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Red Dean (missile)
Red Dean, a rainbow code name, was a large air-to-air missile developed for the Royal Air Force during the 1950s. Originally planned to use an active radar seeker to offer all-aspect performance and true fire-and-forget engagements, the valve-based electronics demanded a missile of prodigious size. Folland Aircraft won the development contract in February 1950 to arm the Gloster Meteor, weighing in at about estimated . After some initial progress, chief engineer Teddy Petter seemed uninterested in pursuing the design and the contract was cancelled in November 1951. In July 1952 it was picked up by Vickers, who had already experimented with a number of large missiles. Their design was too large for Meteor, so it was instead designed for the emerging Gloster Javelin. Problems with the General Electric Company (GEC) X-band seeker led to the missile having to be enlarged several times, eventually reaching a massive , which made it too heavy for the Javelin. The weapon was then s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Air Force Museum Cosford
The Royal Air Force Museum Midlands, located at RAF Cosford in Shropshire, is a free museum dedicated to the history of aviation and the Royal Air Force in particular. The museum is part of the Royal Air Force Museum, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Ministry of Defence and also a registered charity. The museum is spread over two sites in England; the other site is at the Royal Air Force Museum London at Colindale (near Hendon) in north London. History The London museum was officially opened at the Colindale (then part of Hendon) London site on 15 November 1972 by Queen Elizabeth II. The hangars housed just 36 aircraft at opening. Over the years, the collection increased and aircraft were stored at RAF stations around the country when they were not on display to the public. On 1 May 1979, the Cosford site was opened at RAF Cosford, one of the RAF stations which had been used to store the museum's collection of aircraft. On opening, the museum initially exh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Hebe (missile)
Red Hebe was a large active radar homing air-to-air missile developed by Vickers for the Royal Air Force's Operational Requirement F.155 interceptor aircraft. It was a development of the earlier Red Dean, which was not suitable for launch by the new supersonic aircraft. Before progressing much beyond advanced design studies, F.155 was cancelled in the aftermath of the 1957 Defence White Paper which moved Britain's attention from strategic bombers to ballistic missiles. With no other suitable platform, Red Hebe was cancelled as well. History Red Dean By the late World War II era each of the British forces had ongoing missile development programmes. Among these was the January 1945 Air Staff Operational Requirement 1056 for an air-to-air missile intended as an anti-bomber weapon. OR.1056 called for a weapon able to attack from any angle, an "all-aspect" design, using either radar or infrared homing, the radar version using the signals from the AI Mk. IX radar being used at that t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solid Fuel Rocket
A solid-propellant rocket or solid rocket is a rocket with a rocket engine that uses solid propellants (fuel/ oxidizer). The earliest rockets were solid-fuel rockets powered by gunpowder. The inception of gunpowder rockets in warfare can be credited to the ancient Chinese, and in the 13th century, the Mongols played a pivotal role in facilitating their westward adoption. All rockets used some form of solid or powdered propellant until the 20th century, when liquid-propellant rockets offered more efficient and controllable alternatives. Because of their simplicity and reliability, solid rockets are still used today in military armaments worldwide, model rockets, solid rocket boosters and on larger applications. Since solid-fuel rockets can remain in storage for an extended period without much propellant degradation, and since they almost always launch reliably, they have been frequently used in military applications such as missiles. The lower performance of solid propellants ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swept Wing
A swept wing is a wing angled either backward or occasionally forward from its root rather than perpendicular to the fuselage. Swept wings have been flown since the pioneer days of aviation. Wing sweep at high speeds was first investigated in Germany as early as 1935 by Albert Betz and Adolph Busemann, finding application just before the end of the Second World War. It has the effect of delaying the shock waves and accompanying aerodynamic drag rise caused by fluid compressibility near the speed of sound, improving performance. Swept wings are therefore almost always used on jet aircraft designed to fly at these speeds. The term "swept wing" is normally used to mean "swept back", but variants include forward sweep, variable sweep wings and oblique wings in which one side sweeps forward and the other back. The delta wing is also aerodynamically a form of swept wing. Reasons for sweep There are three main reasons for sweeping a wing: 1. to arrange the center of gravity o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gloster Aircraft
The Gloster Aircraft Company was a British aircraft manufacturer from 1917 to 1963. Founded as the Gloucestershire Aircraft Company Limited during the First World War, with the aircraft construction activities of H.H. Martyn & Co. of Cheltenham, England it produced fighters during the war. It was renamed later as foreigners found 'Gloucestershire' difficult to pronounce. It later became part of the Hawker Siddeley group and the Gloster name disappeared in 1963. Gloster designed and built several fighters that equipped the British Royal Air Force (RAF) during the interwar years including the Gladiator, the RAF's last biplane fighter. The company built most of the wartime production of Hawker Hurricanes and Hawker Typhoons for their parent company Hawker Siddeley while its design office was working on the first British jet aircraft, the E.28/39 experimental aircraft. This was followed by the Meteor, the RAF's first jet-powered fighter and the only Allied jet fighter to be put ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blue Boar (bomb)
The Vickers Blue Boar was a family of British air-launched television-guided glide bombs of the 1950s which was cancelled during development. A key role was as an anti-shipping missile, using its guidance system to attack the moving targets. It would also replace unguided bombs between against point targets, or be equipped with a nuclear warhead. A smaller version was also developed for testing. The name is a randomly assigned rainbow code. The goal of the system was to allow the bomb to be guided to of its target after being dropped from a jet bomber flying at altitude. It could manoeuvre at up to 3.5G so that it could quickly be aimed after breaking through cloud cover as low as . Nuclear-armed versions were primarily intended to provide the launching aircraft with some stand-off range and avoid overflying the target, gliding about from the launch point. In this role, guidance using H2S radar instead of the television camera was considered. Development was cancelled when ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Army
The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve personnel and 4,697 "other personnel", for a total of 108,413. The British Army traces back to 1707 and the Acts of Union 1707, formation of the united Kingdom of Great Britain which joined the Kingdoms of Kingdom of England, England and Kingdom of Scotland, Scotland into a Political union, single state and, with that, united the English Army and the Scots Army as the British Army. The Parliament of England, English Bill of Rights 1689 and Convention of the Estates, Scottish Claim of Right Act 1689 require parliamentary consent for the Crown to maintain a peacetime standing army. Members of the British Army swear allegiance to the Charles III, monarch as their commander-in-chief. The army is administered by the Ministry of Defence (United Kingd ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seaslug (missile)
Seaslug was a first-generation surface-to-air missile designed by Armstrong Whitworth (later part of the Hawker Siddeley group) for use by the Royal Navy. Tracing its history as far back as 1943's LOPGAP design, it came into operational service in 1961 and was still in use at the time of the Falklands War in 1982. Seaslug was intended to engage high-flying targets such as reconnaissance aircraft or bombers before they could launch stand-off weapons. It was only fitted to the Royal Navy's eight County-class destroyers which were designed around the missile system. Seaslug was only fired in anger once as an anti-aircraft missile, from during the Falklands War, but missed its target. Later improvements meant that it could also be used against ships and ground targets. It was planned that Seaslug's medium-range role was to be supplanted by a very long-range missile known as Blue Envoy, but this was passed over in favour of a new medium-range system, Sea Dart. Sea Dart entered serv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surface-to-air Missile
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 or the sea to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of anti-aircraft warfare, anti-aircraft system; in modern armed forces, missiles have replaced most other forms of dedicated anti-aircraft weapons, with anti-aircraft guns pushed into specialized roles. The first attempt at SAM development took place during World War II, but no operational systems were introduced. Further development in the 1940s and 1950s led to operational systems being introduced by most major forces during the second half of the 1950s. Smaller systems, suitable for close-range work, evolved through the 1960s and 1970s, to modern systems that are man-portable. Shipborne systems followed the evolution of land-based models, starting with long-range weapons and steadily evolving toward smaller designs to provide a layered defence. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom of England, English and Kingdom of Scotland, Scottish kings from the early Middle Ages, medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against Kingdom of France, France. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the English Navy of the early 16th century; the oldest of the British Armed Forces, UK's armed services, it is consequently known as the Senior Service. From the early 18th century until the World War II, Second World War, it was the world's most powerful navy. The Royal Navy played a key part in establishing and defending the British Empire, and four Imperial fortress colonies and a string of imperial bases and coaling stations secured the Royal Navy's ability to assert naval superior ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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), before finally losing its identity in mergers with other institutions. The British Army Balloon Factory was established on Farnborough Common in the early 1900s. By 1912 it had come under civilian control and was the Royal Aircraft Factory (RAF) In 1918 it was renamed Royal Aircraft Establishment to prevent confusion with the newly created Royal Air Force. The first site was at Farnborough Airfield ("RAE Farnborough") in Hampshire to which was added a second site RAE Bedford (Bedfordshire) in 1946. On 1 May 1988 it was renamed the Royal Aerospace Establishment (RAE) before merging with other research entities to become part of the new Defence Research Agency in 1991. History In 1904–1906 the Army Balloon Factory, which was part of the A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ministry Of Supply
The Ministry of Supply (MoS) was a department of the UK government formed on 1 August 1939 by the Ministry of Supply Act 1939 ( 2 & 3 Geo. 6. c. 38) 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 aircraft production, and the Admiralty retained responsibilities for supplying the Royal Navy.Hornby (1958) During the war years the MoS was based at Shell Mex House in The Strand, London. The Ministry of Supply also took over all army research establishments in 1939. The Ministry of Aircraft Production was abolished in 1946, and the MoS took over its responsibilities for aircraft, including the associated research establishments. In the same year, it also took on increased responsibilities for atomic weapons, including the H-bomb development programme. The Ministry of Supply was abolished in late 1959 and its responsibilities passed to the Ministry of Aviation, the War Of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
