The Miles M.6 Hawcon was a 1930s

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

experimental monoplane designed by Miles Aircraft Limited. The ''Hawcon'' name comes from a combination of ''Hawk'' and ''Falcon''.

Design and development

The M.6 Hawcon was a one-off experimental monoplane designed for thick-wing research by the

Royal Aircraft Establishment The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), bef ...

. The Hawcon combined parts from both the

Hawk Hawks are bird of prey, birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. They are widely distributed and are found on all continents except Antarctica. * The subfamily Accipitrinae includes goshawks, sparrowhawks, sharp-shinned hawks and others. Th ...

and

Falcon Falcons () are birds of prey in the genus ''Falco'', which includes about 40 species. Falcons are widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica, though closely related raptors did occur there in the Eocene. Adult falcons ...

and was powered by a 200 hp (149 kW)

de Havilland Gipsy Six The de Havilland Gipsy Six is a British six-cylinder, air-cooled, inverted inline piston engine developed by the de Havilland Engine Company for aircraft use in the 1930s. It was based on the cylinders of the four-cylinder Gipsy Major and w ...

piston engine.

Operational history

The aircraft, serial number ''K5925'', was used for thick-wing research by the Royal Aircraft Establishment. It had four interchangeable wings of different thickness. The aim was to investigate the performance penalties of thicker wings, which had structural advantages (lower weight for the same strength) and provided space for fuel etc. The four wings, labelled A to D had root thickness to chord ratios of 0.15, 0.20, 0.25 and 0.30. The trials showed that the thickness had little effect on maximum speed: wing B was faster than A by 5 m.p.h. (less than 3%) and the other wings fell between. The maximum speed given below is for the D wing, as are the dimensions and weights. For comparison, modern low

Mach number Mach number (M or Ma) (; ) is a dimensionless quantity in fluid dynamics representing the ratio of flow velocity past a boundary to the local speed of sound. It is named after the Moravian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach. : \mathrm = \frac ...

aircraft have root thickness to chord ratios of 0.14 - 0.20.Fielding p.21

Operators

; *

Specifications (M.6)

References

Notes

Bibliography

* Amos, Peter. and Brown, Don Lambert. ''Miles Aircraft Since 1925, Volume 1''. London: Putnam Aeronautical, 2000. . * Brown, Don Lambert. ''Miles Aircraft Since 1925''. London: Putnam & Company Ltd., 1970. . * ''The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aircraft (Part Work 1982-1985)''. Orbis Publishing. * Jackson, A.J. ''British Civil Aircraft since 1919''. London: Putnam, 1974. . * Jackson, A.J. ''British Civil Aircraft since 1919, Volume 3''. London: Putnam, 1988. . *Lukins, A.H. and Russell, D.A. ''The book of Miles aircraft''. Leicester UK: Harborough 1945 *Fielding, John P. ''Introduction to Aircraft Design'', Cambridge UK:

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press A university press is an academic publishing hou ...

1999. . {{Miles aircraft 1930s British experimental aircraft Hawcon Single-engined tractor aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1935