The History of the Miles Aircraft Company

[@sdj3140]

Brilliant! I recently visited the museum and was so umpressed with the amount of exhibits on display and staff I became a member that very day and offered my services to help out.

[@warbirdsandweathervintagec2527]

Excellent, glad you enjoyed it.

[@duncangrainge]

I lived in Woodley all my life, I brought cars from Donnington Cars in reading which was the original offices of the company and I helped paint the BEA aircraft in the first few seconds of the video. When I was a boy the aerodrome was very much still there but not in use. The hotel with swimming pool which was very fine in the day was still open and used as a night club. The old buildings on the aerodrome were playgrounds for us and I remember our headmaster warning us after a boy found a revolver under a floorboard and fired a couple of rounds before taking it home! Douglas Bader also came to our school and I was lucky enough to put on his leather flying helmet with earphones and oxygen mask which he wore when he was shot down and kept with him throughout his imprisonment. Woodley has completely changed these days. It’s no longer a village but just a huge housing estate that connects Wokingham to Reading. The only remaining buildings are one or two gun emplacements which originally were on the Perimeter Road (now gone and is under houses) I miss the old Woodley.

[@williamroberts1819]

There is a Magester stored at the Brownsville Airport in Brownsville Texas. Camouflage top and yellow undersurfaces.

[@PDZ1122]

Amazing to see that 5000 ton press again . Way back in the early 90s I was looking for a company that could do rubber pressing for some aluminium wing ribs for a small biplane I was designing. I was surprised to find out that the sheet metal shop I had chosen was in the former Miles factory building. They were very accommodating to two young chaps who wanted to design and build their own biplane and I think they really enjoyed doing something aeronautical again. Their usual work was truck doors and kitchen sinks and the like. That is the same huge press that formed my ribs! Sad to learn that the building is now under threat of destruction.

[@markbowen3638]

I worked for the company at Shoreham airport when it was known as Miles Dufon. We worked in the old Beagle factory. I was an apprentice panel beater making skins for skyvans then being made in Belfast by Shorts. I worked on the Student when it was being used as an engine test bed. The company also converted vans into cherry pickers for Seeboard.
My apprenticeship was cut short in 1976 when the company went into receivership for the final time. Happy memories of my time there though!

[@grahamepigney8565]

My father worked for Miles when they were based at Shoreham Airport. By that time they were transitioning from aircraft to boats and lifecraft containers made from fibreglass.
Dad would talk at length about how Miles were cheated out of the designs of the Miles Caravan and Aerovan by Shorts and when the design of the M52 supersonic jet was passed to the USA resulting in the Bell X1.

[@nickdanger3802]

HMG had plenty of funds for the Bristol Barbizon luxury airliner, Saunders Roe luxury flying boat, DH Comet jet liner and Blackburn Beverly military transport and V bombers,

[@grahamepigney8565]

@@nickdanger3802 But with exception of the Comet and possibly two of the V-bombers they were all flawed concepts. The Comet had the potential to be sold in profitable numbers, but the Mk1 crashes put a stop to that. The Valiant was an ultra conservative design that failed very early due to stress fractures. The Victor didn't survive the switch from high-level to low-level because of stress fractures and only continued due to its conversion to a refuelling tanker. The Vulcan survived the transistion to the low-level role but by then even that role was more suited to other more capable aircraft. The Vulcan squadrons were about to be disbanded in 1982 but the Falklands War kept them in service for a little longer even though the effectiveness of the Vulcan bombing raids on the Falklands is questionable.

[@nickdanger3802]

@@grahamepigney8565 The Vulcan was one hell of an aircraft by any measure. If you look at the aircraft designed by DH before the Comet, it seems to me that was reaching for the stars from a step ladder.
Funding was the reason the 52 was cancelled while other "more profitable" aircraft went ahead. IMHO

[@sandervanderkammen9230]

The Miles M.52 never existed, when the scandal broke Miles was charged with 24 counts of fraud and embezzlement and Frank Whittle was sacked from his own company for embezzlement and derilection of duty.

[@sandervanderkammen9230]

The is absolutely no evidence that Bell Aircraft recieved any plans or flight test data on the M.52 program... no such data is known to ever exist.

[@uralbob1]

Terrific! I’d never heard of this company!

[@David_Walker16-3-51]

Really enjoyed this presentation as I’ve always had a liking and respect for Miles aircraft. The cancellation and transfer of data of the M52 really grates, a travesty of justice. On New Years Eve 1968, my new wife and I flew from Dundee (RAF Leuchars) to London (Luton Airport) on an Autair Dart Herald. We expected to fly via Carlisle, so the sudden appearance of the Irish Sea below caused great concern. For operational reasons, we had been diverted to Blackpool, but it wasn’t important enough to inform the passengers. We sat on the ground for about 30 minutes with the door wide open in the middle of winter, it was chilly. The onward journey from London (Luton) to Crawley took hours, passing Gatport Airwick on the way. Should have paid for a proper airline I suppose. Fond memories.

[@nickdanger3802]

HMG had plenty of funds for the Bristol Barbizon luxury airliner, Saunders Roe luxury flying boat, DH Comet jet liner and Blackburn Beverly military transport and V bombers,

[@kgs42]

One of my earliest memories was of a Marathon parked at Shoreham, all soft silver painted with RAF roundels. It probably led to my lifelong interest in aircraft. There is a real quaint magic to the historic past of aviation, especially seen with Miles Aircraft, some spectacular what-if designs in their archives. A very enjoyable, nice-feeling film. Thank you.

[@sandervanderkammen9230]

There is absolutely no evidence to support that British revisionist myth... Bell Aircraft never received any plans or technical data from the Miles M.52 program because it never existed.
When the M.52 scandal broke government auditor's only found partially completely drawings, a wooden mock up of the cockpit and a few fixtures and jigs.
No prototype of the M.52 was ever constructed or tested.
Miles Aircraft was charged with 24 counts of fraud and embezzlement and Frank Whittle was sacked from Power Jets Ltd. and discharged facing allegations of embezzlement and derilection of duty.

[@johnevans7261]

Douglas Bader became rather more closely connected with Woodley than he wanted when he rolled his Bulldog there one time too many. And flew a Miles Gemini post-war.

[@brucegibbins3792]

The Herald was part of an airborne cavalcade in 1959 that included the Focker Friendship being considered here in Aotearoa by the domestic carrier, NAC as their DC3 replacement. Public sentiment was divided as to which aircraft type should fly our friendly sky's. The baby boomer generation didn't give a flying fig, however, the anglophile generation that immediately preceeded the boomers would give nothing but full support for the Herald. As it happened though, NAC bought and operated the Fokker Friendship well into the 1980s. Despite threats of trade Sanctions by the British if NAC bought the Dutch Fokker airliners. A compromise was reached and perfidious Albion's Sanctions were averted when the Friendships we fitted with British electronics.
The Friendships served New Zealand for thirty years, latterly under Air New Zealand ownership, progressively being rundown through the 1980s before the last of the fleet was withdrawn in 1990.

[@grahamepigney8565]

BTW, Douglas Bader flew a Miles Gemini while he was working for Shell's Aviation Department.

[@warbirdsandweathervintagec2527]

Thanks Grahame, I didn’t know that Douglas Bader worked for Shell Aviation. I actually work for Shell right now, so that’s some interesting company trivia to bore my colleagues with one day! 😀

[@thylacinenv]

The first photograph was of Port Meadow airfield located in Wolvercote, Oxford, so definitely in Oxfordshire not Berkshire.

[@josephlambe2796]

A lot of these were concept aircraft that did never fly, why did you show them

[@ABrit-bt6ce]

No mention of supersonic. Bl00dy yanks ; )

[@sandervanderkammen9230]

Miles never built a supersonic jet... the Miles M.52 never actually existed, it's nothing more than a revisionist myth.

[@WilhelmKarsten]

Britain was decades behind in aircraft technology, they did have supersonic aircraft until the mid-1950s

[@malcolmnicholls2893]

Did I hear that the Herald started out with piston engines, and so was beaten in the market by the F27 Friendship, a massively successful plane?

[@warbirdsandweathervintagec2527]

Interesting - I’m not sure. Sadly the folks who would know, including my grandfather, are no longer with us.

[@malcolmnicholls2893]

@@warbirdsandweathervintagec2527 Thanks for the film. I hadn't realised that Miles designs continued into new brands, or heard about all the other interesting things they did.

[@grahamepigney8565]

It had 4 radial engines to start with. When H.P. lost orders to Fokker Friendship the Herald was redesigned with to R-R Dart turboprops.

[@johnjephcote7636]

@@grahamepigney8565 Alvis Leonides, I believe.

[@grahamepigney8565]

@@johnjephcote7636 That's right.

[@pcowdrey]

Who came up with the name, "Gnome" for an aircraft engine?? 100% uninspiring. Somebody's never heard of or understood sales psychology. Still, they prevail. Funny world. =PC=

[@brucegibbins3792]

Gnome, was part of an engine series featuring Grim style names the writer had given to "little people" often depicted in fairy stories. Hence: goblin, elf etc.
To people working in aviation at the time few if any appear to have been perplexed by the use of these names. Seemingly though, times have have changed to the extent that at least one aviation enthusiast questions, by inference, the less than macho epithet🙂

[@sandervanderkammen9230]

The *Gnom* dates back to 1891 with Wilhelm "Willy" Seck patent for a small, 4hp fuel injected single cylinder air-cooled engine.
First produced by _Motorenfabrik Oberursel_ in Germany and later licensed to Le Rhone in France.
The Rotary aircraft versions of the Gnom(e) produced as the U.R. or the Gnome in both countries would dominate aerial combat during WW1.

[@Road38910]

This guy needs to speak to his dentist about that bloody irritating whistling 'S'.

[@malcolmnicholls2893]

Or is that the best bit?😀