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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 |
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