Miles M.52
Aerocraft

The Miles M.52 is another of the 'what if' stories of British aviation. The project began in 1943 with the award of a contract to Miles Aircraft to produce a jet-powered research aircraft that could fly at 1000mph in level flight: twice the maximum speed of any aircraft flying at that time!. Miles were primarily known for producing light aircraft and were the principal supplier of British pilot training aircraft throughout the war. They had, however, produced some canard fighter designs and were seen as innovative. The design they came up with was based around a fuselage shaped to resemble a rifle bullet (the only proven form known to be stable at supersonic speeds), with very sharp biconvex thin wings (clipped at the tip to avoid the shock cone from the nose) and an all-moving tailplane (rather than elevators). Power would come from a Power Jets engine, which would be fitted with an afterburner. All these features were tested. Wooden versions of the thin wings were tried on a Miles Falcon, renamed the 'Gilette Falcon'. The all-moving tailplane was fitted to the fastest Spitfire then in service and later added to the Gillette Falcon. Miles built a wind tunnel to test the complete aircraft. The afterburner was also sucessfully tested by Power Jets. Three prototypes had been ordered and the maiden flight expected in summer of 1946. In February 1946 the team was shocked when the project was cancelled by the government. Bell Aircraft who had visited Miles and been provided with research data during the war, built the bullet-shaped, rocket powered Bell X-1 in which Chuck Jaeger made the first sustained supersonic flight in October 1947. After the war, Vickers were awarded a contract to test a series of 3/10 scale rocket powered drones launched from a Mosquito. One was a scale model of the M.52 and reached a speed of Mach 1.3, confirming that the design was sound.
I've long wanted to build this to sit alongside my own Bell X1. I bought a 3D-printed kit back in 2022, but it needed a lot of filling and sanding and I never finished it. When I saw that the Aerocraft kit was available in 1:72 I bought it imediately. Now I need to decide whether to finally finish my 1st attempt.