Early UK AAMs: Firestreak, Red Top, Fireflash, Red Dean, Red Hebe etc..

[Weaver]

As far as I can see we don't have a thread for this but if we have and I've missed it, mods, please merge them.

Gatwick Aviation Museum has a good page on Lightning weapon options, which includes diagrams of Firestreak and Red Top:





Source page: http://www.gatwick-aviation-museum.co.uk/lightning/wepons.htm

[PR19_Kit]

Good call H, but you left off THE weirdest Brit missile, the 'fire and glide' Fireflash. 



I'm still trying to figure out something suitably weird as a carrier for a couple of Fireflashes that Gondor sent me. 

[NARSES2]

Good call H, but you left off THE weirdest Brit missile, the 'fire and glide' Fireflash. 



I'm still trying to figure out something suitably weird as a carrier for a couple of Fireflashes that Gondor sent me. 

When I first saw one of those, in a Magna kit ?, I spent a while trying to figure out which bit was the missile and which the motors, seriously 

After recently reading the "bookazine" on Secret Jets of Cold War Britain I've become quite intrigued by some of these early missiles. Some were huge, almost larger then the intended carriers !

[Weaver]

Good call H, but you left off THE weirdest Brit missile, the 'fire and glide' Fireflash. 



I'm still trying to figure out something suitably weird as a carrier for a couple of Fireflashes that Gondor sent me. 

Arghhh, I thought I hadn't but I put 'Skyflash' in the title by mistake. Corrected now.

Most AAMs are actually fire-and-glide: the motors burn out long before they reach maximum, or even typical, range. That's why it's possible to evade them when they're at the end of their flight: every turn costs them air speed and they have no way to get it back. That's also why ramjet missiles like Sea Dart, Bloodhound and Meteor are so good: they retain maneuverability much further down-range.

I've got a couple of white-metal Fireflashes too. Lee found them in a kit he bought 2nd hand at a show and very generously gave them to me.

Here's Fireflash on a Meteor for trials. It's very easy to imagine an operational version of this combo, with the Fireflash guidance beam generated by a modified version of the main AI radar instead of the Ekco set seen here in the nose 'pimple'. You could use the inaccurate very long nose in the Matchbox NF.14 kit to represent the modified radar:

[PR19_Kit]

I was going to suggest a Fireflash carrying Mosquito as a test aircraft, but then realised it should be re-filed under the 'Very Bad Ideas' thread.

A Mosquito's made of wood of course............... 

[NARSES2]

I was going to suggest a Fireflash carrying Mosquito as a test aircraft, but then realised it should be re-filed under the 'Very Bad Ideas' thread.

A Mosquito's made of wood of course............... 

Maybe a Beaufighter then ? They were used in various roles well into the 50's. If not the Beau' then a Buckingham ?

[Snowtrooper]

I was going to suggest a Fireflash carrying Mosquito as a test aircraft, but then realised it should be re-filed under the 'Very Bad Ideas' thread.

A Mosquito's made of wood of course............... 

Just fit a metal plate on the wing around the launch rail and you're good to go. After all, Swordfish is made of fabric and was nevertheless used to launch RP-3's...

[Weaver]

Lovely model of the Fireflash trials Meteor by Richard M on the Airfix Tribute forum:


Source: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/airfixtributeforum/matchbox-1-72-gloster-meteor-nf11-12-14-pk-129-t12342-s40.html

Aren't the pylons weird? It's as if they cropped the wingtips and then changed their minds...

[Weaver]

Useful comparison of British Air-to-air weapons, posted HERE by user Just Leo. It doesn't say they're to scale, but they look about right (apart from the ADEN, obviously):



The Firestreak image is a bit ropey: it doesn't show the subtle taper of the forebody, it shows the fuse window rings at front and back instead of both at the front, and it shows them as rectangles, whereas they were actually tessellating triangles.

[PR19_Kit]

Wasn't the Red Hebe meant to be a SMALLER version of the Red Dean?

In that drawing it has the same size fuselage and MUCH larger wings.

[Weaver]

Wasn't the Red Hebe meant to be a SMALLER version of the Red Dean?

It that drawing it has the same size fuselage and MUCH larger wings.

No Red Hebe was a development of Red Dean that was suitable for supersonic carriage and very high altitudes. Red Dean's radome couldn't take the kinetic heating that came with supersonic speed, plus it was a blunt shape, so it had to be changed. The bigger wings maintained maneuverability in thin air at high altitudes (any missile can be improved by fitting bigger wings?  ).

Note that Red Hebe fitted to an aircraft was actually longer than that picture shows, since it had to have a jettisonable tail cone to prevent excessive base drag...

Red Dean started off smaller. When it was in Folland's hands it weighed about 700lb and was 'small' enough to be carried on the wingtips of a Meteor F.8 for trials. The trouble was that it didn't work, and trying to fix that after it was transferred to Vickers pushed the weight and size up inexorably. A fully-active radar-homing AAM was WAY too ambitious for the state-of-the-art in the 1950s: even the Yanks, who were generally well ahead of us in this field, couldn't get Sparrow II to work well, and took until the 1970s to get any active radar-homer (Phoenix) into general service. Even Phoenix weighed over 1000lb and was 13ft long.

[elmayerle]

No Blue Dolphin to complete matters?

[MAD]

You may have already seen this video of Fireflash being launched during trials

https://youtu.be/-BC2NiirG6E

MAD