The story of Miles Aircraft started at Shoreham Sussex in 1925, from very small beginnings, Mr F G Miles, one of the sons of a laundry owner at nearby Portslade, decided that his future was to be in aviation. He designed and built his own aeroplane, called the Gnat. This was a tiny biplane built in the workshop of the laundry, with the help of friends but was never flown.

 Cecil Pashley taught Miles to fly in his Avro 504K. Having obtained his "A" licence, Miles lost no time in persuading Pashley to help him to operate a joy riding business . 

After the purchase of an Avro Baby , Avro 504K's and others Miles decided the Baby could be suitably modified to make an aerobatic, sporty, machine , the Southern Martlet. The aerobatic displays given by the Martlet at many major air meetings in the early 1930s created quite a sensation and the sixth and last Martlet to be built was for The Hon Mrs Inigo 'Blossom' Freeman-Thomas the Viscountess Ratendone. One Martlet survives to this day and this is owned and flown by The Shuttleworth Collection 

Miles taught 'Blossom' to fly at Shoreham and they were later married. 'Blossom' was a very talented lady and she helped Miles to design the Satyr, a very small and highly aerobatic biplane. This was built by George Parnall & Co of Yate in Gloucestershire. In 1932, Miles met Charles Powis, a motor engineer from Reading, Berkshire, who had an aviation business at Woodley. They agreed that a cheap modern light aeroplane was needed for private owners and clubsPhillips and Powis aircraft was formed.

The resulting aircraft was the Miles M.2 Hawk low wing Cantilever monoplane priced at £395. first flown, on 29th March 1933.

 From 1932 the company was based on Woodley Aerodrome Many innovative aircraft were built at Woodley including racing aircraft and training aircraft used during World War 2.Miles was a major contributor to the light aircraft market. In 1936, Rolls-Royce bought into the company and 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 opened the Miles Aeronautical Technical School in 1943 .

 Unusually the Chairman and Managing Director, their Chief Designer and his Personal Assistant, could not only all design very advanced, innovative and practical aircraft, but could also fly them as approved and qualified test pilots .

The company needed to increase production of the Miles Messenger and to do so they 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

By September 1947, however, things started to go wrong financially. All the Directors were forced to resign and Miles lost control of the Company. Miles was back in December 1948 and formed a new company at Redhill Aerodrome . This he called F.G. Miles Ltd, and from there he started again, moving to Shoreham in 1952. In 1961, the aviation interests were merged with Auster Aircraft Limited into British Executive and General Aviation Limited (Beagle Aircraft), initially as Beagle-Miles Ltd, with George Miles as Chief Designer and Technical Director.Handley Page took over the Miles company assets on its demise.

The aircraft designed by Miles were often technologically and aerodynamically advanced for their time; the M.20 emergency production fighter prototype outperformed contemporary Hawker Hurricanes, despite having fixed landing gear. The X Minor was a flying testbed for blended wing-fuselage designs, although the large commercial transport intended to be produced from this research never entered production. The gigantic Miles X Airliner was to seat 55 and have eight engines buried in the wings, driving four sets of contra-rotating props and achieve a range of 3,450 miles.

The Miles Libellula were tandem-wing designs for a fighter and a bomber. Having two wings, one each end of the aircraft, movements of the centre of gravity due to fuel or ammunition use were less of a problem.

The Miles M.52 was a turbojet-powered supersonic research aircraft project that was cancelled before completion.