History
The air-to-air missile grew out of the unguided air-to-air rockets used during the First World War. Le Prieur rockets were sometimes attached to the struts of biplanes and fired electrically, usually against observation balloons, by such early pilots as Albert Ball and A. M. Walters. Facing the Allied air superiority, Germany in World War II invested considerable effort into missile research, using the R4M unguided rocket first and later the first guided rockets like the Ruhrstahl X-4.
Post-war research led the Royal Air Force to introduce Fairey Fireflash into service in 1955 but their results were unsuccessful. The US Navy and US Air Force began equipping guided missiles in 1956, deploying the USAF's AIM-4 Falcon and the USN's AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewinder. The Soviet Air Force introduced its Kaliningrad K-5 into service in 1957. As missile systems have continued to advance, modern air warfare consists almost entirely of missile firing. The faith in Beyond Visual Range combat became so pervasive in the US that early F-4 variants were armed only with missiles in the 1960s. High casualty rates during the Vietnam War caused the US to reintroduce autocannons and traditional dogfighting tactics but the missile remains the primary weapon in air combat.
In the Falklands War British Harriers, using AIM-9L missiles provided by the United States, were able to defeat faster Argentinian opponents. Since the late 20th century all-aspect heat-seeking designs can lock-on to a target from various angles, not just from behind, where the heat signature from the engines is strongest. Other types rely on radar guidance (either on-board or "painted" by the launching aircraft).
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“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)