Red Dean

Red Dean
Red Dean on display at the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford
Type	Air-to-air missile
Place of origin	United Kingdom
Production history
Manufacturer	Vickers
Specifications
Mass	1,330 lb (603 kg)
Length	16 ft (4.9 m)
Warhead	100 lb (45 kg) high explosive
Engine	Bristol Aerojet Buzzard 6,750 lb (30 kN)[1]
Operational range	4 miles (6.4 km)
Flight ceiling	50,000 ft (15,000 m)
Maximum speed	Mach 2.2
Guidance system	active radar homing
Steering system	control surfaces

Red Dean, a rainbow code name, was a large air-to-air missile developed for the Royal Air Force during the 1950s. Originally planned to use an active radar seeker to offer all-aspect performance and true fire-and-forget engagements, the valve-based electronics demanded a missile of prodigious size.

Folland Aircraft won the development contract in February 1950 to arm the Gloster Meteor, weighing in at about estimated 600 pounds (270 kg). After some initial progress, chief engineer Teddy Petter seemed uninterested in pursuing the design and the contract was cancelled in November 1951. In July 1952 it was picked up by Vickers, who had already experimented with a number of large missiles. Their design was too large for Meteor, so it was instead designed for the emerging Gloster Javelin.

Problems with the General Electric Company (GEC) X-band seeker led to the missile having to be enlarged several times, eventually reaching a massive 1,330 pounds (600 kg), which made it too heavy for the Javelin. The weapon was then selected to arm the upcoming thin-wing Javelin. Continued problems led Vickers to completely redesign it, abandoning the GEC seeker in favour of a simpler semi-active radar homing. This reduced the weight to 700 pounds (320 kg) and finally to 400 pounds (180 kg) with transistorization.

When British intelligence learned of new Soviet supersonic bombers, the Thin-Wing Javelin was cancelled in 1956 in favour of Operational Requirement F.155. Unsuited to these designs, Red Dean was cancelled in June. A new weapon dedicated to this role began in 1955 as Red Hebe. Also developed by Vickers, Red Hebe suffered from the same growth in weight and size and was ultimately cancelled in 1957 along with F.155.