USAF F4 WSO, 1700+hrs in F4C,D,E, combat in Vietnam, Fighter Weapons School graduate: This is an excellent treatise on the AIM-7. I can expand on the area you excluded-aircrew training. It was terrible. Once out of a training squadron, there was little follow-on teaching as hardly anyone knew how the missile worked or what the best tactics were. It wasn't until the mid-70s that we began to get a handle on how to employ the E3 version correctly. In a maneuvering fight max range rule of thumb was 6 miles in the front quarter, 4 miles in the beam quarter, and 2 miles in the rear. Min range was 2 miles in the front, 1 mile on the beam, and 3k feet in the rear. A 6 mile front launch meant that the target could not escape the missile. Of course one still had the fuze issues etc. The slat F4E featured a major cockpit modernization that put the missile/gun switches on the throttles and stick and were a great improvement. However, we still had the APQ-120 radar, pulse only, with a nasty altitude line issue caused by an ogive shaped antenna caused by the installation of the gun. One more thing, it might have been nice to mention Ritchie's WSO, Capt. Charles DeBellevue :)

@AlanToon-fy4hg

Ай бұрын

And that is why both are aces. Thank you for serving...

@manuelkatsos5104

Ай бұрын

Also a doco on Combat Tree and Teaball would be great.

@RogerSanGabriel

Ай бұрын

Thanks for posting thanks for your service.

@reinbeers5322

Ай бұрын

You might know the answer to this, so I'll ask: was there ever a published minimum altitude for the Sparrows prior to the M model with its inverse monopulse seeker? Reports of them being unreliable at low altitude are common, but exactly how bad was it?

@LupusAries

Ай бұрын

Yeah, a crew is a team, and the kills belong to both. I only play DCS, but given that my stick work is better than my radar work, it has given me a keen appreciation for WSOs/RIOs. Better that someone who knows what he's doing handles that, instead of me mucking about. And the second set of eyes is very appreciated. As is dealing with the Tomcat INS....Looking at that thing I wonder how much work it must've been to navigate the Phantom. One thing I was wondering about Ritchie's (and deBellevue's) Success was that aside from having a really, really good WSO is that he might've also had a really good crew Chief and Armourer? Just thinking about one of the comments that one of the guys wrote on one of the earlier on the "The Fight Between Two Legendary US Aces That Gave The Phantom A Gun"-video, about the rocker grate and how that trashed a load of Thank you for your service and taking the time to write to us all. It would be very interesting to have an interview here with you, to see how flying the F-4 was from the WSO's perspective.

"The radar, it turned out, was not a great deal of use against the backdrop of the sea, which is a prominent feature in naval combat." I literally LOL'ed.

@AndrewGivens

Ай бұрын

A Drachism of sorts? Nice.

@whyjnot420

Ай бұрын

@@AndrewGivens More like typical British understatement. Not enough snark to call it a Drachism. :P

@AndrewGivens

Ай бұрын

@@whyjnot420 agreed. Drach takes sarcasm to camp levels. However, Pound doesn't usually indulge in such over humour, so this is perhaps his directional equivalent for the moment? Whatever, it certainly landed.

@AnimeSunglasses

Ай бұрын

Yes, that was a good one. I agree it was Drach quality, tho perhaps not a Drachism for the books.

I loaded a lot of AIM-7s on F-15s... There was thing that the pickle button had to be pressed and held until the rocket motor fired. There is what was called a missile motor fire wire. That wire was connected to the LAU-106 and would uncoil during ejection. The idea is for the rocket motor to fire at the moment the wire was fully extended. A short pickle would cause the missile to fall away harmlessly, as described in the video. Funny story-- I was covering a launch of an F-15 one day and an inert missile with no wings or fins activated on the aircraft. All 4 wing wells cocked like it was trying to do it's post-launch 45 degree roll. Shut the jet down, downloaded the missile. I was leaning on the missile whilst it was on a trailer, waiting on ammo to come get it, and it activated again. The hydraulics are LOUD. Scared the absolute crap out of me and I took off running like it was a live missile. Everyone around laughed at me running from an inert missile with blue bands all over it. I ran like it counted and didn't care what they thought.

yes! your missile development videos are my favorite! you have no clue how entertaining your mini documentaries are, keep it up man 🤙

@manuelkatsos5104

Ай бұрын

I agree keep it up more weapon docos please

@morganeubanks5166

Ай бұрын

WOULD!

@johncashwell1024

Ай бұрын

I totally agree!

@hlynkacg9529

Ай бұрын

seconded

@stickiedmin6508

Ай бұрын

​@@hlynkacg9529 Thirded. I'd really like to hear about the plans to pair the Canadian Arrow with Sparrows. Come to think of it, a nice long video all about the Arrow would be pretty awesome too.

The description of the motor fire function is a little off. Ejecting the missile doesn't "pull a pin". There's a cable on the aft ejector foot that extends from a reel as the foot extends. A microswitch closes at the correct extension distance and if the timing is correct, sends voltage down the cable to light the motor. We had a test set that used compressed nitrogen instead of the explosive cartridges to fire the feet down and it recorded that the correct timing and extensions were achieved. It wouldn't fire the motor if the aft foot extended more quickly than the forward foot. You don't want to light the motor if the missile is pointing up at the aircraft! Maybe the cold-soaking of the ejector carts was causing timing issues? There's also a circuit breaker in the cockpit that needs to be set to allow motor fire voltage. We would pull that breaker when loading for safety. The RIO was supposed to push it back in once they were in the air. At least once during a training missile shoot, that didn't happen and the missile just dropped into the ocean after it was ejected. Sad RIO face...

Over 40 years past I was trained to pull functional checks on the AIM-7 system. I did tens of dozens of those in the USAF. Generally, it took us about 10 odd minutes per station to run a functional check. There were four stations. Between set up, the check, running the check lists, and close up the whole process was 45 - 90 minutes, generally took up a little more than an hour on average.

@vernmeyerotto255

Ай бұрын

20 checks plus front and rear signal? If everything was working right, it took longer to hook the equipment up than to punch off the stations. We were using the 383 checker to analyze the RF sent to the launchers too, but it was computerized so it went quickly.

@Easy-Eight

Ай бұрын

@@vernmeyerotto255 I have not pulled a functional check since 1981. Honestly, by December of '81 I was in business school learning accounting, finance, and economics. I was a 462 in the USAF. The only testing machine I remember was "the beer can". I do remember loading dozens of AIM-7F on the F-15 through the years. The ignition wire was fastened to the missile by an 8" pipe hose clamp. Weird days. Best job I ever had.

@vernmeyerotto255

Ай бұрын

@@Easy-Eight 321, fire control systems... radar, optical sight and bombing computer on F4Es. The 20 checks verified the presence of signals through the umbilical connector within certain voltage limits at trigger pull. We used a 406 box to verify RF radiating at the front and rear signal horns at the launcher. It was crude, but at least let us know the the missle had the proper prelaunch data. That was every 45 days. We did full radar calibration, including missle launch simulations on each station with a computer verifying the validity of the launch data at least once a year. I know the guys in Thailand ran every system through radar cal prior to Linebacker II, and one of the SOF officers had caught the weapons guys providing rough handling to AIM7s at a flightline entry point during Linebacker I. They returned 8 missles for functional check after that - 7 failed, so that was corrected before Linebacker II as well. That may have helped Capt. Ritchie a bit. Yup, best job I ever had. By 1980, I was busy working on a BSEE.

I think that laypeople often underestimate the significance of inverse-monopulse guidance as introduced in Aspide, Skyflash, and finally the AIM-7M “monopulse Sparrow”. I was happy to hear you describe the limitations of the pre-M variants’ conical scan seekers and the improvements in AIM-7M. It was basically a completely different missile in terms of effectiveness and ECM resistance. The AIM-7R’s miniature IR seeker reportedly lives on in the Navy’s SM-2 MR Block IIIB SAM, which remains in service to this day. That missile is known to have dual-mode SARH/IR terminal guidance based on the AIM-7R’s design. And then there is also the RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM), which uses a different airframe and motor and serves as a critical layer of the USN’s area air defenses. With that said, the latest ESSM block II basically mates an AMRAAM seeker to the new airframe and motor, leaving basically no Sparrow components beyond the name.

@TheOsfania

Ай бұрын

Laypeople don't care or even think about it.

@MADCATMK3103

Ай бұрын

The Sparrow just had to get over menopulse to become truly mature.

@patrickchase5614

Ай бұрын

@@MADCATMK3103 Wow is that an appalling pun. I felt compelled to give it a thumbs up anyway.

@patrickchase5614

Ай бұрын

@@TheOsfania I'm a layperson, and I know that it was completely transformative: Vastly improved clutter reception, no more angle deception jamming (unless you count cross-eye jamming and its ilk, but those are _hard_ ), etc

@stickiedmin6508

Ай бұрын

​@@patrickchase5614 If you want the italics to work on "hard," at the end of your post, you'll need to put a space in between the second underscore and the closing bracket. The system gets confused by other symbols if they're right next to a bold or italics command. _Hard._ (_Hard._ See?

Very nice. IIRC, AIM-7M was born out of Britain's Skyflash, itself a development of AIM-7 as sold to Britain, which pioneered the inverse monopulse system. It would have been nice to cover Skyflash and also the Italian Aspide in this video, although I do appreciate your coverage of Iranian experience.

@AndrewGivens

Ай бұрын

I think the Skyflash might get its own little video at some point. I shouldn't be surprised, because he'll get the chance to talk UK defence procurement politics, which is *always* great fun as a discussion... Really! Maybe not upbeat, but fun.

@ramal5708

6 күн бұрын

Skyflash is miles better than the AIM-7M, sadly it was never tested in combat.

A 1 hour deep dive on the Sparrow shortly after the Phantom drops? Excellent work- can't wait to watch this over tea.

2 points. Your comments about being transported (beat up) on unapproved roads in unsprung vehicles (26:11) really illuminated the issue for me. And 26:32 as a retired member of an un-named armed force in the Department of the Navy, I was in awe of how every square millimeter of ships are used and the amount of honest to goodness work the Navy do, around the clock, under immense pressure, in (to put it mildly) less than ideal conditions. This photo exemplifies the voodoo wrench turners do underway. Also, if anyone ever accuses me of giving the Navy a compliment I will deny it. Semper Fi.

@AndrewGivens

Ай бұрын

No. I can't work out which branch you served in. You'll need to give me a clue.

@daszieher

Ай бұрын

​@@AndrewGivensyes, it is too "cryptic" for anyone to guess. Must be some obscure sub-section of the "department of the boat people" 😂

@LupusAries

Ай бұрын

@@daszieher You mean the department of seafaring church mice that handles their extra spicy secret sauce? Aka the cooks? ;) :P

During my time in the USAF as an avionics tech on F-101 and F-106 interceptors at Tyndall AFB, Fl. in the late 1970s, we once had a group of brand new F-15A Eagles down here to use our Gulf missile range. Two Eagles had serious failures. One was evident looking down the line of aircraft , and seeing one's nose out of line. Pilot seriously over-geed it and the entire cockpit/nose section "bent" downwards several degrees. It was flown back to Langley AFB. The second Eagle had a couple holes in it's belly! It seems when the pilot fire the starboard forward Sparrow, the missile fired and launched, taking pieces of the mounts with it! The plane was trucked back to Langley AFB. Teething troubles on a new plane I guess. 😅

Great job, loaded many AIM-7s while serving as Aviation Ordnanceman in the U.S Navy.

Dude, I love your videos! I haven't watched TV in over ten years, now. But if stuff like this was on there, high quality, great and normal-speaking narration, in-depth, I would totally watch it still. You're amazing!

@justforever96

Ай бұрын

Same. More like 15 years for me, although I never watched it extensively. The programming is mindless drivel, even the "educational" stuff, and I hear it's much worse now. At least you could watch kind of basic, overly-simplified history with some interesting images at one time, now it's just aliens and propaganda

@jr7392

Ай бұрын

I haven't watched since the history channel showed history programs and discovery had science stuff. Wings of the Red Star and the like were actually good, if a bit simplified as you point out.

A year in the making... What an effort. Thank you so much for this video. Very insightful and entertaining. We've received some Sparrows recently. They were integrated into soviet era SAM systems, resulting into so-called FrankenSAMs. 🇺🇦✌️☮️

@AndrewGivens

Ай бұрын

Good work, Glad the aid is arriving still. We hope you can out it to good use.

Another great video that demands my time on Friday! In one year Not a Pound has risen to the ranks of Drachinifel, Rex and Greg's Airplanes but covering early and cold war jets. The only other one I've found who covers Soviet stuff is Paper Skies. Now if he matched Drach's output, I'd never get anything done.

@notapound

Ай бұрын

Thanks so much for this! Great to hear that you’re enjoying the videos!

@alexandermonro6768

Ай бұрын

He's only human! No-one can match Drach's output! Thanks for the great videos, Pound.

@briancavanagh7048

Ай бұрын

You are watching the exact same stuff as me! All of it excellent.

Very informative. Reminds me of the torpedoes in the early years of world war 2. Finally they worked out the reasons and finally had a workable weapon

I think these missile videos are among your best! I'm only a few minutes in and i can already tell this will be great!

Fantastic video. The level of depth you went into to explain why Sparrow failed when it counts - in combat - was brilliant. For years the mantra has been "it was useless" with various reasons being given around ROE, pilot proficiency and overly optimistic test profiles. Nobody really mentions the storage, handling inherent design and quality issues in fighters and Sparrow rounds as being the root cause of the failures.

@user-qw3kv5fs8p

9 күн бұрын

Not THE root cause, one of the root causes for sure. Kill chain has lots of parts with all the things mentioned play a part.

An excellent dive into a much maligned AAM. Just a note the Iranian Tomcats carried the AIM-7E4 as this was designed to work specifically with the F-14...

@MM22966

Ай бұрын

It's kind of funny to realize the Iranians started out with hundreds of top of the line 4th-gen fighters in the 80's, and forty years later they are reduced to piloting monkey-model Soviet planes, homegrown F-5 copycats, and...their few remaining Tomcats and Phantoms. It makes me wonder what the Saudis are going to look like in 50 years, when the oil has run out and they can't afford their expensive Uncle Sam-gifted toys anymore.

@jedinight235

5 күн бұрын

I didn't know an E-4 variant existed.

@MM22966

4 күн бұрын

@@jedinight235 It was the one after B-4.

My mom worked for Raytheon back in the day. She actually had a golden Sparrow tie tack and other memorabilia. I used to joke with her about them getting fan letters from NVAAF pilots for all the times the Sparrow failed over Vietnam (it only had a .11 or 11% hit rate In the early going)

@gotanon9659

5 күн бұрын

Cant fault the weapon when the guys the use it doesnt even know how to use it!

This is so fascinating. I had no idea an active seeker head was experimented with. I was able to shoot both a AIM-9M and AIM-7M. The Sparrow warhead looks like a 500# bomb going off when it fuses.

@baremetalmafia

Ай бұрын

What were you flying? Pilot? WSO/RIO? Very interesting stuff. Sounds like 80s experience considering the M models stated. Not a lot of info out there about US 80s mil aviation as we weren’t engaged in any large scale fighter fights.

@brianrmc1963

Ай бұрын

@@baremetalmafia F/A-18A

@gotanon9659

Ай бұрын

The US was the first to use an Active seeker head on a weapon which was the ASM-n-2 Bat anti ship glide bomb and it was experimented with for shipborne SAM application in the Bumblebee program both of which is a WW2 program

Watching this video made me remember my days doing Radar Cal. Great times on Phantoms.

Understood this was a lot of work but, this is a fascinating story that really hasn't been compiled like this before. I'm fascinated by Vietnam era and prior electronic warfare.

@EffequalsMA

Ай бұрын

Early days of bvr combat, radar guidance, just amazing tech for the time.

Outstanding presentation sir! I have a soft spot for the Sparrow. I started my engineering career as a junior engineer/technician in 1978, working for General Dynamics Pomona division. GD was second source for Sparrow at the time, and I worked in the test equipment group in support of production and field maintenance requirements. In that group, I worked on Sparrow, Standard, Phalanx, Stinger, and DIVADS programs. My senior project was an airframe pressure/vacuum test stand for Sparrow. Graduated from Cal Poly Pomona as a ME in 1980 and continued to work for GD for another year before going on to work in testing for nearly all of the SoCal based aerospace companies at one time or another...chasing contracts =) Retired in 2020.

The Sparrow has 2 naval cousins The RIM7 and the RIM162 The latter had some significant improvements via some designers in Australia. In fact becoming the 162. The US navy tested it in the mid 201x near Hawaii. As far as i know it is integrated in many US and Australian ships including Arleigh Burke Ticonderoga and Australian Air Warfare Destroyers

It’s 5am I should be asleep, but not until after I watch this.

@dxv1l_x

12 күн бұрын

3am for me and my phone is dying

Magnificent! To understand the modern air combat & aircraft the advent of the weapon systems is equally important factor. I read about the Sparrow in the book "Engineering the Phantom II" by G. Bugos in which it mentioned its development history as 1Sperry 2Douglas and 3Raytheon in few pages but yours describes a lot more, helps me to visualize what it has been. Thank you from my heart!

Excellent video! The hard work and effort put into its creation shows, and I am grateful for the presentation. THANK YOU!!!

Good job on another high-quality documentary! Love the work man.

Another great history lesson

Your missile development docs are thr most comprehensive source here on YT! Next should be the aim4 falcon

@reinbeers5322

Ай бұрын

A Falcon video would be very nice. Like the Sparrow it was also the victim of poor handling and an unsuitable launching aircraft, as it worked perfectly fine in the Convair Deltas.

I wait all week for these. The missile videos are awesome, I usually watch each 3+ times. That said, can we PLEASE get an examination of the M39/ADEN/DEFA, the Hispano-Suiza cannon & US derivatives, & of course, the M61 Vulcan? PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!!!

Something that would've been nice to talk about is the usage of a secondary emitter using CW signals allowing doppler filtering rather than the LPRF signals from contemporary radars( french and soviet). And finally the return to homing on the main radar tracking signals, but in this case its HPRF rather than LPRF or CW. And what the outcome of using the main tracking signals rather than a secondary one is

Would be nice to have a little addendum to this about the BAe Sky Flash which was a British development of the Sparrow used by the RAF on their Tornado F.3 and Sweden on the Viggen.

@AndrewGivens

Ай бұрын

To be fair, the cluster-foxtrot which is BAe and the MoD's development & procurement policies deserve time on their own to talk about. Only then can you really put Sky Flash into true perspective.

That's a great pic of a rare F-4C Wild Weasel at 26:57 w two Sparrows & two Shrikes. Clearly you put a lot - a LOT - of work and research into this excellent video on the Sparrow. My congratulations to you and also my appreciation!

is it weird that I find missile videos more interesting than aircraft ones

@ivancho5854

Ай бұрын

Absolutely. 👍

Very nice. At some point you may wish to consider doing a deep dive on the continuous-rod warhead. Even among people I know who are aware of it, many do not understand how it works. I have heard some truly strange theories and descriptions of it over the years. The best and most entertaining one I've heard is that the warhead is a bundle of rods the are spread apart by the warhead and impact the target linearly rather than laterally. Your audience here is probably better informed, just like I have always known that the sparrow was -a piece of cr- _problematic._ Nonetheless, we all enjoy a nice documentary about our favorite topics. Thanks for your work.

@richardvernon317

Ай бұрын

That is pretty much how a Con Rod warhead works. I worked on the Bloodhound Mk 2 SAM for the first four years of my 30 year RAF Career back in the 1980's. This is a bit long, but explains exactly how it works. The warhead on that weapon weighted in at 330lb with an explosive charge of 80lb (77lb RDX/TNT) in the main charge and 3lb in the central exploder and explosive train from the detonator which was in a Safety and Arming Unit external to the warhead). The SAM unit broke the Electrical and Explosive trains from the Detonators to the Warhead and the Fuze until the missile had pulled 14G plus for more than a few seconds. The Explosion train ran down the centre of the long axis of the Warhead from the rear of the warhead to a point in the middle of the warhead where the main exploder charge was located. The Main explosive charge was a cylindrical concave shaped charge mounted within a cylindrical convex shaped plastic liner contained within a thin mild steel tube. The tube was surrounded by 354 hardened steel rods which were around 16 inches long and 1/4 inch square. These rods were wrapped around the tube two layer deep. At the front of the warhead the rods were welded together top to bottom between two rods, while at the rear the one on top was welded to the rod to its right, while the bottom one was welded to the rod on its left. The welds were about an inch long. This resulted all of the rods being welded into a flattened hoop. To keep every thing together, the rods were then coated in epoxy resin. Round front and rear castings were attached to both ends which had the mounting points for attachment to the missile at both ends, with the explosive train tube at the back. After launch the Safety and arming unit armed the warhead by closing the electrical contacts between the detonators and the Fuze and exposed the Detonators to the explosive train. The Proximity Fuze also became active. The Fuze was known as a PRANGER fuze which stood for Pulse Range Gate. The Fuze was unlike the WWII Doppler VT fuze, this was a proper pulse ranging radar with a peak power of around 7kw and a Pulse Repetition Frequency of 10,000 pulses per second. It transmitted out of two of the four aerials fitted on the outer skin of the warhead bay (180 degrees apart). and received the target echoes on a pair of receiver aerials that were 90 degrees to the Transmitter ones. The fuze actually looked out in a cone around the missile with a beam around 10 degrees wide, 70 degrees from the central axis of the missile There were two Receiver channels in the fuze. One for short range target detection for returns at less than 10 feet and the main channel that had a range gate window on it that would receive echoes at ranges between 10 and 110 feet. The Fuze was fitted with various ECCM systems , which I will not go into., but if the Fuze detected what it thought was a valid target return it sent a high voltage electrical pulse to the detonators. When the central exploder detonated, the shock wave went through the main charge and the plastic former and resulted in a cylindrical shock wave hitting all parts on the mild steel tube at the same time. This threw the rods out through the missile's airframe at a speed of around 900 metres a second. The welds were strong enough to hold the rods together and they expanded out to form a hoop of steel 180 feet in diameter before the welds failed and the rods broke apart. The Missile itself was doing Mach 2.5 at this point (800 metres per second plus), thus the rods expanded out at an angle of around 40 to 50 degrees from the direction of the missile's flight. As soon as the rods broke apart, the probability of getting a kill dropped off massively. That was why at ranges of more than 110 feet the fuze wouldn't see the target. Fun Fact, the Warhead was smaller in diameter than the Missile Airframe and running through the warhead bay were cable looms, Hydraulics pipes, thicker parts of the structure that allowed the two halves of the warhead bay to be connected together (so that you could fit and removed the Warhead and the Fuze) and the Fuze aerials around the outside. Seeing this resulted in varying densities of structure that the rods had to cut through to get into free space, this risked breaking the welds of the rods before they got out of the missile. Therefore the parts of the warhead bay structure within the missile which were just the airframe skin, were lined internally with rubber sheets to minimize the risk of the rods breaking apart. Biggest Target the missile was every fired at with a live warhead was a Canberra Drone at Woomerra in Australia during the Missile's Service Acceptance Trials in 1964. The Missile quite literally chopped the nose off the Canberra.

@mfrsr

Ай бұрын

​@@richardvernon317 that is honestly the most indepth, understandable and helpful description of the type I've ever come across in at least 15 years of casual online searching. You have no idea how many unanswered questions about specifics you've finally given me some closure to. Thanks a hell of a lot, I really appreciate it👍

@matthewallwood1017

Ай бұрын

​@@richardvernon317 unreal 🙏

@weedwacker1716

Ай бұрын

@@richardvernon317 Very thorough. Now there is no need for a video. Regarding the misunderstandings I described I do not believe I did a good job explaining the other party's error. They believed that the rods spread out individually and continued forward like arrows to impact or puncture the target ahead of it. Thus when I wrote linearly rather than laterally. Now this would not normally be of any significance but this individual was at the time a junior enlisted - let's call him an armorer - who had supposedly been trained about the system who was spouting off about it's capabilities to a mob of his buddies. I believed him at the time and only learned of the error many years later when I read the precis of the research paper about the warheads development.

WOW! Thanks for a very informative, enlightening video! B-52 operations over N. Vietnam was LINEBACKER II; in the original LINEBACKER the BUFFs were restricted from operating up north.

36:15 Robin Olds is said to have scored 7 kills in Vietnam, but gave away credit for the last 3 to avoid being sent home. Also, multiple RIOs achieved ace status in Vietnam Other USAF aces of Vietnam War: Capt Charles "Chuck" DeBellevue Capt Richard "Steve" Ritchie Capt Jeffrey Feinstein

Great as always, NotAPound.

Eager to watch this! Thanks for all of your amazing videos!

Hats off to your research and insight on a topic little expounded upon! Thank you!

Again and again this channel deserves praise. The calm and technical narration, the depth to which details are highlighted. Really appreciated!

Fantastic presentation. I particularly like that you clearly understand the underlying systems of mechanisms responsible for various issues, and how operational use diverged from intended design.

Thanks for putting these AAM videos together. Some of my favorites!

This was a spectacular video! I always love your videos about cold war weapons development and the annecdotes about combat use that you include. Keep it up!

Great vid well done!! Added several obscured data bits regarding it's Vietnam record, especially maintenance issues.

I, like many others, am very grateful for the extra effort you put into accurately producing this video. Thank you good sir!!!!!

Excellent work --thanks! Many seem to have forgotten the many teething problems encountered with such an advanced system. Your video does a great job at painting a more "realistic" picture. Very enjoyable to watch.

Words that come to mind of this latest documentary of yours are...excellent, insightful, entertaining and interesting. 👍 Well done! Enjoyed every minute of it thank you!

really enjoy the detail provided and others comments that experienced the topic.

Man. I love listening you and Greg’s airplanes whilst I’m working on a build on Flyout.

great video, love the channel and im always excited when i see a new video has been released

My father, USN 56-60 was a member of the BLACK ACES VF41. In 1959, Point Magu, VF41 won the Top Gun competition with the A3 Demon and the Sparrow. My dad was the leader that designed and brought to life the "lock-on/tone system " that is in common use today. VF41 went on to defeat the Air Force as well. Afterwards, the Navy shared the new development and why VF41's kill ratio was so high. Dad was awarded for his contribution. He served aboard the Independence, Forrestal and the Intrepid.

Absolutely fantastic work!

Thank you for sharing this awesome video with a treasure of information ! My personal library contains much literature about military technology but still this video is very interesting. I hope you keep the future as interesting as this video... ❤

Very informative and well done. Thank you for your hard work.

A simple thumbs up somehow doesn't seem good enough. Comprehensive, engaging and informative. Well done!

Thank you for covering the development and complexities of tye Sparrow missile. 😃

Thank you, an excellent video. Nice to see the RAF get a mention as their F-4K/M Phantoms used the Sparrow until the BAe Skyflash was introduced (which was a Sparrow AIM-7E-2 with a Marconi inverse monopulse seeker, essentially a homebrew AIM-7M).

I really love these long informative missile videos!

Thank you for this comprehensive video. It is just a great source of information!

Yet another excellent video. Thank you for covering obscure aircraft and little covered topics such as this. I learn something new every time I watch one of your videos. One topic I’d like to see covered, they you’ve slightly touched on in previous videos, post WWII service of the P-61 Black Widow. I feel like the topic of air defense immediately after the war, is something that isn’t covered. Thank you for all your hard work, keep it up. 👍

very good. I love your deep dives into the history of these missiles. I still wish there was more to the Shafrir missile, that was an interesting one.

In 1969 and 1970 I served as a fire control technician on USS Forrestal CVA-59. During the ships renovations after the catastrophic fire aboard in July 1967, her five inch 38 gun mounts, and other guns, were removed and replaced by the Basic Point Defense Surface Missile System (BPDSMS). This consisted of an eight bay Sparrow III launcher with a doppler target illumination director. It was intended for short range defense of the ship from air threats. Longer range threats were to be handled by the ship's air arm flying F4 Phantoms. The Sparrow missles were slightly modified with thicker flight wings to be more effective at low altitudes, and drawn from the aircraft weapons stores.

Excellent presentation. I look forward to the AIM-54 video, which I'm sure is in the works. I also hope you will do a video on the AGM-65 Maverick family.

I had no idea Steve Ritchie had used boresight mode to shoot down MiGs. I did hear that he indeed was high up enough/well-respected enough to be able to choose the best-taken care of Sparrows which increased his chances of them working. Thanks for the informative video!

Oh, and the Shrike ARM used the Sparrow airframe.

A year well spent by you and 52 minutes well spent by me! I love the intricate breakdown of flaws and successes and the emphasis on the cutting edge (for the time) technology that was being deployed. Perhaps a little too ambitiously at first, but impressive developments all the same. The detail about missiles being jostled around on carriers and air bases contributing to their high rate of failure was very interesting to me. I'd love to see a similar breakdown of the AIM-54 Phoenix, or AIM-9 Sidewinder, or even the attempts at air to air rockets from late WWII.

I was not aware that the Saporrow development went so back in the late 40´s. Awesome video, keep it up!

How frustrating that must have been to Phantom pilots to lose so many opportunities to destroy the North Vietnamese Air Force because of failure to launch or track.

The one AIM-7F I shot off my F-14A during a missile shoot in W-291 off of San Diego was a PDSST shot at 15 NM on a non-maneuvering BQM-37 and flew straight and true for a bulla-bulla fireball.

Fantastic content! Thank you! Suggestion for future video: compare and contrast the best and worst performing production fighters, for each major jet engine (i.e. J75, J79), and unpack the reasons for the delta in performance.

Your videos are top notch! Keep it up, Dude! Great learning and I love the humor!

Another missile video! The Friday is the best day! It would be great to know more about other air launched missiles like the AGM-45 Shrike.

Thank you for not peddling click bait! Factual is wonderful....

There are some very good videos posted on YT that were done by China Lake. The poster, I believe, uses the name Baltica Beer. The videos are very in depth...

Excellent presentation, very informative.

Most excellent presentation. Thank you.

Very very cool vid!!! Love learning about weapon systems like this

It's always informative at this channel

Incredible video. I love these A2A missile videos. Phoenix would be a good one. They look like something that belongs on a 1980’s/90’s GI Joe vehicle.

Heatblurs DCS F-4E has sparrows with Virtual Doppler mode ,a speed gate system for firing unlocked when the radar is caged to the bore sight. It's interesting. I was hoping your research uncovered this mode.

Very detailed video. Thank you.

Best sparrow breakdown I’ve seen

This was an amazing video, one can really appreciate the effort you put into it, even by your high standards :)

An absolutely incredible video 👍

Great video. Thank you.

Learnt a lot from this, great work.

This is a very interesting video that is for sure

Well worth the wait! Great stuff

Obviously your next video (after the F5E video) should be an in depth study of the Ault report and detailed success and failures of the Navy and Air Force reaction to it with Top Gun and Red Flag.

exceptional video just as always

Excellent vid! A bit of me hoped you might mention Skyflash as it seemed as a development of Sparrow to contend slightly with 7M.

Great content, 👍🏻

good work.

Amazing as always !! Please the AIM 54 Phoenix next !!

Wow, great video. Must have put a ton of work into a topic that only appeals to DCS players and a few enthusiasts - yet you made the video. Probably won't bring you riches, but it will bring you recognition - so once again: thanks!

The combination of detailed and concisely presented research plus the judicious use of absolutely bone-dry humour to occasionally drive home a point has rapidly made this one of my favourite aviation history channels. Really enjoyed this one, Vietnam earned it a terrible reputation in history but the Sparrow really was a remarkable weapon system for its time, it can't be judged by the standards of modern day solid-state microelectronics wizardry. It's worth remembering that the precursor Project Hotshot got off the ground a year before the invention of the first experimental germanium point-contact transistor (1947), well over a decade before the first monolithic integrated circuit was demonstrated (1960), and multiple decades before mass manufacturing of printed circuit boards became possible. Even after the initial issues were worked out, the guidance and control systems in these things were still being assembled from hand-soldered discrete components for the first half of its operational life. Of course, the fact that it was so cutting edge was surely of little consolation to pilots who hit the pickle button only to have rhe missile drop off the rail without igniting, or fail to track and go wild, or track to the target but fail to detonate. And if that was your last one, you are shit out of luck son.

Superb video. Back in the late ‘70s when I was in AF Junior ROTC we were told that the terrible reputation the Sparrow had earned over Vietnam was no longer applicable. Our Colonel claimed that it was going to guarantee NATO air superiority if the Russians were to attack Germany. I’m certain we all believed him without question.