EE NEVER thought of putting Sidewinder or Sparrow on the Lightning. The Aim 9 would not work on the Lightning due to problems with Obscuration. The well known photo of a Lightning fitted with Sidewinder was taken at RAF Valley and was meant as a joke!
Red Top was probably the first air to air missile with a head on capability that didn’t require CW (continuous wave ) illumination of the target. Its seeker head actually used the friction of the wing leading edge for acquisition head on not the reheat plume. Fire streak was good at Low level due to the fact that it did not suffer from a phenomena known as gravity drop- ie at trigger press the rocket fired off the rail and was in flight where as the Aim 9 tended to leave the rail and drop slightly before guidance .

Don’t know where you get your gen from Salad but lets just agree to disagree. I spent three years as a RT/Firestreak guidance specialist, I’m not going to argue the toss, we’ll just leave it at that.

Yeah it does pong. I’ve never figured out why it always smells like the inside of a fuel bowser in a Cessna just after you’ve filled up, it used to worry me a bit!

Could well be, Cessnas do smell a bit of fuel if you brim the tanks. The other think I thought of was that the Cessnas I fly have leather upholstery whereas the Piper has fabric. I think as well with 28 only having the one door the odour has less chance of dispersing cf the Cessna with both doors open and a bit of a breeze you don’t get any lingering smells.

It was proposed by BAe but rejected on cost grounds. No surprise there then although to be fair the Lightning didn’t have long left to go. As I remember EE originally planned for the Lightning to have Sidewinder and even Sparrow capability.

The Red Top was an all aspect missile as cf. the Firestreak which was rear aspect only. Actually the Firestreak was a very good missile considering the guidance system was all valve and it had to have an ammonia cooling system! RT’s main adversery was considered to be the Blinder and head on against supersonic targets with afterburner plume and high kinetic heating it was very good. Where it wasn’t so good was head on against less kinetically heated targets ie subsonic.

I had rather a nice and unusual memento presented to me when the Lightning finished, a Lightning inside a Firestreak nose cone. The observant among you will notice that the model has RT on the rails!

WCO to Didcot looks good too, thanks for that.

Moggy-Waddington.

Fieldhawk, I’ll def be down sometime (Atlas starts July 14th I think till mid August) I put the track on Skydemon yesterday and it looked pretty congested but I had tinker last night and if I route via Cranfield and S’ham VOR it looks OK. I’ll come down IFR.

Dave
Your remarks about the RAF F4 – FGR2 are totally incorrect

I can definitely vouch for the SUU gun/Fletcher tank combination as a mate was in the back seat when the pilot said he would have to bunt a little to get supersonic easily. The rest I gleaned from four years working on them and having a current mate who was a Nav on them, plus conversations I had with USAF exchange crews who had flown the F4 in Vietnam. I am aware that the RAF F4 had the edge in performance below 20,000 if I have been correctly informed. I am not however an FGR2 pilot so stand to be corrected.

Edit: I can speak from experience about the Lightning as I was part of the investigation team that looked at why the Red Top was such a poor performer. In fact even in the mid 80’s we did a feasibility study into whether we could put four sidewinders on it.

I think it was the best fighter of WW11 in it’s Merlin engined guise, much as I love the Spitfire and all it stands for. It did the job that it was designed to do brilliantly.

I’ve always thought that the problem that a/c manufacturers have to contend with is that governments want a/c to do everything, which the F4 made as good a stab at as any other a/c. But they usually finish up as Jack of all and master of none. It’s OK having a cost effective solution in peacetime but if it’s going to get blown out of the sky come a shooting match then those savings are complete losses.

I think it was the F15 that had the design motto ‘Not a pound for air to ground’. It was designed purely as an interceptor/fighter and as a result has shot down some 100 a/c without a single loss (in combat). Of course they then thought they would hang bombs on it and call it the F15E. Low wing loading=very bumpy flight at low level. Not good. Conversley the TSR2 had high wing loading which gives very good gust damping but poor turning performance. This instantaneous turn rate may be high because a highly loaded a/c will tend to roll quicker but all bets are off after that. So as a turner and mixer the TSR2 was always going to be at a disdvantage.