Miles M.20

At the beginning of the World War 2, Miles aircraft began their work on an aircraft that could supplement the RAF's Spitfires and Hurricanes. They built a wooden mock-up model which was inspected by Sir Kingsley Wood, Secretary of State for Air, but no orders were followed. As, at the beginning of the Battle of Britain in July 1940, the RAF suffered a serious shortage of fighters so, in order to face the threat of the Luftwaffe, the Air Ministry ordered Miles to design a fighter that should be easy to build and simple, as stated in the specification F.19/40.
In order to reduce manufacturing time it was made entirely out of wood and used many parts of the earlier Miles Master Trainer, it lacked hydraulics and has a spatted landing gear. The fixed landing gear freed enough space for twelve 0.303 Browning Machine guns to be fixed in the wings with 5000 total rounds and a fuel capacity of 154 imperial gallons (700 litres). Both weaponry and range doubled the capacity of both the Hawker Hurricane and the Supermarine Spitfire and its bubble canopy gave an excellent 360º vision.
As Miles had to simplify their design and re-use available components, it was powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin XX V12 inline engine with a capacity of 1260hp (940Kw) which also powered the Bristol Beaufighter or the Avro Lancaster. This granted flight performance that fell between those of the Britain's two frontline fighters.
The first prototype was tested by the Royal Aircraft Establishment on 15th September 1940 and was armed with eight 0.303 Browning machine guns (out of a capacity of 12), like the Hawker Hurricane and proved to be faster, but slower than the Spitfire versions that were in production but, on the other hand, it had greater range and greater ammo capacity than those two. However as the Luftwaffe was defeated over Britain, the need for the M.20 decreased and the design was abandoned without entering into production with the first prototype being scrapped at Woodley, in Berkshire.
A second prototype was built to comply with the specification N.1/41 for a shipboard fighter to serve with the Fleet Air Arm and was equipped with an arrestor hook and catapult launching points. It flew for the first time on 8th April 1941 and was intended to serve on board of Catapult Merchant Ships which, as they lacked flight decks, the aircraft had to be ditched after each mission so, in order to facilitate it, a jettisonable undercarriage was fitted. In the end that role was filled by obsolete Hawker Hurricanes so there was no need for this type of aircraft and this shipboard variant was also scrapped.

Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_M.20
2. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighters