Miles M.52 and the X-1 – again!

Errm. Lucky you. One of the best aviation bookshops in the world. Used to be in North London, and well known to the aviation reading public (which is why I’m surprised you’d not heard of it.)

http://www.aviation-bookshop.com/

Well it’s not well known to this member of the aviation reading public – hence my post. But nonetheless I’m grateful to you for the hyperlink. Via that, I hope, I’ll be able to direct my enquiry to one of the best aviation bookshops in the world.

Received some very interesting info from one of the people working on the new book with Eric Brown. Opinion seems to be that much of what has been published about the M.52 is indeed nonsense, particularly the implication that the US somehow stole information. Likewise, the tale regarding the destruction of jigs etc., seems to have come from the TSR2 saga. It does indeed seem to be a story that has become more of an urban myth than fact.

Oh the wonderful benefit of hindsight.

Not really just hindsight vega,even at the end of WW2 many a/c designers/test pilots would be aware that tailless a/c would be ‘twitchy’ longitudinally,transonic a/c were waiting for irreversible power controls to arrive (just that they didnt know it yet) …which solved many transonic control problems.
In my post that you quoted from I also said that the smaller firms could not compete with the political clout of the larger companies and could not get the ‘bread and butter’ orders to keep afloat,the large companies had some real ‘howlers’ as well,but I agree that Miles probably were not big enough to take on too many projects concurrently

cheers baz

Ta, Dean. I have to say that I have never heard of the Aviation Bookshop of Tunbridge Wells (presumably not related to Angry!). Does the leaflet contain any contact details – website, e-mail address, telephone number or suchlike?

Errm. Lucky you. One of the best aviation bookshops in the world. Used to be in North London, and well known to the aviation reading public (which is why I’m surprised you’d not heard of it.)

http://www.aviation-bookshop.com/

Not just RAE: why bother? Same as today, doing a son-of-Concorde: doubtless do-able, but why consume resources there, so foregoing, say, feeding the populace? In 1946 we had no formed enemy; Defence was back to the historic Brit purpose of Empire/Trade Routes garrison against revolting locals. Transonic speed would be either/or with range/payload. Not until 14 April,1948 did Cabinet give Chiefs the Task of holding the Red Army somewhere between Hanover and Antwerp. By then we had Marshall Aid. Valiant, Javelin, upgrade of swept-wing prototypes at the “proper” fighter stables, to become Swift/Hunter, were all funded promptly thereafter, as were experiments to be F.D.2 and P1A. NACA’s research budget was greater, so they could play widely. X-1 was just part of that remarkable range inc. tail-sitters, jetski fighters, &tc, &tc.

If it was me…I would have saved the project that had a tailplane

cheers baz

Oh the wonderful benefit of hindsight.

Actually, I think the RAE actually advised Lockspear to go for the design with the swept wing and not worry about the fact it didn’t have a tail. What they should have said was go for the swept wing 108 but make sure it has a 12 sqft horizontal tail plane half way up the fin and extend the rear fuse by 4 feet. Had they done this I’ m confident the 108 and Geoffrey De Hav would have broken the Sound Barry before Yeager and the X1. The story of why the wrong advice was given to Lockspear & DH is intriguing and has not yet been told in any meaningful detail. Lots of petty politics, personality clashes and miss- management.

The M52 I thought might have had a reasonable chance of success
cheers baz

As for whether Miles could have done it, before you make any comments, please read “Tested and Failed – Miles M33 Monitor” in Aeroplane Monthly July 1997. This gives an excellent insight in the near total collapse of Miles technical project management capability in the mid 1944-46 time frame.

Just in case you don’t have your copy handy here are the significant highlights;-
Miles M33 Monitor – A twin engine 300mph capable target tug, Spec Q9/42 issued , first design conf Oct 1942., Expected entry in to service end of 1944 (Quite a normal development period for that time) An Order for 500 placed prior to first flight;- This was Mile’s future “Bread and Butter” work.
> April 5 1944 – NF900 first flight (late to program)
> April 19 1944 – NF900 U/C collapse during taxi (approx 4 hours flying time)
> July 25 1944 – NF900 Return to flying status
> Aug 8 1944 – NF900 burst into flames in flight and crashes – 1 Fatality (approx 10 hours flying time)
> Dec 2 1944 – NF904 First Flight (again very late to program)
> Dec 4 1944 – NF904 Damaged when U/C collapses upon Landing (is this the same uncorrected fault that caused the accident on NF900?)
End off 1944 Total flying time <15 hours
> May 20 1945 – NP406 first production A/C delivered to support Flight test and replace lost prototypes and starts a 100 hour intensive flying demo
>early to mid 1945 – NF904 returned to flight status
>Aug 3 1945 – NP409 second production A/C delivered to support flight test – After just 4 hours of flying an inspection shows many pulled rivets, broken air intake baffles, hydraulic failure. Grounded
>Aug 14 1945 – NF904 W/O when U/C failed to extend on landing
> Aug 31 1945 – NP409 Crashes whilst on a test flight – 2 Fatalities – Board of Enquiry finds that the probable cause is a critical fault identified on first prototype not corrected despite recommendations from previous BoE.
> Oct 3 1945 – NP406 Suffers major damage from loss of Engine cowling – Lands safely
> Oct 45 1945 -A&AEE report notes that between May & Oct (i.e 5 months) NP406 has flown just 13 hours of its intended 100hr!
> Jan 22 1947 – NP406 burst into flames whilst taxing and is destroyed
At the end of the flight trials the Monitor is considered too lightly built for the installed engine power which lead to unacceptable reliability.
Full service release never achieved despite pressure to do so from MAP. Orders for the type were progressively scaled back during 1945-46 until just 20 AC remain. These are produced by Miles and the survivors from this batch are scraped off without a single one seeing service.

Although other A/C from period also failed, this is an example of a technical project management failure with a relatively simple aircraft. Sure prior to the Monitor, Miles had done some really innovative and excellent work, but by the 45-46 time frame something clearly was going badly wrong. Morien Morgan, head of the RAE commented at this time Miles were “very good at biffing out small cardboard aeroplanes but” hence in high government circles the companies reputation was in taters. The Miles Aircraft company folded in 1947. The cancellation of the M52 may have been a nail in the coffin but the corpse was the M33 Monitor. Hence you cannot discuss the cancellation of the M52 without understanding the reputation of Miles within its one and only customer.

So, the exam question is;- could Miles recover from the loss of their one and only bread and butter project, re-acquired critical A/C flight test support skills, build the M52 prototypes and solved a host of very difficult/demanding problems in a very short timescale? My opinion is no, but we will never know for sure.

(BTW, from all accounts the RAE seem to have had little inclination to supporting any UK manuf in an attempt on Mach 1)

The leaflet doesn’t state who will be publishing the book, the point of contact, according to said leaflet is the Aviation Bookshop of Tunbridge Wells, to which I hasten to add, I have no connections what so ever. Will be a very interesting book!

Sorry for the delay and confusion, hope this is of use.

Dean

Ta, Dean. I have to say that I have never heard of the Aviation Bookshop of Tunbridge Wells (presumably not related to Angry!). Does the leaflet contain any contact details – website, e-mail address, telephone number or suchlike?

The leaflet doesn’t state who will be publishing the book, the point of contact, according to said leaflet is the Aviation Bookshop of Tunbridge Wells, to which I hasten to add, I have no connections what so ever. Will be a very interesting book!

Sorry for the delay and confusion, hope this is of use.

Dean

Sorry, Dean. By striving for brevity I succumbed to slopppiness. As Graham rightly identifies, what I was after was the name of the company who will be publishing the book.

By whom?

I think the question relates to who is the publisher?

Erm, it says in the post. But just in case my laptop is playing a cruel trick on me, Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown with Dennis Bancroft, Peter Amos and Josh Spoor.

Dean. 🙂

“So near- yet so far”- The mystery behind the cancellation of the Miles M.52 Supersonic Research Aircraft. To be Published 2009

By whom?

From a leaflet given to me by a well known book shop:

“So near- yet so far”- The mystery behind the cancellation of the Miles M.52 Supersonic Research Aircraft.

Captain Eric Brown CBE DSC AFC
in co-operation with
Dennis Bancroft C.Eng MRAeS, Peter Amos, Josh Spoor.

To be Published 2009

Hope this helps,

Dean

Peter Amos has researched this for over 50 years now, and he along with a fellow researcher (working equally long on the subject) have been unable to establish the true facts behind this cancellation.

Back in 2004/5 my publishing company in conjunction with John Farley’s Aero Book Company down in West Sussex were in the process of publishing Mr Amos’ Miles aircraft book – in fact we did about a years worth of preliminary work designing, editing and general preparation prior to contract signing. This included going through all that he had and was available for publication on the M52.

We offered Mr Amos the use of our contacts in the USA to research what could be available there but unfortunately, just prior to the ‘contract to publish’ was to be signed, Mr Amos removed the title from us, and placed it with Air Britain I believe. We have no knowledge on when this work will come out.

Obviously, I respect Mr Amos’s confidentially as to what was in his files we had sight of and will not reveal any of his work here. However, from what our own contacts later discovered in the USA and told us, there did appear to be some kind of paper trail that linked Miles, at least two USAAF officer ‘observers’ operating out of the US Embassy in London and attached to the Air Technical Section at Wright Field, Ohio. It is not hard to believe that from their office the trail could easily go to Bell Aircraft!

However, there is a big ‘fly in the ointment’ here. The material in the USA is dated July 1946 – the Miles M.52 was cancelled already to my knowledge, and the XS-1 had already flown at Pinecastle – so did this visit to Woodley matter?

I take it nobody else has anything to add to the original question posed on this thread?

non-sequitur

Non- sequitur or not whilst I am aware that the aviation engineering fraternity were not aware of area rule, transonic phase and all that is known to us today the papers released on the subject still make good reading. The Americans ‘believed’ the information they had gathered from German sources, is it also possible that they had all the development data notes on the 262 as well? If this was the case why were tech evaluations buried in secret folders and are only now coming to light,I can only re-iterate my earlier post ……’It makes interesting reading’.

From memory (away from home at mo !) the M52 fuselage shape was based on an artillery shell ie = a known stable transonic shape .The flying/control surfaces were all designed to be inside the predicted transonic shock wave…which is why the wing/fin tips had that distinctive chamfered angle.

cheers baz

I don’t follow.

Yes, I noted the apparent non-sequitur too! (Ollie posted while I was posting this – I think that’s a fair comment, and I wonder whether a belief that others may have gone supersonic in other aircraft misled the US when you look at aircraft like the one I cite below)

Personally, and I am not an aerodynamicist so I stand to be corrected by one, it was my understanding that with the sort of power available from jet engines at the time that anything that was going to be practical at supersonic speeds needed to be “area-ruled”. As far as I recall the practicalities of this meant that supersonic aircraft would need a “coke-bottle” shaped fuselage with a distinct waist, as in the F-102 and F-106. The Me262 has almost the opposite of this, with a spindle-shaped fuselage. I’m not sure how the DH108 fits into this, but I suspect that the survival rate (3 built, 3 crashed fatally) might have a lot to do with their practicality as a supersonic aircraft – ie not very!

If you want an example of the “It looks supersonic, so it must be” folly, read up on the Douglas X-3 Stiletto. It looks as though it could outrace an SR-71. In fact, it couldn’t top Mach 1 without diving, partly due to lack of power and partly due to lack of appreciation of area-ruling.

Adrian

mutke

The point of my input wasn’t to try to justify Mutke’s(apparent)claim merely to draw attention to the papers now released onto the web. These show the americans ‘believed’ the barrier had been broken by possibly several pilots before Chuck did his bit. If people have the time to search for these official documents they make interesting reading all the same.

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0198c.shtml

For those who havent read this account of Hans Guido Mutke’s flight on 9th April 1945 flying an Me 262 it may throw a spanner in this debate. Further referencing can be found on the net including information released by the Americans on this and other debriefed pilots of the German jet. It pre dates the bell aircraft and one has to ask if the Americans knew this why did they continue telling the world that they got a first?

I don’t follow – this account says “In light of this information, it seems very unlikely that Hans Mutke broke the sound barrier in 1945 while flying the Me 262. If he had, he would not have lived to tell the tale. Mutke probably reached speeds closer to Mach 0.85. It seems probable that he experienced the sudden changes in flight characteristics that often occur in transonic flight and believed he had flown faster than was actually possible.”

Also bear in mind that the linked report says that Mutke did not come forward with his claim until the characteristics of transonic flight were well known – and claims even he did not think he had broken the sound barrier until later. So how could ‘the Americans’ have factored this dubious claim in even if they had wanted to? In any case the Bell and Miles designs were not really influenced by German tech as they pre-dated most of that information being available to the Allies.

I think claims that Mutke exceeded Mach 1 as he claimed are generally regarded as extremely unlikely, and in any case are impossible to prove. The Me262 did not have good transonic characteristics and probably did not contribute much to postwar supersonic research as the Messerschmitt P.1101 and Focke-Wulf Ta183 designs were already far more advanced and the Allies had this to draw upon after the war.