Improvements
Two Firestreak variants were studied but not adopted: the Mk.2 with a new motor, and the Mk.3 with increased wingspan and reduced top speed, for use with rocket-powered interceptors such as the Saunders-Roe SR.177 and Avro 720, according to Specification F.124T.
Firestreak was developed into Blue Jay Mk.4 (later renamed Blue Vesta), again intended for use by rocket-powered interceptors against high-speed Soviet bombers. In the end, Specification F.124T was cancelled but Blue Jay Mk.4 development continued. Blue Jay Mk.4 ultimately entered service as the Red Top in 1964. Despite Red Top being intended to replace Firestreak, Firestreak remained in limited service until the final retirement of the Lightning in 1988; the carriage of these missiles improved the aircraft's aerodynamics.
Red Top was faster and had a longer range than Firestreak, and "was capable of all aspect homing against super-sonic targets." An important difference between Firestreak and Red Top was the electronics technology used. Firestreak electronics used thermionic valves, which were "wired in" to the control / guidance electronics and required a system of cooling pipes to remove the heat generated by the valve filaments. For this reason, the Firestreak missile on ground test was cooled by Arcton and in flight by ammonia pumped through the missile from the parent aircraft. The Red Top electronics were constructed using transistors which were heated instead and the IR sensor in its dome-shaped Homing Head was cooled by purified air at 3000psi filtered to 3 microns.
Read more about this topic: De Havilland Firestreak
Famous quotes containing the word improvements:
“A country whose buildings are of wood, can never increase in its improvements to any considerable degree.... Whereas when buildings are of durable materials, every new edifice is an actual and permanent acquisition to the state, adding to its value as well as to its ornament.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“... these great improvements of modern times are blessings or curses on us, just in the same ratio as the mental, moral, and religious rule over the animal; or the animal propensities of our nature predominate over the intellectual and moral. The spider elaborates poison from the same flower, in which the bee finds materials out of which she manufactures honey.”
—Harriot K. Hunt (1805–1875)
“I was interested to see how a pioneer lived on this side of the country. His life is in some respects more adventurous than that of his brother in the West; for he contends with winter as well as the wilderness, and there is a greater interval of time at least between him and the army which is to follow. Here immigration is a tide which may ebb when it has swept away the pines; there it is not a tide, but an inundation, and roads and other improvements come steadily rushing after.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)