A thread for the ubiquitous Sidewinder and any of it's derivatives.

Happened upon this interesting version, the HAP (High Altitude Project) Sidewinder.  AIM-9 seeker & control surfaces added to an AIM-7 Sparrow motor:
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/sidewinder-hap-high-altitude-project.23848/

https://skyhawk.org/article/skyhawk-ordnance

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IIRC, there was during the Vietnam War the "Bullwinder": an AGM-12 Bullpup with an AIM-9 IR seeker head, as a guided weapon against ground targets with a clear heat signature, e .g. burning buildings. Here's a test round:

Love the look of these items, put a Bullwinder on a pylon and see the JMN's scratch their heads 

Gondor

Diamondback, an upscaled Sidewinder with Nuclear warhead.
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/diamondback-china-lakes-nuclear-sidewinder.2555/#post-406246

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Fascinating document Mossie 

It's also showing the era it's from by the fact it's handwritten on what looks to be a photocopied form ? 

Quote from: NARSES2 on April 21, 2023, 05:47:30 AMFascinating document Mossie 

It's also showing the era it's from by the fact it's handwritten on what looks to be a photocopied form ? 

Photocopied?

Xeroxed, surely!  

Quote from: Old Wombat on April 21, 2023, 06:40:54 AMXeroxed, surely!  

We never used that name inn the office. It was always "see you in the photocopy room"    I can remember when you had to have your bosses written permission to get a photocopy and they checked numbers in and out    Before that it was Roneo ? copiers.

Neither photocopied nor Xeroxed, just a standardized printed form. 

Quote from: jcf on April 21, 2023, 09:05:41 AMNeither photocopied nor Xeroxed, just a standardized printed form.

Poor quality printing then Jon. Looks exactly like copies of copies of copies, and I saw a few of those in my time 

Many years ago a visiting British academic attempted to explain to me UK regulations on how you could get things photocopied for yourself.  It seems a clumsy way of managing the problem to me.  Downunder we had a long established method that you could photocopy up to 10% of a work before you had to fill in any forms or anything.  Not many people appreciated how much work was needed to photocopy more than 10% so they just basically ignored all the regulations.  For the UK it was a lot more regulated with someone asking and receiving paperwork for a few pages it seemed.  The Acadmic was quite serious about it too and couldn't believe it was so free and easily downunder.   

Quote from: Dizzyfugu on April 20, 2023, 04:28:22 AMIIRC, there was during the Vietnam War the "Bullwinder": an AGM-12 Bullpup with an AIM-9 IR seeker head, as a guided weapon against ground targets with a clear heat signature, e .g. burning buildings. Here's a test round:

l could see the potential as an IR guided anti-shipping or even anti-tank missile. It might be easily decoyed, though.

I think that this was the problem with it in real life, because this conversion did not see much use (or even received an official designation).

Very interesting!  Especially the high altitude version! 

I seem to recall a few IR Falcon missiles were fired at trucks and such in Vietnam.  With predicable results- the Falcon never seemed much good at anything.     

All the air to ground variants of had a short operational life, AGM-87 Focus and AGM-122 Sidearm. My own thoughts are the warhead was too small, but that doesn't apply to Bullpup.