Who was the first person through the speed of sound

Re: TSR2 some guy from one of the American manufacturers pointedout that there was one other thing which killed that project. Britain would not have stood the cost of producing it but our technological know how combined with American production facilities could have produced it for both airforces at a reasonable price but neither side would let go of their not made here syndrome. I for one think he hit the nail on the head

TV prog Monday

C4 20.00 Speed Machines

all about the race to break the sound barrier.

Sandys was a plonker of monumental proportions but it was Wilson and Healey that did the deed on TSR2, the P1154 and the HS681. Nobody will ever convince me that Wilson wasn’t in the pay of someone other than the British taxpayer.

As far as I can find out, it was “Bee” in May 1948 in the XP-86, followed in September by John Derry in the DH108.

Sandys, a spy? I think the word traitor is closer. He’d decided that aircraft were superfluous by the time he visited Bee’s Tempest wing in 1944.

For the sake of a bit of levity… I mentioned the previously unheard of Miles M53 in my last post because Phil Foster asked the question about it when he was actually referring to the Miles M52! And to show I was having a giggle… I put a wink smilie on it too.

The mock up that I remember showed the bare bones, with some outer skin but definitely made out of wood. I don’t think it was finished in my head so it couldn’t have been finished in the picture!

Don’t quote me but I thought (and I can be as wrong as the next nutter!) that since Britain had the bomb it had been decided that we didn’t need things like TSR2, manned fighters, or aircraft carriers; our enemies would quiver in their bunkers in fear of our missiles and all would be right with the world. I can well understand that maybe America would want us to rely on them for all our military needs but I thought that it was more likely that – for the TSR2, etc – it was Duncan Sandys who wore the executioners hood (- maybe he was an American spy?;) ).

Flood.

“CIVILIAN test pilot chicken”

Haha. Was that the retired old boy in ‘Chicken Run’?

I seem to recall that Wg Cmdr ‘Bee’ Beamont was the first British pilot through the barrier (in an F86?). I also seem to recall that he wrote something on the politics of the time and the fact that the Americans were first through the sound barrier (due to politics?). America had a rather large hold on the world in the 40’s, and Britain was pretty much told exactly what to do by them. Projects were cancelled, right up to the TSR-2. You can blame our governments or anything else you like – but look across the ocean and you will see that there is almost definately more to it than that.

Even the mock up wasn’t completed.
When it was cancelled all the jigs, drawings and the mock up were destroyed. Barnes Wallis also influenced the cancellation being convinced the design, of the wing in particular, was all wrong.
2 years later, in a programme controlled by Barnes Wallis, a radio controlled scale model of the M52 flew and achieved Mach 1.38, proving that Miles had been right all along.
Wallis never admitted he had been wrong, in fact he refused to discuss it. I really don’t understand that attitude, nobody’s infallible or expected to be.
For further reading, Project Cancelled by Derek Wood is guaranteed to raise blood pressure to levels bordering on fatal. It covers 1945 – 1972 and always leaves me biting chunks out of the furniture and considering a cull of politicians.
Never heard of an M53. Not thinking of the SR53 are you?

Never mind mate; maybe it was the Miles M53 that broke the barrier – not the M52…;)

Wasn’t there a mock up built which made people think it had been built? Haven’t found it on the net but seem to recall it. Also haven’t found anything about the Russians and their claims, although I admit to being easily distracted!

Flood.

dhfan I think you might be right. Every website says exactly the same thing more or less. However the Discovery Channel (thout shall take thy DC with a pinch of salt) did an interview with one of the project team who stated quite catagorrically that they did complete the aircraft, it did fly and it did break the sound barrier. Not that it matters because they were doing it without prmission and it could not be recorded so whatever the truth, what you say is effectively true. Sad but true.:(

Miles M 52

“With the Miles M52, the dream of supersonic flight and the glory of being the first to achieve it, was within the grasp of the small team at Woodley, when it was snatched away. And why? Even today, over fifty years later, the controversy is still unresolved and can cause heated discussions among aviation historians. Was it a cost-cutting government – that did indeed go on to decimate the British aviation industry?
Were they under pressure from other sources?
Did well-meaning but influential individuals completely fail to understand why a queue of test pilots wanted to fly it?
Or did so-called experts so completely misunderstand the aerodynamics of supersonic flight. Whatever really happened, the M52 painted here is just a dream.”

http://www.geoffbeckett.com/page9.html

Wrong.

The Miles M52 was cancelled by Sir Ben Lockspeiser on the grounds of pilot safety and was never completed.
There were numerous volunteers to fly it, including ex-Luftwaffe pilots who said why are you worried about “enemy” pilots.
The straigt wing was thought to be flawed but Miles had it dead right. All data was handed to the Americans when it was cancelled and the Bell X-1 is basically a Miles M52 with a rocket instead of an afterburning jet.

Sorry, the Miles M52 was cancelled on the grounds of pilot safety in 1946… Before it could fly!

Flood sorry mate go back and check it again. It got cancelled because they thought straight wings were unsafe. They flew it mate, they flew through the sound barrier but by then it was too late. They finished the prototype and chucked it through the sound barrier. Time for a little digging methinks.

Bell X-1

Was it Chalmers “Slick” Goodlin, a civilian Bell test pilot, that became very “expensive” in his salary demands? Yeager was flying for his normal captains salary.

When Bell’s company test pilot Jean “Skip” Ziegler flew the X-1A, Chuck flew as a chase pilot. But Ziegler got “spooked” by the aircrafts handling.

Shortly after while flying with the X-2 mated to the B-50 motherplane, Skip was in the cockpit when the LOX (liquid oxygen) tank suddenly blew up at 20,000 feet. Ziegler and the X-2 were torn from the B-50 and fell the 20,000 feet to the bottom of Lake Ontario. Poor Ziegler had no chance. As Yeager says in his autobiography “same old story, another civilian test-pilot in over his head”.

The MiG-19 was also supersonic in level flight. Was it just ahead of the F-100?

Best regards
atc pal

Sorry, the Miles M52 was cancelled on the grounds of pilot safety in 1946… Before it could fly!
Lots of artists impressions out there but it never happened!

Flood.

I don’t know what his name was but didn’t some bloke do it a couple of weeks later in a Miles M53 or something like that? I know it was a jet and not a rocket engine but was similar in apearance to the Bell X1.

:confused:

So, was it Matt Damon or Ben Affleck that was George Welch?

😀

now that story seems to be at odd with why Yeager was selected…i’ve always thought that Yeager was selected because Bell’s CIVILIAN test pilot chicken out during it’s previous flight of the X-1 due to control problems encountered near M1…then because Yeager was offered by the military because no civilian test pilot is willing to do it. This is according to the book “The Right Stuff” or “Yeager”…kinda forgot (IIRC, it’s an biography on Yeager….if not autobiography). In that case, where did you get all this crap about how they wanted the military to take the credit?

Surviving does help.
I think it’s suggested that Geoffrey de Havilland Jnr exceeded the speed of sound on the flight that killed him when the DH108 broke up in mid-air over the Thames estuary.

Or the first to break the speed of sound and survive , at least…
Didn’t the Russians used to dispute this too?

Flood.