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Sidewinder help

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Drunken matelot

New Member
Can someone please confirm which variant of sidewinder this is.
Relic from the Falklands war so possibly a AM 9L ??
Anyone help to confirm 100% for a friend
 

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It is a Blowpipe Missile. They were in service with both sides in the Falklands War.

Javelin replaced Blowpipe after the Falklands War.
 
Has anybody information about the Blowpipe? and then especially about the missile.

Regards Chris
 
This is the best I have run across that is not still classified.

Presumably, CAT-UXO has some good information as far as the details of the missile warhead, fuze(s), and rocket motor?
 

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Blowpipe was a "Command to Line of Sight" missile i.e. it had no autopilot and you steered it with your thumb..
The tailfins were stowed up at the front end of the launch tube and got picked up by the motor body as it left the launcher so as not to cut the firer's head off. The tips of the fins were folded into the wide end of the launch tube and sprang out as it emerged..

The missile was controlled by a radio command link and used a "twist and steer" method of steering using carnards. It had a fairly large blast/frag warhead and a proximity fuze. It was not an easy system to use.. the firer had basically to use a thumbstick to control a supersonic missile.. it was however capable of taking on incoming targets which the heat seekers of the day such as Stinger could not.

I recall having a conversation with an Instructor in Gunnery in the Hebrides who said that it was very much down to the skill of the firer.. practice did not seem to make much of a difference. Instinctive firers, often the Battery Drunk who spent hours on gaming machines could make them perform and achieve a high hit rate.. other simply couldn't!

The holes in the back of the motor were for the launch motor, which was a "christmas tree" bracket holding strips of propellant about the size of a can of beans. This fired almost immediately and bounced the missile out of the launcher.. The sustainer fired up after the missile had got to a safe distance.. there were also four tracking flares in the base which you can see in the four larger holes..

This example may however be a practice "Dart" which consisted of a launch motor and a dummy body.. as the front end is missing, I cannot confirm. I think this is the more likely outcome, as live missiles rarely survived in one piece.. Darts were not only cheaper than live missiles, but were more predictable on launch as they were basically ballistic and lacked the ability to pootle off in strange directions which the warshots could (and did) do, much to the concern of the range staff!
 
Drunken matelot said:
Can someone please confirm which variant of sidewinder this is.
Relic from the Falklands war so possibly a AM 9L ??
Anyone help to confirm 100% for a friend
Click to expand...
It's the tail fin assembly and first stage rocket motor of a BLOWPIPE surface to air missile. They were used by both Argentinian and UK forces in the Falklands War. It is quite common for the tail fin assembly to survive firing and a warhead event with many shoulder fired SAM systems. This looks to me like a fired live missile, perhaps a K49A2 variant.
 
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