Plane Tales

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.