Sidewinders and Sparrows

18/01/2022 19 min
Sidewinders and Sparrows

Listen "Sidewinders and Sparrows"

Episode Synopsis

Despite their obvious differences, Sidewinders and Sparrows often went together because they aren’t just the names of flying creatures and slithering serpents… they are weapons of war.
 
The Sidewinder
 
House Sparrows
 
The Rapier missile system
 
Chinese Fire Arrows
 
The Tipu Sultan’s artillery rockets
 
The RS-28 rockets fired by the Polikarpov I-16
 
The German R4M unguided air to air rocket
 
The nuclear AIR-2 Genie missile
 
A Genie launch
 
The AIM9 Sidewinder
 
The rotating reticule
 
The rolleron
 
Guidance
 
The warhead
 
An AIM 9 warhead effect demonstration
 
The AIM7 Sparrow
 
A QF4B killed by a Sparrow missile
 
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to images in the Public Domain, UK Defence Imagery, Wubei Zhi, NASA, Juergen Schiffmann, the USAF, David Monniaux, RoyKabanlit, U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation and the USN.