What if the British Empire chose the Miles Master as its colonial fighter as well as its advanced trainer. How well would it do?

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Kevin J

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May 11, 2018
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I've been reading up on the Miles Master and its predecessor the Kestrel which could do 296 mph, more than a match for the Fiat Cr42, G50, Ki 27 and A5M. Finding precise performance figures for the trainer versions comes up with different results. Is it 242 mph at 6000 ft for the Master II or 260 mph at 5000 ft., or is the later the speed for the 6 LMG single seat fighter version. The wings could also be clipped by 3 ft to improve manoeuvrability. These are low altitude speeds so I would expect with higher rated engines, maybe even a two speed Bristol Pegasus they would be better. Any thoughts, opinions on the idea would be appreciated. The SAAF received 340 of them so clearly they're suitable for Mediterranean and sub tropical climates which means Australia too. Any ideas on performance with a 2 speed Pegasus, clipped wings and 6 LMG. Would it be able to compete with either an A6M2 or Ki-27-I?
 
Simple, these "What If's" are ridiculous. What's next, "add a Griffon" to it?
The RAF already had the Spitfire and Hurricane by 1939. Why waste time & money trying to turn a trainer into a fighter when you already have fighters?
And CAC quit building the Boomerang after #250 for a reason.
 
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mjfur said:
Simple, these "What If's" are ridiculous. What's next, "add a Griffon" to it?
The RAF already had the Spitfire and Hurricane by 1939 and CAC quit building the Boomerang after #250 for a reason.
Click to expand...
Hey, I'm not that stupid enough to put a Griffon in it. I'm just looking for something, cheap, cheerful and possible. If the Aussies had built the Boomerang instead of the Woomera we might know the answer as to whether or not it was a good idea. As it was, it simply arrived to late to know the answer.
 
" cheap, cheerful " often gets your troops dead with little impact on the enemy.

The British built 1682(?) of the MK VI light tank between 136 and 1940

Certainly cheap and cheerful but not very effective for much besides training.

Miles Masters were powered by 3 engines.
The Kestrel, the Mercury and the P & W R-1535 14 cylinder radial.
However for a cheap and cheerful fighter it has a few drawbacks.
Wiki claims a do not exceed (dive speed) of 330mph.
cutting the wing tips is not as easy as some imagine.


miles Martinet but close enough. Simply cut the wing tips and you loose aileron area. Yes you can move the ailerons inboard but then you loose flap area. Perhaps a decent trade but you are getting further from the original.
Plane had a 36 imp gallon tank in each wing root. OK for the small engines and training flights, not so good for any higher powered engines or combat.
No self sealing tanks or armor.
The Pegasus isn't going to buy you a whole lot once you get near 14,000ft and above and it costs a bit. It does give somewhat more power low down.
Is this trainer even stressed for high "G" maneuvers? Most real fighters were built to withstand 10-13 Gs of ultimate load or about 7-9 Gs in service. Trainers may not have been quite as strong ( fighter versions of other trainers may have been beefed up but that means more weight)The Italian biplanes were built to some of the most extreme G ratings of any fighters.

I have some figures for performance with all 3 engines from a 1942 "Jane's All the Worlds Aircraft" but seeing as how it is a war time book I wouldn't argue with any other sources. Some of the war time performance figures are not always accurate.
 
Up to the beginning of the war Hawkers could make Hurricanes faster than the RAF could take them so they got permission to export. After the BoB it just wasn't really competitive, sending anything less than a Hurricane to "the Empire" is only any good if there is no enemy aircraft there. Transporting any aircraft across the world is a huge effort, a pilot is worth more than a plane so you should put them in the best you can.
 
Kevin J said:
I've been reading up on the Miles Master and its predecessor the Kestrel which could do 296 mph, more than a match for the Fiat Cr42, G50, Ki 27 and A5M.
Click to expand...
What, no floats?

What is a colonial fighter and how does it differ from a home fighter? It needs to tackle the Ki-43, Ki-44 and A6M, so the colonial fighter can't be a cheaper, low performance bird. What a colonial fighter is to me is one that can be constructed or assembled in the colonies, so Hurricanes at CC&F, Boomerangs at CAC and Mohawks at Hindustan Corp.

But if it is the Master, let's swap out the Master's RR Kestrel for the Peregrine so that the Whirlwind is not the orphan user. Two applications may see some improvements to the Peregrine. Perhaps the Peregine drawings and tooling are donated to Canada or Australia to free up RR for Merlins.
 
My thoughts were that it could be suitable for operations where it might only come up against flying boats or float planes, where there was no indigenous car manufacturing industry. Maybe in the worst case scenario, it comes up against the Cr 32/42 even G50 and God forbid maybe either a Ki-27 or A5M4, definitely the F1M2. Perhaps suitable for construction in New Zealand, South Africa or India. That's why I chose Bristol for the engines. The SAAF got 453 Masters.
 
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The problem I see with adapting Miles types is that they were largely made of wood, so altering their structure is very difficult, requiring redesign and manufacture of existing parts. Not only that, but with the exception of the M.20, the Miles racers and light aircraft were not really stressed for the needs of the military.
 
For Southern Africa, by that I mean Africa South of the equator, I don't see the need for a fighter better than any seaplane or float plane that it might encounter, so Miles Master fighter with clipped wings, 6 LMG and a top speed of 260 mph is more than adequate. If I do this I can free up all 227 Mohawk IVs for service in India including Burma, roughly 3 times as many as were actually delivered. These can be used to reinforce Malaya when the Japanese invade. Perhaps the Mohawk I, II & III could be delivered to Australia for use in PNG and their Northern Territory.
 

Totally agree about the racers being not stressed for military work - You are going to repeat the errors of the French producing the C714 Cyclone developed from a racer. However, isn't one of the benefits of wooden construction the speed with which you can introduce changes? Miles knocked up an incredible number of design prototypes during WW2 (many without Air Ministry approval) - a time frame that would have been impossible with metal designs. Many of the Miles pre-war tourers and racers had modifications built to individual owners specifications (almost every Falcon was different), again in a way that would have been impossible with metal designs. One of the reasons de Havilland was the most commercially successful British aviation companies between the wars was because they had largely stuck to wooden construction and could make money out of small production runs that did not need the expensive tooling-up of metal designs.
 
I've looked up Miles' proposal for fighters based on the Miles Master in Peter Amos's mighty tomes on the history of the company. It's a convoluted story, not helped by Miles' fractious relationship with the Air Ministry and the Ministry of Aircraft production. There are at least 3 attempts to get the Air Ministry interested in such a project. - First, the "Munich Fighter" project which started off as a more streamlined single-seat Master but which then was redesigned for a Merlin engine and ended up as the Miles M20. Second is the straight-forward conversion of Master Mk Is with 6 machine-guns, armoured windscreen, reflector gunsight and armour protection for the single pilot. The Air Ministry sanctioned the building of these aircraft as type "M24 Master fighters" and the Miles history shows 25 of them having been built and delivered (first one registered N7412) before the Air Ministry changed its mind and ordered production to revert to the training version. - Just what happened to these 25 aircraft is a bit of a mystery, they may have been converted back to trainers. By this time supplies of reconditioned Kestrel engines were running out and Miles tried again with the Master fuselage redesigned to take the RR Peregrine engine (The Peregrine was essentially a Kestrel with glycol instead of water cooling and some modifications gleaned from the development of the Merlin, it had some 80% commonality of parts with the Kestrel and the glycol cooling meant it needed a smaller radiator). This "Peregrine Fighter" also had 6 machine guns, the same wings and rear fuselage as the Master, but a slightly cleaned up canopy with better backward vision. Unfortunately, there is no record of what performance was expected from this design. There are a limited number of diagrams and pictures in Peter Amos's books if anyone is interested.
 
I've had more thoughts on my ideas. The SAAF got 72 Mohawks IVs for training and air defence. Instead, give them the 24 Miles Master I emergency fighters plus the 30 Mohawk Is and IIs for training and air defence, 20 Mohawk IIIs are deployed for use in the East African campaign. Send their Hurricane Is instead of their Mohawks to provide the air defence of Sierra Leone. Upgrade the Kestrel engine in the Master fighter to the Mk XVI. We can now deploy all available Mohawk IVs to India, my guesstimate of the number available is somewhere between 190 and 251 or 3 times the number actually deployed.
 
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Disregard. Was responding to an incorrectly read comment above which I then read more clearly.
 
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