Miles Aircraft
aerospace manufacturer
Miles was the name used for aircraft and associated businesses of British engineer Frederick George Miles, who, with his wife – aviator and draughtswoman Maxine "Blossom" Miles (née Forbes-Robertson) – and his brother George Herbert Miles, designed numerous light civil and military aircraft and a range of curious prototypes, primarily between 1943 and 1947.
History
Phillips and Powis
A company was founded in 1928 by Charles Powis and Jack Phillips as Phillips & Powis Aircraft (Reading) Ltd. In 1929 they opened Woodley Aerodrome, near the town of Reading, Berkshire.
In 1936, Rolls-Royce bought into the company. Although aircraft were produced under the Miles name, it was not until 1943 that the firm became Miles Aircraft Limited when Rolls-Royce's interests were bought out.
The company needed to increase production of the Miles Messenger and to do so it took over a former linen mill in Banbridge, County Down, Northern Ireland for the production of components of the aircraft. A hangar at RAF Long Kesh was used for assembly of the aircraft and flight testing was carried out at the airfield. The company moved to Newtownards following the end of the war in 1946.
The company opened the Miles Aeronautical Technical School in 1943 under the directorship of Maxine (Blossom) Miles The school had a "Headmaster", Walter Evans.
Bankruptcy and receivership
In 1947, the company entered receivership following bankruptcy proceedings instigated by Titanine Ltd., in the Chancery Division of the High Court.
“Miles Aircraft” enters the record as aerospace manufacturer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Miles, Aircraft and aerospace can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1780728. VIAF identifies the subject as 3119153596632851900003. The Library of Congress control number is no2013021274. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1943, 1947, 1928 and 1929.
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This entry incorporates text from “Miles Aircraft” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.