An unlikely story. The early sidewinder was developed by the Navy at
China Lake, CA by a couple of desert rats. An infra-red sensor was
essentially attached to a piece of 5 inch pipe, the old HVAR rocket
tube. The control system aimed for the highest heat source, hopefully
a jet tail pipe, and tried to continuosly correct to that source. The
dead center of the seeker did have a mask which gave a zero audio tone
or nul. The sinous flight path to targets inspired the desert snake
name, "Sidewinder". First operational test was a couple of missiles
fired by Chinat's against a couple of Chicom Migs, resulting in first
Sidewinder Mig kills. Later version had a radar dectector for exclusive
use on Navy F-8 Crusaders in an attempt to give that airplane some
modicum of all-weather missile capability. It was a miserable failure
but did have the unique ability to self-destruct if it lost target
return. This self-destruction would occur right after it's safe and
arm time, about 3 sec. A very reliable source of mine had one of these
sidewinders (Aim-9C) go off in his face one night leading to a less
that hoped for operator acceptance. Perhaps this characteristic
spawned the Math teacher's story, likely told to emphasize the supreme
importance of that science.

leadfoot wrote:
I was told by one of my college math teachers that there was an engineering
calculation in the early sidewinder days that involved a division by ZERO.
No one could figure it out so they ignored it. The missile when launched
destroyed itself in flight and the fix was to place a cross member in the
body of the missile which then made the equation work properly

Can anyone confirm or or deny this srory?

Could have been sparrow but I'm pretty sure he said sidewinder. Instrucor
was often freelancing as an emgineering consultant