Sidewinder (The missile that has rattled enemy pilots since 1958)

Air & Space Magazine ^ | November 01, 2010 | Preston Lerner

[Paul Ross]

Bump!

[TXnMA]

It was in 1961 when I saw my first AIM-9s -- a pair on the wingtips of a F-104. Don't recall which impressed me most: the Sidewinders' small size or the tiny wings on the F-104...

IIRC, the AIM-9 already was notorious for having a confirmed kill in the US: a B-47 taken out by an Aim-9 fired by a FANG (Air National Guard) pilot "in error"...

[chaosagent]

More swamp than sea.

[Rappini]

I hope Nathan Forest takes a peek at this article.

[jmacusa]

With a name like “Sidewinder’’ you know it’s gotta be bad!

[OCC]

When I was in the USAF back in the 1990’s as an AMMO troop, I must have refilled more than 1,000 argon tanks. It was tedious and loud (compressor) work. I also helped load some AIM-9’s on to wing pylons... they seem fairly light until you try to lift them over shoulder height!

[doorgunner69]

The drill to check Sidewinder function on the rail (F-4) before flight used to be shining a flashlight into the seeker and having the pilot (or ordnanceman) listen for tone in the cockpit with helmet on.

While still on the mainland and wearing white tee-shirts, we got creative and flashed the seeker with SoCal sun on the shirts. Pilots looked at us like we were nuts (no argument) but then laughed as it worked like a charm.

[tlb]

>>> in 1956, when a pair of F-89 Scorpions fired 208 rockets against a wayward drone that was threatening southern California, and failed to score a single hit.

Which is a good story in itself. The tiny unguided rockets carried in the interceptor’s pods were intended to attack large bombers flying in thick swarms. Not small fast drones flying alone.

Mile after mile the interceptors chased the drone, attacking and missing, and starting serious forest fires from the misses.

[Yo-Yo]

Under the circumstances, says Dik Daso, a former Air Force F-15 pilot who is now the National Air and Space Museum’s curator for modern military aircraft, the role of the Sidewinder is bound to shrink. “These days,” he explains, “the object is to deploy your radar missiles so that when you get to the merge [the point at which two fighters pass each other], hopefully you see nothing but fireballs. But in air-to-air combat, nothing ever goes perfectly, and I think the AIM-9 is the best fallback for self-defense that you can have.” Says Captain Jeffrey Penfield, a former F/A-18 pilot who, until recently, ran the Navy’s Air-to-Air Missile Program Office: “When you get in a mano-a-mano, visual-versus-visual engagement, the AIM-9 is the weapon of choice.”

Not to discount a future conflict with the same asinine Rules of Engagement that required Vietnam era pilots to visually identify a target before they were allowed to fire a weapon at it, which made BVR engagements moot, and exacerbated the lack of a gun in the early F-4s.

[Starwolf]

They just dfedicated a new engineering building at China Lake, named for Mclean.

China Lake remains an impressive laboratory and produces a number of inovations even today. They are also hiring and the housing prices are low, esp for California.