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Mary Evans Picture Library

Black Arrow

The Black Arrow R3 lifts off from Woomera, Australia, October 28th 1971. The launch marked the first flight of a British-built rocket and a British-built satellite. Due to the amount of peroxide in the fuel mixture, the exhaust was almost invisible.

The fuselage of the mockup M.52. Intended to take off and land from the ground due to the unavailability of vast lake beds onto which pinpoint landing wasn't a problem, the rocket plane would never fly, despite all components being available at time of project cancellation. The aircraft that did – the American Bell X-1 – is preserved in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C (below).

The design of the M.52 featured short, straight wings and a bullet-shaped fuselage – attributes designed for high-speed flight, if not especially desirable at anything slower.

1947: The Miles A.2, a 0.3-scale prototype of the full-sized M.52, is loaded onto the running gear of a de Havilland Mosquito, used as a lifting aircraft. Shortly after launch, the model misfired and dropped on a 'bomb trajectory.' With the problematic rocket ignition system solved, a final attempt in 1948 with the A.3 was successful, reaching 1,074 mph with no sign of instability – not only vindicating the M.52 design, but outperforming expectations.

A view of the M.52 cockpit. It was designed with a capsule that could be ejected with the pilot inside.