Velvet Glove

Velvet Glove
Type	Air-to-air missile
Place of origin	Canada
Service history
In service	Air Force
Used by	Royal Canadian Air Force (Testing only)
Production history
Designed	1948-1951
Manufacturer	Canadair
Produced	1952 (Limited production for testing)

The Velvet Glove was a short-range semi-active radar homing air-to-air missile designed by CARDE (today DRDC Valcartier) and produced by Canadair starting in 1953. 131 Velvet Gloves had been completed when the program was terminated in 1956, officially because of concerns about its ability to be launched at supersonic speeds from the Avro Arrow then under design, but also from the design being overtaken by developments in the United States.

Small scale work on what would become the Velvet Glove started in 1948 at CARDE, and by 1951 the plans were advanced enough to put forth the design as armament on the Avro CF-100 Canuck fighter that was then entering service with the RCAF. Canadair was selected as the manufacturer, and Westinghouse was commissioned to build the radar guidance unit. The final missile design was about ten feet long and just under a foot in diameter. It used four fins at the tail for steering, and was guided by a semi-active radar located behind a conical nose cone. Westinghouse's microwave radar proximity fuze fired the 60 pound (27 kg) warhead.^[1]

To test the aerodynamics of the missile, CADRE used Gerald Bull's method of firing test shapes from sabboted artillery rounds instead of building an expensive supersonic wind tunnel. The shapes were fired through a series of cards, and the position and shape of the resulting holes could be used to measure whether or not the missile was flying stably. This basic concept would be key to Project HARP and many of Bull's later concepts.^[2]

In 1952 ground-launched testing started at the Picton Range, a small test site set up outside Picton, Ontario, near the RCAF base at Trenton, Ontario. Air-launches from a CF-100 started in 1954, with the aircraft flying from Trenton to fire over Picton. The site was later used to launch models of the Arrow for aerodynamics testing. Testing of the Velvet Glove then moved to an operational setting at Cold Lake, Alberta.^[3] By this point the Arrow was slated to replace the CF-100 within a few years, and the RCAF had always demanded that it fire the much more advanced active-radar Sparrow II missile under design for the US Navy. Interest in the Velvet Glove waned, as the Sparrow outperformed it in all ways.

The cancellation of the program led to serious questions in the Canadian House of Commons. Development had cost a total of $24 million ($160 million in year-2000 dollars) which the Defense Department attempted to justify as money well spent on the training of the specialists involved in the project. The opposition pointed out that this amounted to $60,000 per specialist, which at that time was more than their weight in gold.^[4]

The Sparrow ran into lengthy delays, and the US Navy eventually gave up on the design, turning to the simpler semi-automatic Sparrow III. Options for the Arrow were studied, including taking over the Sparrow II program at Canadair, turning to the Falcon/rocket mix being used by contemporary USAF interceptors, or restarting the Velvet Glove project. There were concerns that the Velvet Glove would be difficult to launch at supersonic speeds and therefore representing a risk to the aircraft, likely due to its small control surfaces not having enough authority. In the end Canadair was instructed to take over the Sparrow II, ending development of the Velvet Glove for good. When the Arrow project was later canceled, work on the Sparrow II also ceased.^[1] The Picton Range closed in 1957.^[3]

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