Despite their obvious differences, Sidewinders and Sparrows often went together because they aren’t just the names of flying creatures and slithering serpents… they are weapons of war.
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The Sidewinder
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House Sparrows
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The Rapier missile system
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Chinese Fire Arrows
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The Tipu Sultan’s artillery rockets
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The RS-28 rockets fired by the Polikarpov I-16
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The German R4M unguided air to air rocket
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The nuclear AIR-2 Genie missile
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A Genie launch
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The AIM9 Sidewinder
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The rotating reticule
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The rolleron
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Guidance
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The warhead
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An AIM 9 warhead effect demonstration
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The AIM7 Sparrow
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A QF4B killed by a Sparrow missile
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to images in the Public Domain, UK Defence Imagery, Wubei Zhi, NASA, Juergen Schiffmann, the USAF, David Monniaux, RoyKabanlit, U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation and the USN.