Red Dean

The Red Dean was an air-to-air missile developed by the United Kingdom in the 1950s but cancelled before development was complete. It was a large radar-guided missile using pulse-Doppler radar against enemy bombers.

History

The Red Dean project was split off from the Red Hawk missile project in 1951 as a 700 lb (320 kg) missile to be developed by Folland. Following problems with increasing size and weight as the design progressed, not to mention cost overruns and problems with the seeking head, Folland felt unable to continue the work and the Ministry of Supply passed it to Vickers in 1953.

The Vickers version of Red Dean, Vickers Type 888, was no more fortunate. It continued to suffer from numerous development problems, not the least of which was that ongoing issues with the active radar seeker (for which the designers GEC were pilloried on numerous grounds) caused a size and weight spiral. This in turn detracted grossly from the flight performance, which was dismal for such a large missile. Poor seeker performance in turn demanded a large warhead, which exacerbated the weight problems, while design limitations inherent in the light alloy structure made it unsuitable for use on highly supersonic interceptors.

Operational Requirement F.155 for a fighter to engage enemy bombers with radar and infra-red guided missiles (the missiles were specified under OR.1131) included a scaled down Red Dean under the codename Red Hebe.

Gloster offered a development of their Javelin with Red Dean. The "thin wing" Gloster Javelin development was cancelled in 1956 and Red Dean went with it, despite a major redesign and abandonment of the requirement for autonomous active homing. The limitations on supersonic carriage still remained, and the planned new generation of Mach 2.5 interceptors would need something better.

Examples of Red Dean are held at the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford, the South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum, Doncaster, and Brooklands Museum where Vickers had worked on the design^[2]

See also

• Rainbow Codes

References

Notes

Bibliography

• The 'Secret' World of Vickers Guided Weapons, J. Forbat, Tempus, 2006, ISBN 0-7524-3769-0
• British Secret Projects: Hypersonics, Ramjets and Missiles, Gibson C, Buttler T. Midland, 2007. ISBN 978-1-85780-258-0

External links

• Red Dean

v t e Cold War military projects of the United Kingdom Air-to-air missiles Blue Sky (Fireflash) Blue Jay (Firestreak) Red Dean Red Top SRAAM Skyflash Air-to-surface missiles Blue Steel Green Cheese Surface-to-air missiles CF.299 (Sea Dart) Green Light (Sea Cat) Red Duster (Bloodhound) Red Shoes (Thunderbird) Sea Slug Surface-to-surface missiles Blue Slug Blue Streak Blue Water Blue Rapier / Red Rapier Orange William (Swingfire) Satellite launch vehicles Black Arrow Black Knight Nuclear warheads Blue Danube Blue Peacock Orange Herald Red Beard Red Snow Violet Club Yellow Sun List of codenames used for projects (Rainbow Codes)

v t e Guided missiles of the United Kingdom Air-to-air Fireflash Firestreak Red Dean Red Top SRAAM/Taildog Skyflash ASRAAM Air-to-surface ALARM Brimstone Lightweight Multirole Missile Martel1 Sea Eagle Sea Skua Storm Shadow1 Surface-to-air Bloodhound Blowpipe CAMM Javelin Rapier Sea Cat Sea Dart Sea Slug Sea Viper Sea Wolf Starburst Starstreak Tigercat Thunderbird Surface-to-surface Swingfire Malkara2 UB.109T Vigilant Nuclear Blue Steel Blue Streak Blue Water Green Cheese 1 Anglo-French   2 Anglo-Australian