AIM-7 Sparrow

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Sparrow II would've been very useful there in dogfighting given that it was fire-and-forget.

Fire and - oh forget it, target went into a cloud.

 

[Bruno Anthony]

Fire and - oh forget it, target went into a cloud.

Joking aside how did late 50s/early 60s air arms plan on dealing with fighters since then current missiles were anti bomber weapons? At least the USN had the F8U.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

The biggest drawback to an active radar homing missile in the 50's to even into the early 70's is one of how much power you can cram into the missile. Tube technology draws a lot more power than solid state, and radar technology at the time was not able to use detection circuitry that could run on a low-power signal resulting in an often miniscule return. Add in that battery technology was more limited and batteries of that era, in general, didn't have the greatest shelf life. So, needing a lot of power and a big (and likely heavy) battery to provide it was going to be a serious issue.

 

[NMaude]

Add in that battery technology was more limited and batteries of that era, in general, didn't have the greatest shelf life.

By the end of the 1950s US AAMs (Except the Sidewinder) were using thermal-batteries, the Sidewinder was interesting in that it used a solid-propellant hot-gas generator where the hot-gas was used to energise its pneumatic control-fin servos and to drive a permanent-magnet rotor generator by a single stage turbine to generate electricity.