Some inventions which have a troubled start go on literally change the world. In the case
of aerial combat, the self-guided missile is one such invention and yet infighting within
the US navy meant that the most successful air-to-air missile in history might never
have come about if it weren’t for a small dedicated group of engineers working in their
own time and using experimental funding where they ever they could find it.
This is the story of the worlds first heat-seeking missile, the AIM-9 sidewinder.
This video is sponsored by Magellan TV, Magellan is a new documentary streaming service run
by filmmakers that have a passion for their work. They believe that knowledge is key to
the human struggle and their mission is to tell great stories that define our history
show how we got to where we are. Magellan now has over 3000 documentaries available
with more being added each week with a wide selection of those in 4k for no extra cost
and you can also stream directly to your smartphone or tablet where ever you are.
As we covered a bit of the second world war in this video then you may well be interested
in Magellan’s 3 part series called “WWII in the Pacific” which goes through why Japan
attacked the US at Pearl Harbour and the US response as it pushed Japan back across the
Pacific to the home islands and ultimate victory, a very interesting and informative series.
You can watch this and many more by getting your 1-month free trial using the link for
this special offer right at the top of the description below and I’m sure you’ll
love watching MagellanTV as much as I have. The year is 1946 and US Navy physicist William
McLean has been working on an idea to use a lead-sulphide proximity fuse that is sensitive
to infra-red radiation. He figured that if it could detect the heat
signature of a plane then it might be able to track the target and provide guidance for
a rocket, making it into a self-guiding missile. During WW2 aerial dogfights were the norm
and hadn’t changed much since the 1st world war. The attacker had to get close enough
to the target and get them in their sights before they could open fire. This applied
to guns, canons or rockets, once fired the projectile of whatever type would just follow
a ballistic path to wherever it was pointed and hopefully your enemy was still on that
ballistic path after you fired it During WW2, McLean had been worked on ordnance
equipment and the gyroscopic guidance system of the Bat glide bomb. Afterwards, he moved
to the Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS), Inyokern, California, now the Naval Air Weapons
Station China Lake. This is where he was investigating the infrared
heat sensor and came up with the idea to use it to track a heat source and then control
the steering mechanism for a rocket. But McLean didn’t start out with the intention
of creating a guided missile, this was more a technology demonstration to show what was
possible but it became much more than that and one thing led to another and soon the
team were developing more and more subsystems to make a complete stand-alone weapon.
Over the next year or so his team developed new and innovative power generation, propulsion,
stabilisation and fire-control system all in house. They called the project a “heat
homing rocket” and regarded it as a complete piece of ordinance just like a Navy artillery
shell, aim it, fire it and let it do the rest by its self.
At this time there were couple, of other competing designs for guided missiles, the Sparrow and
Falcon which a different area of the Navy was working on and the Airforce was also interested
in, and to them, they didn’t need another missile design.
This is where things became a bit awkward with rivalry from within different areas of
the Navy almost putting an end to the NOTS program before it had started.
There were two Bureaus within the Navy dealing with rockets & missiles, the Bureau of Aeronautics
(BuAer) which dealt with design, supply and support of naval aircraft and related systems
including missiles and the Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd) which dealt with aerial weapons, bombs,
gun and rockets. BuAer mostly subbed out their work out to contractors whilst BuOrd did most
of their work in-house within the Navy. So what is the difference between a rocket
and a missile? Well, a rocket is an unguided ballistic projectile that goes where it's
pointed whereas a missile is a rocket with a guidance system that can control where it
goes or track a moving object for example. BuAer had contracted out their design requirement
for a guided missile called the Falcon which was very complex and costly and built by outside
contractors whereas the China lake NOTS team were under the control of BuOrd with their
inhouse designed and built Heat Homing Rocket. However, because BuAer had the official job
of making missiles they objected to BuOrd’s “Heat Homing Rocket” and thru the Dept
of Defence had the project cancelled. But instead of just accepting the decision,
McLean and his team decided to carry on with the project by themselves working voluntarily
in their spare time and using laboratory funding, sometimes from other projects.
McLean was well-liked by many in the Bureau of Ordnance and they allowed this to carry
on with his “side projects” which was just as well as by 1951 the project was advanced
enough to show to the Deputy Chief of BuOrd and by 1952 it was officially recognised and
named as the Sidewinder almost to spite BuAer because they attempted to kill it off.
Although the Airforce said they weren’t interested in the sidewinder, some of the
proponents of the program said they should have a shoot-off against the Airforces missile
choice the Falcon to decide which would better. When the fly off occurred, the falcon team
turned up with boxes of test equipment and 8 technicians. The NOT’s team came with
a few sidewinders, one person and meter and a flashlight to check the tracking.
The trails against the Falcon proved decisive as many of the Falcons failed to fire due
to technical problems whereas the Sidewinder proved just how good it was by producing several
one-shot kills on target drones. Although the Falcon was designed to be used
against the slower moving bombers it was kept by the Airforce. Later in the Vietnam war,
it proved to be just too unreliable and poor performing against fast-moving fighters, so
much so that the commander of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing issued an unauthorised order
to replace them with Sidewinders which they knew to work, soon after the rest of the Airforce
followed suit. One of the keys to the success of the Sidewinder
was it’s innovative design which used novel concepts. One such was that it required no
batteries onboard because it made its own electrical power with a tiny turbine driven
by a hot gas generator that would burn for 20 seconds, enough time to hit the target,
this also provided the actuator power for the forward steering canards.
On the Aim-9b, the second generation version, it used rollerons, small air driven wheels
that worked as gyros on the articulated rear canards to stabilise the missile, a brilliant
piece of lateral thinking that kept the design simple, cost-effective and reliable, much
more so that its limited competition. This was McLean’s driving principle, to
make it simple, low cost but also reliable and producible. He actively encouraged competition
between the various groups working on the project to come up with the best most elegant
ideas and it worked. Although effective, the Sidewinders were limited
to firing at targets from behind where the greatest heat source from the engines was.
This meant that it couldn’t be used when attacking from the front or sides but later
versions would overcome this limitation as well as coping with enemy countermeasures
with better detectors and Semi-Active Radar Homing.
In 1958 it was crunch time the sidewinder when it was used for the first time by the
airforce of the Republic of China or Taiwan against Soviet-supplied MiGs of Communist
China over the Taiwan straights. Even though the MiGs could fly higher than
the Taiwanese F-86’s and choose their time to attack, the sidewinders allowed them to
shoot down four MiGs in one sortie which put a stop to the communist advance.
However, during the dogfights, one sidewinder hit a MiG but failed to denote and became
stuck in the plane's fuselage. On their return to base, the Chinese handed
over the missile to the Soviets who took it back to Russia to take it apart and eventually
reverse engineer it to make their own sidewinder copy the Vympel K-13 which went into service
in 1961. And so started the missile wars with new updated
versions of the sidewinder appearing over the years covering the Vietnam war with the
AIM-9 C, D, E, G and H versions. Over the decades since then, the Sidewinder
has received six major updates with the AIM-9L, M, R, X, X Block II and X Block III.
Due to its low cost, simplicity and effectiveness, it’s become the most widely used air-air
missile in the West with over 110,000 being made by the US and 27 other nations. It's
also the most effective, shooting down an estimated 270 aircraft, more than any other
missile and stands as a testament to the original design goals set out by William McLean over
60 years ago. And it’s not over yet as Boeing have a contract
to support the sidewinder and keep it up to date until 2055.
So I hope you like the video and if you did then please, subscribe, click the bell notification
and share and that’s to all of our Patreons out there for your ongoing support.