Miles M.52 and the X-1 - again!

[skylon]

Originally Posted by Tim McLelland

Well the TSR2 is an entirely different story which I'm also having to follow at the moment in connection with another publishing project. Like the M.52, it has a lot of sentimentality and urban myth attached to it. My own view (which I'm happy to change in the light of any evidence!) is that both the M.52 and TSR2 projects were both simple victims of cost, pure and simple. I don't buy into the notion that there were any dark political reasons which caused either aircraft to be cancelled even though such reasons have been perpetuated for decades. When you look at hard facts (such as they are) you tend to get a different story to the one that gets churned out again and again. I suppose it's just a symptom of human nature that people try and make stories appear more interesting than they actually are, but I've seen no evidence to suggest that either TSR2 or the M.52 were anything other than victims of their own cost.

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 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. When Frank Whittle's farce was uncovered, the program was discretely cancelled... end of mystery.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. One of the reasons why the M.52 was cancelled.

Bell copying the M52 remains pure speculation without a credible support.

The complaints of an embittered engineer, Dennis Bancroft and disappointed test pilot Eric Brown 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 any 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 fate of the TSR2 is the funniest of all conspiracy theories, almost childish.