Sidewinder

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-...idewinder.html

[Oberon]

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRR "Fox Two!"

To the Sidewinder

Originally Posted by Oberon

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRR "Fox Two!"

To the Sidewinder

The growl is cool, isn't it?

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by The Third Man

The growl is cool, isn't it?

It's a lovely sound, very unique.

[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]

Originally Posted by 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...

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]

Originally Posted by bookworm_020

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...

[bookworm_020]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

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...

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

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by bookworm_020

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...

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

The British may disagree...

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

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

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.

[NeonSamurai]

Originally Posted by CCIP

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

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.