AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 60 / 192

Plate 60 of 192 · Between the wars · Elementary trainer and club monoplane

Miles M.14A Hawk Trainer III

Hawk Trainer III, painted as G-AKPF, The Shuttleworth Collection’s airworthy Miles M.14A Hawk Trainer III, built at Woodley as the RAF Magister V1075, sold in 1947, rebuilt after a 1955 accident, restored to fly by 1990 and flown from Old Warden since, with its 130 hp de Havilland Gipsy Major I, painted as the pre-war trainer N3788: Trainer Yellow overall with a polished bare-metal engine cowling, blue, white and red roundels on the fuselage and above and below the wings, a black ‘N3788’ on the rear fuselage and ‘N’ over ‘3788’ on the fin, no fin flash, a small polished spinner cap and a wooden propeller with black blades and yellow tips, shown with the wheel spats and trouser fairings it has worn for much of its time at Old Warden (it has also flown without them), with its tandem open cockpits and their side doors closed.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as G-AKPF, The Shuttleworth Collection’s airworthy Miles M.14A Hawk Trainer III, built at Woodley as the RAF Magister V1075, sold in 1947, rebuilt after a 1955 accident, restored to fly by 1990 and flown from Old Warden since, with its 130 hp de Havilland Gipsy Major I, painted as the pre-war trainer N3788: Trainer Yellow overall with a polished bare-metal engine cowling, blue, white and red roundels on the fuselage and above and below the wings, a black ‘N3788’ on the rear fuselage and ‘N’ over ‘3788’ on the fin, no fin flash, a small polished spinner cap and a wooden propeller with black blades and yellow tips, shown with the wheel spats and trouser fairings it has worn for much of its time at Old Warden (it has also flown without them), with its tandem open cockpits and their side doors closed. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (942 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (Speed Six, Major, Trainer); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Hawk Trainer III modelled here.

History

The Hawk Trainer III

The Hawk family began at Woodley, near Reading, where F. G. Miles and the Phillips & Powis company set out to build a cheap two-seat monoplane for private owners. The first M.2 Hawk, G-ACGH, flew on 29 March 1933 with a 95 hp Cirrus engine. It was built of spruce and plywood, with a low wing and tandem open cockpits, and it sold well enough to set Miles up as an aircraft maker: 47 were sold in its first fifteen months.

In 1934 the new inverted de Havilland Gipsy Major engine gave the Hawk Major, cleaner and faster, and from it came the Hawk Speed Six racer with a six-cylinder Gipsy Six, of which only three were built. The Hawk Trainer followed, with dual controls for the civilian-run Elementary and Reserve Flying Training Schools, where the RAF taught its reserve pilots. It caught the Air Ministry’s eye, and specification T.40/36 was written around a service version: the M.14, first flown on 20 March 1937 and named Magister by the RAF. It was the RAF’s first monoplane trainer, and after its early spinning troubles had been cured with a raised tailplane, anti-spin strakes and a taller rudder, the M.14A became its standard form. Miles built about 1,200.

After the war the RAF sold its surplus Magisters, and in civil hands they took the old family name as the Hawk Trainer III. Flying clubs and schools used them to train pilots, and they were raced, with Magister races at Thruxton and entries in the King’s Cup. Several still fly in Britain. The Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden flies three of the family: Hawk Speed Six G-ADGP, the Magister P6382 and this Hawk Trainer III; Montrose Air Station Museum has Hawk Major G-ADMW.

This airframe

Hawk Trainer III G-AKPF “N3788”

N3788The airframe modelled

G-AKPF flew with the RAF as Magister V1075 until November 1940, when it was put into store at No. 51 Maintenance Unit, Lichfield, and in December 1947 it was sold for £50. Wolverhampton Aviation converted it for civil use as G-AKPF, it gained its certificate of airworthiness in April 1948, and it spent most of its civil life as a school aircraft with Air Schools Ltd of Wolverhampton. Ron Paine won the Magister race at Thruxton in it in August 1949. After a heavy crash in May 1955 it was rebuilt with the fuselage, centre section, tail surfaces and flaps of another Magister, and it came third in the 1958 King’s Cup at 128 mph. By the 1960s it lay derelict; the East Anglian Aviation Society began its restoration in 1970, Adrian Brook completed it and flew it again at Shoreham on 21 July 1990, and it came to Old Warden later that year, where it was given the identity of its 1938 fuselage, N3788. The model shows it in that pre-war trainer scheme: Trainer Yellow overall with a polished bare-metal cowling, blue, white and red roundels on the fuselage and above and below the wings, a black “N3788” on the rear fuselage and “N” over “3788” on the fin, a small polished spinner cap and a wooden propeller with black blades, with the wheel spats it has worn for much of its time at Old Warden (it has also flown without them).

See it at The Shuttleworth Collection

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Hawk Trainer III in 4 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 192 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.