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.

 

The Sidewinder

 

House Sparrows

 

The Rapier missile system

 

Chinese Fire Arrows

 

The Tipu Sultan's artillery rockets

 

The RS-28 rockets fired by the Polikarpov I-16

 

The German R4M unguided air to air rocket

 

The nuclear AIR-2 Genie missile

 

A Genie launch

 

The AIM9 Sidewinder

 

The rotating reticule

 

The rolleron

 

Guidance

 

The warhead

 

An AIM 9 warhead effect demonstration

 

The AIM7 Sparrow

 

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.