de Havilland Firestreak

The de Havilland Firestreak is a British first-generation, passive infrared homing (heat seeking) air-to-air missile. It was developed by de Havilland Propellers (later Hawker Siddeley) in the early 1950s, entering service in 1957. It was the first such weapon to enter active service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) and Fleet Air Arm, equipping the English Electric Lightning, de Havilland Sea Vixen and Gloster Javelin. It was a rear-aspect, fire and forget pursuit weapon, with a field of attack of 20 degrees either side of the target.

Developed under the rainbow code "Blue Jay", Firestreak was the third heat-seeking missile to enter service, after the US AIM-4 Falcon and AIM-9 Sidewinder, both of which entered service the previous year. In comparison to those designs, the Firestreak was larger and almost twice as heavy, carrying a much larger warhead. It had otherwise similar performance in terms of speed and range. It was also a very complex system, with an unusual internal design, requiring the launch aircraft to provide both cooling for its tube-based electronics and heating to prevent various moving parts from freezing prior to launch.

An improved version, "Blue Vesta", was developed as part of the Operational Requirement F.155 project but ended when that project was canceled in 1957. Development restarted as a somewhat simpler version for the Lightning which was given the name "Red Top". This featured transistorized electronics and greatly simplified internal design. Keeping its code name, it entered service on Lightning and Sea Vixen as the Hawker Siddeley Red Top. Red Top could not be carried on early versions of the Lightning, and so Firestreak remained in service until 1988, when the last RAF Lightnings retired.