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Painted in oils on canvas. 1998. 500mm x 750mm. Selected for the 1998 ‘Aviation Paintings of the Year’ Exhibition. |
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‘Masterwork I’ It was the Spring of 1938 before the Air Ministry finally accepted that their own specification for an advanced training aircraft could not be met and instructed Phillips & Powis to prepare the Miles Kestrel for production. However, the Ministry insisted on certain modifications being made, the most notable being the installation of a down-rated 715hp Rolls Royce Kestrel engine. This caused major installation problems and eventually led to the re-positioning of the air intake to a position underneath the fuselage. The rear half of the canopy was changed and the fuselage in front of the tailplane had to be ‘thickened’. Nevertheless, even before these modifications could be adequately tested, in June 1938, the Ministry placed a £2 million contract for an initial batch of 500 Master Is - the largest contract for a training aircraft placed to that date. Thanks to all the modifications, the Master 1, with a maximum speed of 226mph, was some 70mph slower than the original Kestrel. But this was still a performance better than any other trainer in the world and its handling characteristics remained so similar to the Hurricane and Spitfire that the thousands of pilots trained in the Master I felt perfectly at home when they climbed into one of these fighters for the first time. The Phillips & Powis team considered the Master 1 to be the company’s major contribution to the war effort. ____________________ |