A few more items at the Arsenal. Suitably weird and wonderful, I hope.
The Ruhrstahl X-4Famed early German AAM—I trust it needs no more introduction.
The “Velvet Glove” MissileTHIS one might need some introduction…SARH missile, developed in the early 50s by Canada as a potential armament for the CF-100 and, later, the CF-105 Arrow. Technical troubles and the design being surpassed by American designs lead to it’s cancellation.
A fairly simple shape, with a positively crummy amount of visual documentation, but I thought I should make this one for completeness’ sake.
A better documented weapon, with perhaps even more draw, might be the…
AAM-N-3/AIM-7B “Sparrow II”The only active radar, fire-and-forget variant of the Sparrow missile, this was intended to arm the Avro Arrow, and development was taken up by Canadair after being abandoned by Douglas. However, more technical difficulties with the ambitious project, combined with the cancellation of the Arrow, lead to this missile’s cancellation as well.
But it got further than the…
XAAM-N-9 “Sparrow X” nuclear AAMCancelled at a very early stage of development, this would have been a “fractional kiloton” warhead guided missile with a 6 mile (at sea level)/25 mile (at high altitude) range. According to my good friend Nukemap, this would have been perfectly survivable to the launching aircraft at a range of a bit over one mile.
Carrying aircraft unknown; however, according to my calculations, the weapons bay of the F-106 could have accommodated a single one of these weapons.
Last, and even more fanciful, though, is…
The Lockheed “Energy Bomb” kinetic weaponAccording to a few works on the Skunk Works and Kelly Johnson’s autobiography, this was the 2500 lb, high-density steel kinetic energy bomb proposed as an armament for a (proposed) bomber variant of the SR-71 in the 1960s. Dropped at Mach 3 from 85,000 feet, it would be calculated to penetrate “33 feet of reinforced concrete” or “300 feet of earth.”
My rough attempt at a very low-drag weapon with the volume of the quoted amount of steel. Assuming my figures were right, this should have a Coefficient of Drag about 0.052.
And, of course, this should fit the weapons bays of a YF-12, or the comparably sized ones for one of the proposed SR-71 attack variants, of which I’ve seen blueprints from as late as the 70s and early 80s.
As for other aircraft—well, I’m having difficulty finding exact dimensions of the weapons bay at the moment, which precludes an exact number, but I’d confidently guess you’d be able to load several of these into a B-70 Valkyrie, as well.