I can recommend 'Winkle' Brown's book on the M52. Brown, having been selected as pilot for the first supersonic flight in it, obviously had a lot of involvement including working with Miles and various Government agencies.
I won't say here what Brown's conclusions were about the cancellation and the handing of the data to the US as it would be a spoiler for anyone yet to read the book. Political intrigue is there of course, Whittle and Power Jets play a part, and an expensive side-show of unsuccessful radio controlled models (that ended up costing more than flying the M52 would have done, but which proved the M52 would almost certainly have done the job) were foisted onto the project by a rather 'difficult' Barnes Wallis.
The official reason for cancellation - that 'it was too dangerous a mission for the pilot', is effectively shot down by Brown as nonesense. Brown's teasing out (from his knowledge gained in meetings, and with personally knowing the main characters involved) of the probable real reason is fascinating.
The book is well worth a read!
By the way - TU144 and Concorde. TU144 was in no way a 'Concordski' (Copy of Concorde). If they'd copied it, they'd have got it right. The wing and in particular the intakes on the 144 were far from 'right', hence the fuel burn. The secret of Concorde's supercruise allowing very low fuel consumption at M2 and 60,000 ft is the intakes, mostly. Ted Talbot's book is well worth a read on that.
Last edited by Shaggy Sheep Driver; 2nd Feb 2015 at 09:58.