The Bell X-9 Shrike was a prototype

surface-to-air A surface-to-air missile (SAM), also known as a ground-to-air missile (GTAM) or surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW), is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of anti-aircraft syst ...

, liquid-fueled

guided missile In military terminology, a missile is a guided airborne ranged weapon capable of self-propelled flight usually by a jet engine or rocket motor. Missiles are thus also called guided missiles or guided rockets (when a previously unguided rocket ...

Bell Aircraft The Bell Aircraft Corporation was an American aircraft manufacturer, a builder of several types of fighter aircraft for World War II but most famous for the Bell X-1, the first supersonic aircraft, and for the development and production of many ...

as a testbed for the nuclear-armed

GAM-63 RASCAL The GAM-63 RASCAL was a supersonic air-to-surface missile that was developed by the Bell Aircraft Company. The RASCAL was the United States Air Force's first nuclear armed standoff missile. The RASCAL was initially designated the ASM-A-2, then ...

. It is named after the

shrike Shrikes () are passerine birds of the family Laniidae. The family is composed of 34 species in four genera. The family name, and that of the largest genus, ''Lanius'', is derived from the Latin word for "butcher", and some shrikes are also know ...

, a family of birds.

Testing

Thirty-one X-9 rockets were delivered, flying from April 1949 to January 1953. The program was used to gather aerodynamic and stability data, and to test guidance and propulsion systems for the RASCAL. None of the missiles survived testing. The only known remaining fragment of an X-9 is part of a

vertical stabilizer A vertical stabilizer or tail fin is the static part of the vertical tail of an aircraft. The term is commonly applied to the assembly of both this fixed surface and one or more movable rudders hinged to it. Their role is to provide control, sta ...

, at the Larry Bell Museum in

Mentone, Indiana Mentone is a town in Harrison and Franklin townships, Kosciusko County, in the U.S. state of Indiana. Mentone is the self-proclaimed "Egg Basket of the Midwest" because of prolific commercial egg production in the area, and holds an Egg Festival an ...

Specifications (X-9)

General characteristics: *

Length Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the Interna ...

: 22 ft 9 in (6.9 m) *

Wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingspan of ...

: 7 ft 10 in (2.4 m) *

Diameter In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest chord of the circle. Both definitions are also valid for ...

: 1 ft 10 in (0.56 m) * Wing area: 70 ft² (6.5 m²) * Weight (empty): 2,125 lb (964 kg) * Weight (loaded): 3,500 lb (1,588 kg) *

Propulsion Propulsion is the generation of force by any combination of pushing or pulling to modify the translational motion of an object, which is typically a rigid body (or an articulated rigid body) but may also concern a fluid. The term is derived from ...

Bell XLR65 A bell is a directly struck idiophone percussion instrument. Most bells have the shape of a hollow cup that when struck vibrates in a single strong strike tone, with its sides forming an efficient resonator. The strike may be made by an inter ...

-BA-1 liquid-fuel rocket engine, 3,000 lbf (13.3 kN) thrust Performance: * Maximum

speed In everyday use and in kinematics, the speed (commonly referred to as ''v'') of an object is the magnitude of the change of its position over time or the magnitude of the change of its position per unit of time; it is thus a scalar quanti ...

: Mach 2.0 *

Range Range may refer to: Geography * Range (geographic), a chain of hills or mountains; a somewhat linear, complex mountainous or hilly area (cordillera, sierra) ** Mountain range, a group of mountains bordered by lowlands * Range, a term used to i ...

: 50 mi (80 km) *

Service ceiling With respect to aircraft performance, a ceiling is the maximum density altitude an aircraft can reach under a set of conditions, as determined by its flight envelope. Service ceiling Service ceiling is where the rate of climb drops below a pres ...

: 12.3 mi (19.8 km) *

Rate of climb In aeronautics, the rate of climb (RoC) is an aircraft's vertical speed, that is the positive or negative rate of altitude change with respect to time. In most ICAO member countries, even in otherwise metric countries, this is usually expressed ...

: m/min ( ft/min) *

Wing loading In aerodynamics, wing loading is the total mass of an aircraft or flying animal divided by the area of its wing. The stalling speed of an aircraft in straight, level flight is partly determined by its wing loading. An aircraft or animal with a ...

: kg/m² ( lb/ft²) * Thrust/weight:

References

''American X-Vehicles''
(PDF)

External links

* {{USAF early missiles Experimental missiles

Testing

Specifications (X-9)

See also

References

External links