It featured a carefully streamlined circular cross-section fuselage built using conventional wood and fabric construction techniques to minimise manufacturing difficulty.

This was largely due to an institutional mistrust of the monoplane platform held by the British War Office and many pilots of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) at that time, believing it to be accident-prone and inferior to the more common biplane configuration used by many of the M.1's contemporaries.

As a consequence of the type being believed to possess too great a landing speed to be safely handled by the constrained French airfields on the Western Front, the M.1 was commonly deployed to the Middle East and the Balkans theatres instead.

For experimental purposes, several Bristol Scout D aircraft were outfitted 110 horsepower (82 kW) Clerget rotary engine and large-diameter propellers; considered to be a success, Barnwell decided to incorporate these features into his emerging design.

[1] Specifically, Barnwell had exerted great efforts to produce the aerodynamically cleanest aircraft possible, save for compromises that were made to better facilitate both construction and maintenance activities.

[5] During official test flights, the M.1A demonstrated its impressive performance, being recorded as having attained a peak speed of 128 miles per hour (206 km/h) as well as the ability to ascend up to 10,000 feet (3,000 m) in 8 minutes 30 seconds.

[5] However, some negative feedback was also gathered from the test pilots, which included criticism over the limited forward and downward view,[3][4] it being relatively tiring to fly, and being nose-heavy when flown without the engine running.

[5] It was observed by the CFS that it had made no effort to establish the M.1A's maximum speed at ground level, noting that propeller had been designed to deliver peak performance when flown at altitude.

[10] The aircraft had demonstrated excellent performance during testing, possessing a maximum speed that was some 30–50 mph (48–80 km/h) higher than any of the contemporary German Fokker Eindecker and French Morane-Saulnier N monoplanes.

[12] This negative viewpoint was not universal as, according to Bruce, stories of the M.1's speed and manoeuvrability had quickly spread to front-line pilots, even to the point of enthusiastic rumours surrounding the type.

[13] Some authors have made claims that the probable reason for the M.1 having been rejected came as a consequence of a widespread belief held at that time that monoplane aircraft were inherently unsafe during combat.

During this era, biplane configurations were normally stronger, being able to apply traditional calculations used in bridge construction by civil engineers to their design, and being easier to brace than monoplanes.

It was powered by a single Clerget rotary engine, capable of generating up to 110 horsepower (82 kW), which drove a relatively large twin-bladed propeller that was in turn furnished with a bulky hemispherical spinner for the purpose of reducing drag.

[19][20] The M.1 possessed a carefully streamlined circular cross-section fuselage, which featured conventional wood and fabric construction techniques to minimise manufacturing difficulty.

[8] It is believed that a total of 33 M.1Cs were deployed to the Middle East and the Balkans during 1917–18, while the remainder were predominantly assigned to numerous training units based across the British mainland.

[25] One of these fighters, flown by Lt. Dagoberto Godoy, was used to fly from Santiago to Mendoza, Argentina and back on 12 December 1918, which was recorded as being the first flight to by made across the Andes mountain chain.

[29] The next year, it was fitted with a specially-tuned 140 hp (100 kW) Lucifer engine and was entered for the Grosvenor Cup: however, the aircraft was lost following a crash at Chertsey, Surrey, on approach to Croydon Airport, resulting in the death of the pilot, Ernest Leslie Foot.