Britain's first Supersonic Aeroplane
Created | Updated Feb 23, 2005
Could Britain have been first to fly a supersonic aeroplane?
During the summer of 1942 the British Government decided to embark upon an ambitious new project. The Air Ministry and the Ministry of Aviation approached
Miles Aircraft with a secret contract for a jet engine powered research aircraft designed to fly at greater than the speed of sound.
Air Ministry specification E.24/43 called for an aeroplane capable of flying more than twice as fast as any existing aircraft. No aeroplane had ever exceeded the sound barrier. (There were unconfirmed reports of Spitfires and Mustangs going through the sound barrier in steep dives, but the wing design of these aircraft meant that such a high speed invariably led to a catastrophic failure of the airframe and thus the death of the pilot).
The Miles M.52 was designed for a speed of 1,000mph and the ability to climb to 36,000 feet in 1.5 minutes.
Aircraft Design
The boundaries of design and technology were being pushed forward all the time. The wings of the M.52 were very thin and designed to remain within the V-shaped shockwave, generated by the aircraft's nose at supersonic speeds. In the forward section of the fuselage, the pilot sat in a pressurised pod, which could be seperated from the aircraft in the event of an emergency using explosive bolts. However, the pilot did not have the advantage of sitting in a modern ejector seat, meaning that he would then have to attempt to climb out of the tumbling capsule at near supersonic speeds. A near suicidal manoeuvre!
The contract for the development of an engine for the M.52 went to the Whittle company, headed by Frank Whittle - the inventor of the jet engine. The resulting engine was given the designation W2/700 and was fitted with an afterburner1.
In 1943, Whittle's company was taken over by Rolls Royce, who used the W2/700 as the basis for a whole series of jet engines, including the
Rolls Royce Derwent, which went on to be fitted to the RAF's first operational jet fighter - The Gloucester Meteor2
. Further power was to have been obtained by fitting a specially designed ducted fan to increase the airflow through the engine system. This is what modern turbofan engines currently employ.
The American Connection
In 1946 a team of American engineers from Bell, who were also working on a supersonic aircraft project, visited the top secret research facility of the Miles Aircraft company. The British government instructed the company to cooperate fully with the Americans, in return for data on the United States' own supersonic programme3.
It is known that the Bell company had been having serious problems with control of their aircraft as it approached the sound barrier. The Miles team had overcome this snag with a completely new idea - the all-flying tailplane. Basically, up until that moment, the horizontal tailplanes of all aircraft had been fitted with small flaps on their trailing edges to aid with vertical stability. The all-flying tailplane did away with these flaps, which were just not large enough to counteract the enormous forces encountered at supersonic speeds, and designed an aircraft where the entire horizontal tailplane pivoted, thus giving a much greater movable surface area with which to control the vertical pitch of the aircraft. This was a significant breakthrough, in fact Chuck Yeager4 is on record as saying that the single most significant contribution to the final success of the Bell XS-1 was the all flying tailplane.
Project Cancelled
Within a few weeks of the American's visit, the Director of Scientific Research, Sir Ben Lockspeiser, cancelled the project, saying:
'......in view of the unknown hazards near the speed of sound ....... considered unwise to proceed with the full scale experiments.'
Despite 90% of the design work being completed and with 50% of the construction finished, the project fell, apparently due to a Treasury savings measure.
The Air Ministry ordered Miles to break up all jigs5 and to send all their design data to Bell Aircaraft in the USA. As it seems likely that the M.52 would have been flying by the summer of 1946, and since it would most likely have achieved its specified performance, it is hard not to believe the British Government was 'Leaned On', to cancel the M-52.
This allowed the US become the first 'through the barrier', in October 1947, using the rocket-powered M.52 lookalike, the Bell XS-1. As an added bonus, the Americans' first jet engine, the General Electric Type 1, drew heavily on the designs of the British jet.
Aftermath
Following the cancellation of the M.52, the Government instituted a new programme involving
'no danger to test pilots and economy in purpose.'
This was another way of saying that it was planned to use expendable, pilotless, rocket-propelled missiles. The Royal Aircraft Establishment was responsible for the development of a suitable rocket motor and in charge of aircraft design was Barnes Wallis6 from Vickers Armstrong.
The rockets were exact 3:10 scale replicas of the M.52 and the first launch took place on 8th October 1947.
A Mosquito, light bomber, took off from an RAF airfield in Cornwall with a rocket powered model strapped to its belly. Sadly the motor exploded shortly after launch. Following this, and the success of the XS-1 the Daily Express took up the cause for the restoration of the M.52 programme, but to no avail.
In October 1948 a second rocket powered model was launched. This was successful and a speed of Mach 1.5 was achieved. One interesting titbit of information, purportedly from a member of the development team, was that at the end of the flight, it was planned that the aircraft would be given instructions that would send it into an 'impossible' manoeuvre', a 15g turn, thus destroying the craft and letting the pieces fall back into the sea. However, what actually happened was that on the successful completion of the test, the 'self-destruct' command was transmitted, but, instead of the aircraft being destroyed by the manoeuvre, it was suddenly discovered that the airframe was so well designed that it survived what was thought to be impossible, and it was last observed on radar heading serenely out into the Atlantic.
The final irony came when even these rocket trials were suspended, the reason being given as, "the high cost for little return". The consolation from this investment was the information that a small scale model of the Miles M.52 had successfully broken the sound barrier. Sadly, the United Kingdom had already lost the chance of being the first nation to break the sound barrier.
For a comparison of the two aircraft designs, see the following pages:
Bell XS-1 and Miles M.52.
Entering service in 1944, the Meteor went on to fly for more than a dozen airforces throughout the world was operated by the RAF up until the early 1960s. The Brazilian Air Force flew the Meteor up until 1974.
3Which of course was never received!4Chuck Yeager was the the first pilot of the Bell XS-1, eventually to become the first aircraft to break the sound barrier.5This has only happened on one other project, namely the TSR26Designer of the Wellington Bomber and the world famous 'Bouncing Bomb', as used by 617 squadron of the RAF - The Dambusters.
