AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 25 / 71

Plate 25 of 71 · Between the wars · Elementary trainer

Miles Magister

Magister I, painted as P6382, The Shuttleworth Collection’s airworthy Miles M.14A Magister (civil G-AJRS), built at Woodley in 1939 and flown by the RAF as an elementary trainer, then restored to fly by the Collection at Old Warden, with its 130 hp de Havilland Gipsy Major I, painted as ‘C’ in the early-war trainer scheme: Dark Earth and Dark Green camouflage over the wings, tailplane and fuselage top, Trainer Yellow on the lower fuselage, fin, rudder and all undersides, red and blue roundels above the wings, blue, white and red roundels on the fuselage and under the wings, black ‘P6382’ on the rear fuselage and under the wings, ‘P’ over ‘6382’ on the fin, a black ‘C’ on the cowling, a red spinner cap and a black propeller with yellow tips, without wheel spats, as it is flown from Old Warden.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as P6382, The Shuttleworth Collection’s airworthy Miles M.14A Magister (civil G-AJRS), built at Woodley in 1939 and flown by the RAF as an elementary trainer, then restored to fly by the Collection at Old Warden, with its 130 hp de Havilland Gipsy Major I, painted as ‘C’ in the early-war trainer scheme: Dark Earth and Dark Green camouflage over the wings, tailplane and fuselage top, Trainer Yellow on the lower fuselage, fin, rudder and all undersides, red and blue roundels above the wings, blue, white and red roundels on the fuselage and under the wings, black ‘P6382’ on the rear fuselage and under the wings, ‘P’ over ‘6382’ on the fin, a black ‘C’ on the cowling, a red spinner cap and a black propeller with yellow tips, without wheel spats, as it is flown from Old Warden. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (856 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Magister I modelled here.

History

The Magister

In the mid-1930s the RAF taught its pilots on biplanes, while the fighters they would go on to fly were becoming monoplanes. F. G. Miles of Phillips & Powis at Woodley, near Reading, had already built the Hawk Trainer, a two-seat version of his light Hawk monoplane, and the Air Ministry wrote specification T.40/36 around a militarised version of it. The prototype M.14, flown by Miles on 20 March 1937, was a low-wing monoplane built of spruce and plywood, with tandem open cockpits, flaps, a fixed undercarriage and a 130 hp de Havilland Gipsy Major I. It gave pupils the feel of a monoplane, flaps and all, before they moved on to the Harvard, the Master and then the Hurricane and Spitfire.

The first Magisters reached the Central Flying School and the Elementary Flying Training Schools in 1937, and early on the type gained a bad name for spinning: it was reluctant to recover, and there were fatal accidents. Miles cured it by raising the tailplane by six inches, adding anti-spin strakes along the rear fuselage ahead of it and fitting a taller rudder, and with these changes the M.14A was cleared for aerobatics. By the outbreak of war more than 700 were in service, and RAF pupils knew the type as the Maggie. Miles built about 1,200 at Woodley before production ended in 1941, Turkey built more than a hundred under licence, and Magisters went to Ireland, Egypt, Belgium, Portugal, South Africa, New Zealand and other air arms.

The Magister trained pilots in Britain throughout the war, while the Tiger Moth stayed the more numerous elementary trainer. In June 1940, when invasion was expected, about fifteen were fitted with bomb racks under the Banquet plans to throw every available aircraft against a landing, though they never went into action. After the war many were sold to private owners and flying clubs as the Hawk Trainer III, and several still fly. In Britain the Shuttleworth Collection flies P6382 from Old Warden, and the RAF Museum at Cosford and IWM Duxford each display a Magister.

This airframe

Magister I P6382 (G-AJRS)

P6382The airframe modelled

P6382 was built by Phillips & Powis at Woodley in 1939 and served with the RAF as an elementary trainer. The Shuttleworth Trust acquired the Magister in 1971, when it carried the false civil registration G-AJDR; its logbook showed that its fuselage had been replaced by that of P6382, which had never been civil registered, and the aircraft was re-registered G-AJRS. Shuttleworth’s apprentices restored it to fly using parts from three other Magisters, and it flies from Old Warden, Bedfordshire, at the Collection’s displays. The model shows it as flown today, as “C” in the early-war trainer scheme: Dark Earth and Dark Green camouflage over the wings, tailplane and fuselage top, Trainer Yellow on the lower fuselage, fin, rudder and all undersides, red and blue roundels above the wings, blue, white and red roundels on the fuselage and under the wings, black “P6382” on the rear fuselage and under the wings, “P” over “6382” on the fin, a black “C” on the cowling, a red spinner cap and a black propeller with yellow tips, flown without wheel spats.

See it at The Shuttleworth Collection

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Magister in 3 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 71 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.