History Channel

"Graham Sheldon" wrote in message
...
Talking about "The Sound Barrier" as a work of fiction showing the
British achieving supersonic flight, I seem to recall reading/hearing
somewhere that in actual fact the British were well advanced in
researching this and had designed and built an aeroplane - the Miles M52 I
think - which could well have achieved this. Then the US and British
Governments decided they would pool their research to achieve it. So the
British handed over all their info to the US who then refused to hand over
their info, due to "security reasons". The British did not proceed any
further but the US continued on (now with the benefit of all the British
research and design) and eventually produce the Bell X-1 - which looks
suspiciously like the Miles M52 - and do the deed!

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question...y/q0198a.shtml

Design of the M.52 was nearly complete by 1944, and the UK government
approved the construction of three prototypes. By the end of World War II in
mid-1945, the first prototype was over half-built and may have been ready to
begin flight testing within a year. Unfortunately, a new government had been
elected in 1945 when conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill was
defeated by the Labour party. The new Labour government felt that too much
money was being wasted on defense-related projects now that the war had been
won, and widespread funding cuts were instituted. One of the projects
eliminated was the M.52, cancelled in February 1946 by Sir Ben Lockspeiser,
the Director of Scientific Research








For military movie fiction you can't "The Sound Barrier"
showing the British being the first to achieve supersonic
flight.


I remember seeing "The Sound Barrier" in the year of its release, and my
memories of it stretch back that far. If you have access to a VHS or
DVD
home version, please correct me ... but ... the film presents a
disclaimer
that it is a piece of fiction, and if despite that it seems more
truthful
than most works of fiction then that may be due to the skill of the
director, David Lean; it was acknowledged in the film that the sound
barrier
had already been overcome by an American aviator, without, as I
remember,
any mention being made that the American aircraft was not jet- but
rocket-powered; and the whole thing is really about Geoffrey de
Havilland's
fatal semi-success in the DH 108 Swallow, when he tickled Mach 1 but
didn't
survive.

--
Moving things in still pictures!