![Firestreak missile](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Firestreak_missile.png)
The de Havilland Firestreak is a British first-generation, passive
infrared homing
Infrared homing is a passive weapon guidance system which uses the infrared (IR) light emission from a target to track and follow it seamlessly. Missiles which use infrared seeking are often referred to as "heat-seekers" since infrared is radi ...
(heat seeking)
air-to-air missile
The newest and the oldest member of Rafael's Python family of AAM for comparisons, Python-5 (displayed lower-front) and Shafrir-1 (upper-back)
An air-to-air missile (AAM) is a missile fired from an aircraft for the purpose of destroying a ...
. It was developed by
de Havilland Propellers
de Havilland Propellers was established in 1935, as a division of the de Havilland Aircraft company when that company acquired a licence from the Hamilton Standard company of America for the manufacture of variable-pitch propellers at a cost ...
(later
Hawker Siddeley
Hawker Siddeley was a group of British manufacturing companies engaged in aircraft production. Hawker Siddeley combined the legacies of several British aircraft manufacturers, emerging through a series of mergers and acquisitions as one of onl ...
) in the early 1950s, entering service in 1957. It was the first such weapon to enter active service with the
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...
(RAF) and
Fleet Air Arm
The Fleet Air Arm (FAA) is one of the five fighting arms of the Royal Navy and is responsible for the delivery of naval air power both from land and at sea. The Fleet Air Arm operates the F-35 Lightning II for maritime strike, the AW159 Wil ...
, equipping the
English Electric Lightning
The English Electric Lightning is a British fighter aircraft that served as an interceptor during the 1960s, the 1970s and into the late 1980s. It was capable of a top speed of above Mach 2. The Lightning was designed, developed, and manufa ...
,
de Havilland Sea Vixen
The de Havilland DH.110 Sea Vixen is a British twin-engine, twin boom-tailed, two-seat, carrier-based fleet air-defence fighter flown by the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm during the 1950s through to the early 1970s. The Sea Vixen was designed by ...
and
Gloster Javelin
The Gloster Javelin is a twin-engined T-tailed delta-wing subsonic night and all-weather interceptor aircraft that served with Britain's Royal Air Force from the mid-1950s until the late 1960s. The last aircraft design to bear the Gloster name ...
. It was a
rear-aspect,
fire and forget
Fire-and-forget is a type of missile guidance which does not require further external intervention after launch such as illumination of the target or Wire-guided missile, wire guidance, and can hit its target without the launcher being in line- ...
pursuit weapon, with a field of attack of 20 degrees either side of the target.
[Gibson 2007, p. 33]
Developed under the
rainbow code
The Rainbow Codes were a series of code names used to disguise the nature of various British military research projects. They were mainly used by the Ministry of Supply from the end of the Second World War until 1958, when the ministry was broke ...
"Blue Jay", Firestreak was the third heat-seeking missile to enter service, after the US
AIM-4 Falcon
The Hughes AIM-4 Falcon was the first operational guided air-to-air missile of the United States Air Force. Development began in 1946; the weapon was first tested in 1949. The missile entered service with the USAF in 1956.
Produced in both heat ...
and
AIM-9 Sidewinder
The AIM-9 Sidewinder (where "AIM" stands for "Air Intercept Missile") is a short-range air-to-air missile which entered service with the US Navy in 1956 and subsequently was adopted by the US Air Force in 1964. Since then the Sidewinder has prov ...
, both of which entered service the previous year. In comparison to those designs, the Firestreak was larger and almost twice as heavy, carrying a much larger warhead. It had otherwise similar performance in terms of speed and range. It was also a very complex system, with an unusual internal design, requiring the launch aircraft to provide both cooling for its tube-based electronics and heating to prevent various moving parts from freezing prior to launch.
An improved version, "Blue Vesta", was developed as part of the
Operational Requirement F.155
Operational Requirement F.155 was a specification issued by the British Ministry of Supply on 15 January 1955 for an interceptor aircraft to defend the United Kingdom from Soviet high-flying nuclear-armed supersonic bombers.
Discussion about th ...
project but ended when that project was canceled in 1957. Development restarted as a somewhat simpler version for the Lightning which was given the name "Red Top". This featured
transistor
upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink).
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch e ...
ized electronics and greatly simplified internal design. Keeping its code name, it entered service on Lightning and Sea Vixen as the
Hawker Siddeley Red Top
The Hawker Siddeley (later British Aerospace) Red Top was the third indigenous British air-to-air missile to enter service, following the de Havilland Firestreak and limited-service Fireflash. It was used to replace the Firestreak on the de Havill ...
. Red Top could not be carried on early versions of the Lightning, and so Firestreak remained in service until 1988, when the last RAF Lightnings retired.
Development
Red Hawk
Firestreak was the result of a series of projects begun with the OR.1056
Red Hawk missile
Fireflash was the United Kingdom's first air-to-air missile, air-to-air guided missile to see service with the Royal Air Force. Constructed by Fairey Aviation Company, Fairey Aviation, the missile utilised radar beam riding guidance. Fireflash ...
, which called for an all-aspect seeker that could attack a target from any launch position. When this proved too ambitious for the
state of the art
The state of the art (sometimes cutting edge or leading edge) refers to the highest level of general development, as of a device, technique, or scientific field achieved at a particular time. However, in some contexts it can also refer to a level ...
, another specification lacking the all-aspect requirement was released as Blue Sky, which briefly entered service as
Fireflash
Fireflash was the United Kingdom's first air-to-air guided missile to see service with the Royal Air Force. Constructed by Fairey Aviation, the missile utilised radar beam riding guidance. Fireflash had relatively limited performance and requi ...
the year before Firestreak.
Blue Jay
In 1951 the
Royal Aircraft Establishment
The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), bef ...
(RAE), in charge of missile development, felt that
infrared seeking
Infrared homing is a passive weapon guidance system which uses the infrared (IR) light emission from a target to track and follow it seamlessly. Missiles which use infrared seeking are often referred to as "heat-seekers" since infrared is rad ...
had progressed to the point of reconsidering the Red Hawk requirement. This too turned out to be too demanding for the seekers of the era, although a more limited tail-aspect design was clearly possible in the short term. This led to another lower-performance specification that was released in 1951 as OR.1117, and given the
Ministry of Supply
The Ministry of Supply (MoS) was a department of the UK government formed in 1939 to co-ordinate the supply of equipment to all three British armed forces, headed by the Minister of Supply. A separate ministry, however, was responsible for aircr ...
rainbow code
The Rainbow Codes were a series of code names used to disguise the nature of various British military research projects. They were mainly used by the Ministry of Supply from the end of the Second World War until 1958, when the ministry was broke ...
name Blue Jay.
Blue Jay developed as a fairly conventional-looking missile with cropped delta wings mounted just aft of the midpoint and small rectangular control surfaces in tandem towards the rear. Internally, things were considerably more complex. The tube-based electronics took up most of the forward quarter of the fuselage, leaving little room for a warhead. This led to the warhead being moved to the rear of the fuselage where it was wrapped around the rocket nozzle. That left no room for the actuators for the rear-mounted control fins, which were instead operated by nose-mounted actuators via long pushrods. The actuators were powered by compressed air from bottles at the extreme rear, fed forward through long pipes. The air bottles also powered a turbo-alternator for electrical power after launch. In the case of a miss, the missile self-destructed when the alternator slowed down after the air ran out.
The Magpie rocket motor took up only a small portion of the missile fuselage, placed between the actuators and the warhead, roughly centred under the mid-mounted wings. It consisted of of
cordite
Cordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in the United Kingdom since 1889 to replace black powder as a military propellant. Like modern gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burni ...
that burned for 1.9 seconds, exiting the rear of the missile via a long tailpipe running through the rear section of the missile.
The
lead telluride
Lead telluride is a compound of lead and tellurium (PbTe). It crystallizes in the NaCl crystal structure with Pb atoms occupying the cation and Te forming the anionic lattice. It is a narrow gap semiconductor with a band gap of 0.32 eV. It occurs ...
(PbTe) IR seeker was mounted under an eight-faceted conical
arsenic trisulphide
Arsenic trisulfide is the inorganic compound with the formula . It is a dark yellow solid that is insoluble in water. It also occurs as the mineral orpiment (Latin: auripigmentum), which has been used as a pigment called King's yellow. It is produ ...
"pencil" nose and was cooled to to improve the
signal-to-noise ratio
Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR or S/N) is a measure used in science and engineering that compares the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise. SNR is defined as the ratio of signal power to the noise power, often expressed in deci ...
. The unusual faceted nose was chosen when a more conventional hemispherical nose proved prone to ice accretion.
[Gibson 2007, p. 34] The seeker was cooled by running filtered air through an ammonia-cooled
heat exchanger
A heat exchanger is a system used to transfer heat between a source and a working fluid. Heat exchangers are used in both cooling and heating processes. The fluids may be separated by a solid wall to prevent mixing or they may be in direct contac ...
.
There were two rows of triangular windows in bands around the forward fuselage, behind which sat the optical
proximity fuze
A proximity fuze (or fuse) is a Fuze (munitions), fuze that detonates an Explosive material, explosive device automatically when the distance to the target becomes smaller than a predetermined value. Proximity fuzes are designed for targets such ...
s for the warhead. The prodigious warhead had a lethal radius and was triggered either by the proximity fuzes or four contact fuses set on the front of the wings. The outer casing of the warhead was designed to fragment into pieces fired forward in a 50 degree cone.
The electronics, made from
vacuum tube
A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric voltage, potential difference has been applied.
The type kn ...
s, generated significant heat. For this reason, the Firestreak missile undergoing a ground test was cooled by
Arcton, and in-flight by
ammonia
Ammonia is an inorganic compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . A stable binary hydride, and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinct pungent smell. Biologically, it is a common nitrogenous was ...
pumped through the missile from bottles in the rear of the launching "shoe". The bottles contained enough ammonia for 15 minutes, so the missile could only be started up during the approach. An air bottle in the fuselage-mounted weapon pack kept the ammonia bottles pressurized before launch. Hot air from the engine compressor stages connected to the rear of the launch pack and was routed to the missiles. During flight, this kept various moving components warm, warm enough that they would not freeze up during the 13 second flight time.
Service
![Ee lightning t4 xm974 arp](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Ee_lightning_t4_xm974_arp.jpg)
The first airborne launch of Blue Jay took place in 1954 from a
de Havilland Venom
The de Havilland DH 112 Venom is a British post-war single-engined jet aircraft developed and manufactured by the de Havilland Aircraft Company. Much of its design was derived from the de Havilland Vampire, the firm's first jet-powered combat ...
, the
target drone
A target drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle, generally remote controlled, usually used in the training of anti-aircraft crews.
One of the earliest drones was the British DH.82 Queen Bee, a variant of the Tiger Moth trainer aircraft operationa ...
- a
Fairey Firefly
The Fairey Firefly is a Second World War-era carrier-borne fighter aircraft and anti-submarine aircraft that was principally operated by the Fleet Air Arm (FAA). It was developed and built by the British aircraft manufacturer Fairey Aviatio ...
- being destroyed.
Blue Jay Mk.1 entered service in 1957 with the RAF, where it was named Firestreak. Firestreak was deployed by the Royal Navy and the RAF in August 1958;
[ it was the first effective British air-to-air missile.][Boyne, Walter J, ''Air Warfare: an International Encyclopedia, Volume 1'']
pub ABC-CLIO Inc, 2002, p267.
For launch, the missile seeker was slaved to the launch aircraft's radar (Ferranti
Ferranti or Ferranti International plc was a UK electrical engineering and equipment firm that operated for over a century from 1885 until it went bankrupt in 1993. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
The firm was known ...
AIRPASS
AIRPASS was a British airborne interception radar and fire-control radar system developed by Ferranti. It was the world's first airborne monopulse radar system and fed data to the world's first head-up display. The name is an acronym for "Air ...
in the Lightning and GEC AI.18 in the Sea Vixen) until lock was achieved and the weapon was launched, leaving the interceptor free to acquire another target.[Gibson 2007, p. 35] A downside was that the missile was highly toxic (due to either the ''Magpie'' rocket motor or the ammonia coolant) and RAF armourers had to wear some form of CRBN protection to safely mount the missile onto an aircraft. "Unlike modern 990s
The 990s decade ran from January 1, 990, to December 31, 999.
Significant people
* Al-Qadir
* Mahmud of Ghazni
* Pope John XV
Pope John XV ( la, Ioannes XV; died on 1 April 996) was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from Aug ...
missiles, ... Firestreak could only be fired outside cloud, and in winter, skies were rarely clear over the UK."[Black, Ian, ''The Last of the Lightnings'', pub PSL, 1996, , p141.]
Improvements
Two minor Blue Jay variants were studied but not adopted. The Blue Jay Mk.2 included the more powerful Magpie II motor and a PbTe seeker which offered better detection capabilities. Blue Jay Mk.3 had an increased wingspan and reduced performance motor. The derated motor was intended to limit acceleration when launched from supersonic rocket-powered interceptors such as the Saunders-Roe SR.177
The Saunders-Roe SR.177 was a 1950s project to develop a combined jet- and rocket-powered interceptor aircraft for the Royal Air Force (RAF) and Royal Navy. It was an enlarged derivative of the Saunders-Roe SR.53, which was itself an experi ...
and Avro 720
The Avro 720 was an in-development British single-seat interceptor of the 1950s. It was designed and being developed by Avro in competition with the Saunders-Roe-built SR.53. While at least one prototype was partially-constructed, the order fo ...
, where the additional speed imparted by the Magpie II would have given it a maximum speed so high it would suffer from adverse aerodynamic heating.
Looking for an improved weapon for the Operational Requirement F.155
Operational Requirement F.155 was a specification issued by the British Ministry of Supply on 15 January 1955 for an interceptor aircraft to defend the United Kingdom from Soviet high-flying nuclear-armed supersonic bombers.
Discussion about th ...
interceptors, in 1955 the Air Ministry issued OR.1131 for an all-aspect design capability against enemy aircraft traveling at Mach 2. De Havilland responded with Blue Jay Mk.4, which was later given its own rainbow code, Blue Vesta. This adopted the PbTe seeker of Mk.2, further improved by cooling it to improve its sensitivity in what became known as the "Violet Banner" seeker. The motor was further upgraded to the new Magpie III. To handle the aerodynamic heating issues, the fins were made of steel rather than aluminum, and featured cut-away sections to keep the rear portions of the surfaces out of the Mach cones, a feature they referred to as "mach tips". Work on Mk.4 was curtailed after 1956 as the RAE decided that the closing speeds of two Mach 2+ aircraft would be so rapid that the missile would have no chance to be launched while still within the range of its seeker.
In August 1956, the Fleet Air Arm
The Fleet Air Arm (FAA) is one of the five fighting arms of the Royal Navy and is responsible for the delivery of naval air power both from land and at sea. The Fleet Air Arm operates the F-35 Lightning II for maritime strike, the AW159 Wil ...
took over development of the Blue Jay line with Blue Jay Mk.5, replacing the IR seeker with a semi-active radar homing
Semi-active radar homing (SARH) is a common type of missile guidance system, perhaps the most common type for longer-range Air-to-air missile, air-to-air and surface-to-air missile systems. The name refers to the fact that the missile itself is ...
(SARH) system intended to be used with the De Havilland Sea Vixen
The de Havilland DH.110 Sea Vixen is a British twin-engine, twin boom-tailed, two-seat, carrier-based fleet air-defence fighter flown by the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm during the 1950s through to the early 1970s. The Sea Vixen was designed by ...
's AI.18 radar with a special continual wave illuminator mode. This was otherwise identical to Mk.4, differing only by replacing its seeker section with a longer ogive nose cone holding the radar receiver antenna. Problems fitting the illuminator antenna to the Sea Vixen ended work on this project. In November 1957 it was briefly restarted under the name Blue Dolphin as other radar-guided developments ended, but this was never deployed.
Red Top
After the fallout of the 1957 Defence White Paper
The 1957 White Paper on Defence (Cmnd. 124) was a British white paper issued in March 1957 setting forth the perceived future of the British military. It had profound effects on all aspects of the defence industry but probably the most affected wa ...
led to the cancellation of the F.155 and many other interceptor projects, the English Electric Lightning
The English Electric Lightning is a British fighter aircraft that served as an interceptor during the 1960s, the 1970s and into the late 1980s. It was capable of a top speed of above Mach 2. The Lightning was designed, developed, and manufa ...
was allowed to continue largely because development was almost complete. This left it with no modern weapon, so Blue Vesta was reactivated in a slightly modified form.[ In November 1957, paperwork with the Blue Vesta name on it was considered disclosed and the project was assigned the new name "Red Top".
In contrast to the Mk.4 there were several important changes. The adoption of ]transistor
upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink).
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch e ...
ized circuits in place of the former thermionic valve
A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric potential difference has been applied.
The type known as a ...
s eliminated the need for cooling the electronics, as well as making the guidance section significantly smaller. This allowed the warhead to be moved from its former position near the tail to the midsection, which also allowed it to grow in size and weight, replacing the former blast-fragmentation type with an expanding-rod system that was significantly deadlier. The rear section of the missile was now left empty, allowing the fin actuators to be moved there, removing the complex routing. This still left more room that was used up by replacing the Magpie III with the new Linnet, which offered significantly higher performance and boosted the typical top speed of the missile from Mach 2.4 to 3.2 whilst almost doubling effective range to .
Given the elimination of the ammonia cooling, which was also used by the Violet Banner seeker of the Mk.4, the decision was made to use a simplified seeker that did not require cooling to the same level. This led to a new indium antimonide
Indium antimonide (InSb) is a crystalline compound made from the elements indium (In) and antimony (Sb). It is a narrow- gap semiconductor material from the III- V group used in infrared detectors, including thermal imaging cameras, FLIR systems ...
(InSb) design that was cooled with purified air at filtered to 3 μm. This reduced its sensitivity compared to Violet Banner, lacking its true all-aspect ability, but further simplified the design and eliminated ground handling concerns.
Never given its own name by the RAF, the new design entered service in 1964 as Red Top. It was faster and had a longer range than Firestreak,[ and "was capable of all aspect homing against super-sonic targets."][ Despite Red Top being intended to replace Firestreak, Firestreak remained in limited service until the final retirement of the Lightning in 1988; carrying Red Top required more vertical tail to stabilize the effects of the missile's larger wings, so Firestreak remained in use on older models of the Lightning.
]
Operators
Past operators
;
* Kuwait Air Force
The Kuwait Air Force ( ar, القوات الجوية الكويتية , al-Quwwat al-Jawwiya al-Kuwaitiya) is the air arm of the Armed Forces of Kuwait. The Air Force headquarters is located at Abdullah Al-Mubarak Air Base, with the remaining f ...
;
* Royal Saudi Air Force
The Royal Saudi Air Force ( ar, الْقُوَّاتُ الْجَوِّيَّةُ الْمَلَكِيَّةْ ٱلسُّعُوْدِيَّة, Al-Quwwat Al-Jawiyah Al-Malakiyah as-Su’udiyah) (RSAF) is the aviation branch of the Saudi Arabia ...
;
* Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...
* Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
, Fleet Air Arm
The Fleet Air Arm (FAA) is one of the five fighting arms of the Royal Navy and is responsible for the delivery of naval air power both from land and at sea. The Fleet Air Arm operates the F-35 Lightning II for maritime strike, the AW159 Wil ...
Notes
References
Citations
Bibliography
*
*
External links
The de Havilland Firestreak
The Jet Age Museum - exhibits one
{{UKmissiles
Cold War air-to-air missiles of the United Kingdom
Firestreak
The de Havilland Firestreak is a British first-generation, passive infrared homing (heat seeking) air-to-air missile. It was developed by de Havilland Propellers (later Hawker Siddeley) in the early 1950s, entering service in 1957. It was the fir ...
Military equipment introduced in the 1950s
Fire-and-forget weapons
De Havilland