Fairey fireflash missile

Noting how rare photographs are appreciated by the community, I thought you would all like to see these, held in my collection from lond ago;

The Fireflash (Blue Sky) was a beam rider developed in parallel with the infrared seeking Firestreak (Blue Jay). I think the idea was to ensure that all bases were covered, if one or the other failed to come up to scratch.

The design offices were at Heston, but the trials unit was based at Valley, convenient for trials at Aberporth.

The Trials fleet at Valley consisted of three Meteor Mk 11s, fully radar capable:
WD743, WD744 and WD745 also WM374 (All white) was at Valley for a period prior to dispatch to Australia to join WM372 and373 at Woomera.

There were also two Meteor Mk7s: WA738 and WF781 used as Photographic chase aircraft and these had the capability to fire basic missile without guidance.

A Fireflash fired from WD743 was the first british missile to destroy a target (Firefly U mk7).
The pilot was Jimmy Mathews, who later flew the FD-2 The other Fairey pilot was Ian Ryall and there were also anumber of RAF pilots involved, an early example of joint trials.

Such was life in the 1950s