Sidewinder

[The Third Man]

The missile that has rattled enemy pilots since 1958.



May 1956. Holloman Air Force Base, Alamogordo, New Mexico. The preflight briefing took place in the office of the base’s commanding general, but the center of attention was a cocky young Navy pilot named Glenn Tierney. He was dead certain that he was about to win a shoot-off between two weapons competing to become the United States’ first self-guided air-to-air missile. The Air Force was betting on the radar-guided Falcon, built by a vast engineering group at Hughes Aircraft. Representing the Navy, Tierney was betting on the heat-seeking Sidewinder, developed by a small cadre at the Naval Ordnance Test Station in China Lake, California.

Tierney, the commander of Guided Missile Unit 61, had already demonstrated the lethality of the Sidewinder, blowing up a surface-to-surface Matador missile a few hours earlier. Now, he told his skeptical audience, he planned to fly as a wingman while an Air Force pilot who had never before fired a Sidewinder destroyed a second Matador. When the general scoffed, Tierney told him, “I’ll cover all the bets in the room up to $100.”

After $85 was collected, Tierney and an Air Force lieutenant took off in a pair of F-100 Super Sabres. At 30,000 feet and Mach 0.8, they lined up two miles behind a Matador already in the air. “You got signal?” he radioed to the other pilot.

“I got good signal,” said the pilot, referring to the distinctive growl in his headset, which meant that the heat-seeker in the nose of his Sidewinder had locked onto the infrared radiation of the Matador’s exhaust.
“Well, let her go,” said Tierney.

“It was a turkey shoot—nothing to it,” Tierney recalls with a chuckle. “The Sidewinder blew that son of a bitch right out of the sky.” Tierney flew back to China Lake with $85 of Air Force money in his wallet.


Read more.......

http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/Sidewinder.html

[Oberon]

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRR "Fox Two!"

:salute: To the Sidewinder :yeah:

[The Third Man]

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRR "Fox Two!"

:salute: To the Sidewinder :yeah:

The growl is cool, isn't it?

[Oberon]

The growl is cool, isn't it?

It's a lovely sound, very unique. :yeah:

[CaptainMattJ.]

wonder what itll do in a real war with those F-22s. Im talking war with a country that has a very formidable Air fleet.

[TLAM Strike]

Not that impressive, a MGM-1 Matador had much lower performance over a Super Saber.

The Matador was basically a "Super V-1".

A Regulus II would have left the Super Saber in the dust... ;)

[bookworm_020]

Not that impressive, a MGM-1 Matador had much lower performance over a Super Saber.

The Matador was basically a "Super V-1".

A Regulus II would have left the Super Saber in the dust... ;)

When you consider when missile was first produced, the achievement of packing so much in to such a small missile and making it work at that time in history, it really brings it to attention what a ground breaking weapon it was. The big daddy of all heat seeker missiles!

[TLAM Strike]

When you consider when missile was first produced, the achievement of packing so much in to such a small missile and making it work at that time in history, it really brings it to attention what a ground breaking weapon it was. The big daddy of all heat seeker missiles!

Well the US had two IR weapons in development at the time. The Sidewinder was the Navy's the Falcon was the Air Force's.

Arguably the AIM-4 Falcon was the better missile on paper, it was faster, had longer range, and was more versatile (had IR, SARH, and Nuc configs). But in combat the AIM-9 had better reliability, the rest is history... :hmmm:

[bookworm_020]

Well the US had two IR weapons in development at the time. The Sidewinder was the Navy's the Falcon was the Air Force's.

Arguably the AIM-4 Falcon was the better missile on paper, it was faster, had longer range, and was more versatile (had IR, SARH, and Nuc configs). But in combat the AIM-9 had better reliability, the rest is history... :hmmm:

The Russians coped a Sidewider for their own air force, know as the AA-2 Atoll

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AA-2_Atoll

I stated the Sidewinder as the father of IR missiles as it also was the father of many Soviet/Russian missiles as well.

[CCIP]

Really had its share of teething problems, but survives to this day as one hell of a weapon :yep:

[TLAM Strike]

I stated the Sidewinder as the father of IR missiles as it also was the father of many Soviet/Russian missiles as well.

The British may disagree... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Firestreak)

[Jimbuna]

The British may disagree... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Firestreak)

Quite true but we (British) are still using the Sidewinder to this day.

[TLAM Strike]

Quite true but we (British) are still using the Sidewinder to this day.

Well that started in the 1980s and is soon to end. The RAF is going to be using the ASRAAM now. :03:

[NeonSamurai]

Really had its share of teething problems, but survives to this day as one hell of a weapon :yep:

That is true, in Vietnam the Sidewinders were about as reliable as the Sparrow was, and needed a near perfect sight picture (not near the sun or pointed towards the ground, and almost dead astern). Plus like the sparrow it would often go ballistic, or fail to ignite or release.

[krashkart]

On planes without guns, in some cases. :doh:

[TLAM Strike]

On planes without guns, in some cases. :doh:

The guns were not always reliable either. The quad 20mms on the F-8s tended to jam after a high G turn. Over half the F-8s kills were with the Sidewinder.

[krashkart]

That I did not know.

[NeonSamurai]

The guns were not always reliable either. The quad 20mms on the F-8s tended to jam after a high G turn. Over half the F-8s kills were with the Sidewinder.

Yep that was true, though they would jam when being fired while in a high g turn if I remember correctly (a frequent scenario when dogfighting Migs). The Vulcan 20mm was better, but only available as gun pods for the F4's and other aircraft much later in the war (other than a few exceptions).

This was part of the reason why the kill ratio and rates were so poor in Vietnam as it wasn't unusual to have all attempts to use ordinance fail to function correctly, or just plain miss. Plus the F4 was designed as a bomber interceptor, not a fighter jet. Worst of all, the air force and navy had stoped training dogfighting and BFM before and during the first half of the conflict. The only way the pilots got any practice before going into combat, was to try to save fuel from other training missions and practice a bit of dogfighting on the sly.

[Bilge_Rat]

The AIM-9 sidewinder had a lot of problems in Vietnam, achieving about a 9% PK overall I believe.

part of this had to do with the missile's design. The seeker on the early missiles could only track an airplane from the rear where it could "see" the engine. The seeker does not actually track "heat", but infra red radiations emitted by the engine. The early seekers could be spoofed by the sun or clouds. The missile was refined over the war by adding a cooling unit which made the seeker more effective.

further more, the early missiles could not really pull high G turns. NVA pilots soon realized they had a chance to survive if they pulled a high g turn as soon as they spotted or were warned of the missile.

part of the problem had to do with the high heat/humidity in vietnam which led to a fair number of duds.

part of the problem also had to do with pilot training. USN/USAF pilots in the early 60s received very little dogfight training and many were not aware of the missile's capabilities. They would fire outside the missile's enveloppe. The USN started the TOP GUN school specifically to address this problem and the results showed in 1972.

part of the problem had to do with tactics, the USAF had a practice of firing every missile on the plane at a target, either all 4 AIM-9s or AIM-7s to increase PK.

the problem with the AIM-4 Falcon had to do with the cooling unit. The missile had to be cooled before it could track. The pilot had to manually turn on the cooling unit and it then took about 1-2 minutes before the missile was ready, the missile then had to be fired within the next 2 minutes or the seeker unit basically died. Once the cooling process was started, it could not be stopped. Needless to say, it was a totally unpractical system out in the field were dogfights start and are over in a matter of seconds.

The 20 mm quad gun on the F-8 crusaders had a different problem. If the pilot pulled more than a 3G turn (easy to do in a dogfight), the gun would jam.

[XabbaRus]

Another tid bit

Top Gun was set up by the British....British naval aviators were the first instructors.

[Jimbuna]

Well that started in the 1980s and is soon to end. The RAF is going to be using the ASRAAM now. :03:

I hope that is still the case after the spending review is sorted, we might end up going back to using the Firestreak :DL

[Oberon]

I hope that is still the case after the spending review is sorted, we might end up going back to using the Firestreak :DL


Firestreak...no...far too expensive!

Browning .303s more likely! :yep:

[TLAM Strike]

Firestreak...no...far too expensive!

Browning .303s more likely! :yep:

I figure they would just open the window and use a pump action 12 gauge... :03:

[krashkart]

I figure they would just open the window and use a pump action 12 gauge... :03:

No, that's what we'd do. More likely they'd strap a Ghillie under the wing and have him do all the shooting. :D

[Jimbuna]

No, that's what we'd do. More likely they'd strap a Ghillie under the wing and have him do all the shooting. :D

http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/4905/fdgdfgg.jpg (http://img687.imageshack.us/i/fdgdfgg.jpg/)

[krashkart]

Like that, yeah. :haha:

[TLAM Strike]

http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/4905/fdgdfgg.jpg (http://img687.imageshack.us/i/fdgdfgg.jpg/)

The Navy has to make due with less since its budget is in the crapper...
http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/5768/va25specbomb001b.jpg

... yes that is a toilet on the bomb pylon... (http://midwaysailor.com/midwayva25bomb/)

[Oberon]

I love that pic, I wonder if the Vietnamese ever found that toilet...

http://midwaysailor.com/midwayva25bomb/

[TLAM Strike]

The sidewinder is nice but there are bigger heat seeking missiles out there...

http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/7260/3m9withaphidseeker1s.th.jpg (http://img825.imageshack.us/i/3m9withaphidseeker1s.jpg/)

... yea thats a SA-6 GAINFUL with the seeker from a AA-8 APHID tacked on...

[Oberon]

Needs more Telegraph pole :yep:

[bookworm_020]

The RAF is going to be using the ASRAAM now. :03:

So is the RAAF!