting, when the Canadian government destroyed the Arrow project, the Americans were quick to supply them with mediocre, second class fighters, of course.
TSR2 before TSR2…
“…the British government had cancelled the programme due to budget constraints.” -So, nothing old there! I do hope to shortly hear the same comment about several of the ‘Pi-in-the-sky’ rubbish projects presently in progress. [HS2, Third Airport (or is it runway) for London, Trident submarines, warheads to go on the missiles we are to buy from some bloke in a shed in Seattle (even though he keeps the keys and has made the linking parts in feet and inches and we are metric (well aren’t we) air-craft carriers that cannot accept the planes that we might buy to fly off them: if we ever get round to buying them, and they do actually/hopefully work: and no-one murders(*) the 40 folk who are able to fly them from anything, let alone 8 acres of real-estate which can be moved around the world at 500 miles (600km?) per day (an admiral’s comment)(“) a measure according to a general of our unpreparedness to stop a Russian Invasion . Have they put something in the water in Whitehall?
Oh how many times have we heard about a two way shareing with the Americans, only to have the door slammed shut in our faces, When will the idiots in Whitehall learn. This was what happened from the days of the Whittle gas turbine up to the presant day. I sometimes dispare, but then, We should know by now. Don’t trust the big corporations, banks or the government when all they are interested in is lining their pockets at our expence.
during my career at RARDE, many was the time I heard the results of ‘Collaboration’ with the ‘cousins’: Our boffins would always tell them what we were currently working on, they would only tell us what they had already done
“…the big corporations, banks or the government when all they are interested in is lining their pockets at our expence.” Only them? Surely that is what all the ‘shams’ do? Those who manipulate ‘laws’ other than Nature’s. When my children were growing up, I used to tell them that I had learned to disbelieve on principle any official statement from any body of any level, political stripe or location. I am sure they believed I was a cynical old f**t. I listen to them saying the same (albeit up-dated to the full-meja age) to my grand-children. Some of the rubbish expounded I know personally to be wrong (WMD for example) some, based upon 40+ years of being on the receiving end of (or having to correct such!) I will always suspect. I believe that in the past (when only ‘they’ were educated) they could get away with it, because they were preaching (in more ways than one) to those less capable. Now, we have the absurd situation where across the world 70% of ALL the persons who have ever been trained and educated in Science and its application are alive and working: and we are still supposed to listen to, accept without question and be influenced by these intellectual pigmeys, notionally our ‘elders’ and ‘betters’. Join me at the barricades of intellectual honesty.
Mike, Many a true word Ect. All you have to do is listen to the current crop in opposition. I am a great believer in the axiom of “Keep your powder dry and your backs to the wall”. I will gladly join you at the barricades. God bless our Engineers and damm the politians.
I’ve heard of the model going supersonic but not “an unmanned M52”. Also, Winkle Brown was convinced that not only did we have a one way traffic of information to the US but also that they were behind the project being canned. Excuse enough for me to spend time to digging into the history of this incredible aircraft again I think!
Stephen, I recently came across EWB’s autobiography (“Wings on my sleeve” or some such) in a charity book-shop. A great read and well worth trying to get a copy if you have not read it.
Best
Mike B
Curiously enough, that’s where I got my copy too!
I don’t believe we will ever learn from history as not only did we accept the governments poor leadership in the post war period but we had Harold Wilson so desperate for funds to spend he accepted the US demand that in return for cash we cancel TSR2 and a supersonic Harrier both of which could have been the most advanced out there. But here is the worst element Labour government ministers admitted later they did not know that the production jigs were in the factory ready to produce the aircraft. The US insisted that all means of ever building them was to be destroyed . That was an appalling aspect of Wilsons white heat of technology i.e. We have the creators and producers but government provides the poor leadership and the dispere based on the fact most of the politicians have never had a post in business
Despite the evidence I do hope that our great creators do not give up that one day government gets some of the technical decisions right
I wasn’t aware of all that Harrier/TSR2 information. Could you link me to sources so I can read further.
Thanks
As one who spent a not inconsiderable part of my professional life working on TSR2, I can only wholeheartedly agree with the comments.
Eric Brown’s take.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Miles-M-52-Gateway-Supersonic-Flight/dp/0752470140
Yet more world leading British technology given away by government bureaucrats.
Very depressing.
Not the first time the bean counters killed a great idea. They are the 11th plague of Moses which was inadvertently left out of the bible. A smart guy said Progress requires a visionary, not an actuary.
By 1946 the UK government was SO short of cash it introduced bread rationing (something Hitler’s U-boat fleet failed to impose during WWII) – so a supersonic jet in peacetime MAY have been a tad extravagant
Which is cobblers because they used the remaining money to develop missles that exceeded the speed of sound imeadiately after resembling the miles 52 and dumped that project too … then money went on to develop the lightening..
Surprisingly, in view of some of my views which have been described as those of a Leftist Pinko, I do recognise the need “to walk softly and carry a big stick!” But …too many still have nothing to do but extend the conflict and that is the issue.
We are at the next pivotal point again in British design, it called Reaction Engines Sabre. We should be investing more and lead the world in supersonic and space travel. The UK desperately needs big business exports to get back on its feet again, not washing money with small businesses. Can the UK keep its hands on this world leading concept, let’s hope so? Although our record is very poor. M52, Frank Whittle, TSR2 etc.
Wasn’t the information passed on to Bell because of pressure from the Government? I think I remember reading that the reason the Americans never reciprocated was due to Britain being on its knees financially after lend-lease came to an end.
The Labour Government caved into American demands that the project be cancelled in order to secure American financial aid.
For a full picture of the UK aviation industry during this period get hold of a copy of Empire of the Clouds. Fascinating reading and well researched.
See you there Mike, Backs to the walls and keep your powder dry.
Transfer of intellectual property to the US during and after the war was part repayment for the supplies the US provided under the lend-lease program. There was no expectation of return cooperation, Britain sold everything it had in return for tanks, guns and food, including large swaths of intellectual property. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
The Bell X-1 did not use any “stolen” brit supersonic technology. The ‘Stabilator’ was invented long before the M.52… its not a british invention. The The general concensus among jet engine experts at the time was (and correctly so) that jet engine technology was considerably less advanced than what was needed to reach supersonic performance. Another of my understandings is that the M.52 needed a afterburner to get through M1 but the aeroplane was too small to carry the extra fuel. This was the real reason why the M.52 was cancelled and not to forget Frank Whittle’s failure to provide an operational jet engine for the project which cost him his job at Power Jet. He was sacked.
Bell copying M52 is a pure speculations without a credible support.
The complaints of an embittered engineer Dennis Bancroft and a disappointed test pilot holding a personnel grudge are not actual facts… especially if that engineer himself did not know what actual knowledge the US had before the transfer of the M-52 data. Aside from all the examples of earlier aircraft with “all-moving tailplanes”, the Curtis XP-42 also flew with a one-piece, “all-flying” horizontal stabilizer well before the Miles M52 data ever went to the US.
The XP-42 was the 4th production P-36A, delivered in March 1939 with a number of modifications for better streamlining.
It was fitted with the “all-flying” horizontal stabilizer in 1942, and used to gather data on the aerodynamics of that configuration.
The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA)* was the governmental agency tasked with undertaking, promoting, and institutionalizing aeronautical research. Founded in 1915, NACA was involved in all experimental aerodynamics research by not only the government, but the private companies… so NACA would have been involved in the XP-42 testing.
NACA was also a major part of the X-1 program… so they already had the basics of the idea well before the Miles data passed to the US.
the all moving tail wasn’t a new invention by any means.
I agree with Stuarts comments above re the Sabre engine. This potentially is a game changer for for what was once a dominant British aeropace industry. With Brexit I hope the British govt has the freedom, will, and faith in British technology and not ,yet again, do a TSR2 on us yet again!
I have wrote my local MP to relay these sentiments – do the same!