The Miles M.52 was a turbojet powered supersonic research aircraft project designed in the United Kingdom in the mid 1940s. Design work was undertaken in secrecy between 1942 and 1945. In 1946 the Air Ministry controversially changed the project to a series of unmanned rocket-powered scale aircraft, launched from a modified de Havilland Mosquito. In a successful test flight Mach 1.38 was achieved by a scale model in normally controllable transonic and supersonic level flight, a unique achievement at that time which validated the aerodynamics of the M.52. At that point the ministry cancelled that project and issued a new requirement which was to result in the English Electric Lightning. Work on the afterburning version of the Power Jets W.B.2/700 turbojet was also cancelled and the Power Jets company was incorporated into the National Gas Turbine Establishment.
Read more about Miles M.52: Design and Development, Specifications (M.52)
Famous quotes containing the word miles:
“It is an agreeable change to cross a lake, after you have been shut up in the woods, not only on account of the greater expanse of water, but also of sky. It is one of the surprises which Nature has in store for the traveler in the forest. To look down, in this case, over eighteen miles of water, was liberating and civilizing even.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)