It could be said that by the time the Bristol Aeroplane Company’s twin-engined Type 188 – dubbed the Flaming Pencil – took to the skies, the project had been left standing due to substantial delays. Nevertheless, it was unique and covered new ground in many ways. In particular, its designers opted for an all-stainless-steel airframe –a material never previously used to build a complete aircraft in the UK – and its trials were some of the first where in-flight data was recorded using real-time telemetry.
Mach 2 odyssey
With post-World War Two developments in jet propulsion and subsequent increases in attainable speeds, by 1952 it was clear that aircraft capable of Mach 1 would soon be the norm. However, in February that year, the Ministry of Supply confirmed it was already looking even further ahead when it produced Experimental Requirement ER.134T. This outlined the need for a machine capable of twice the speed of sound in level flight for a sustained period. The idea was to use this aircraft to investigate the effect of kinetic heating at high Mach numbers.
The competition was won by Bristol’s Type 188 proposal, resulting in a contract for two prototypes (XF923 and XF926) powered by Rolls-Royce Avon…
