Sidewinder Sidelights
Winter 1990
| Volume 5
| Issue 3
Your history of the Sidewinder was especially interesting to me because I developed the first IR (infrared)-guided missile for the Air Corps, the GB6 Glide Bomb during World War II. The Sidewinder’s IR seeker was based on one I independently developed during the war for an IR-guided bomb that MIT was trying to develop. The Sidewinder’s IR element is far more sensitive than those available during the war, greatly simplifying the problem, but the basic design of the seeker is the same, and it is covered by the same U.S. patent, number 2,517,702.
