As I said earlier the idea of putting Aim9 on the Lightning never got far due to the limitation of the seeker head. Mounted on the same rail as a Firestreak or Red Top so far back a missile on the port side would have been unable to detect a target on the right side of the Lightning as its seeker was masked.

I don’t have your depth of knowledge about such things – but the F8 Crusader had twin sidewinder launch rails mounted high on the sides of the forward fuselage.

Presumably it too suffered from the same ‘masking’ problem?

Ken