The Crazy Story of How the Soviet Union Back-engineered US Sidewinder Missile

I had been reading up on history of US combat aviation, and in particular, I was looking into the history of the "Sidewinder" AIM-9 air-to-air missile.

I had not known that after its development, the first action this weapon saw was new Taiwan. The US was attempting to assist the Taiwanese in their engagements against the PRC in the region. Taiwan's air forces were flying F-86 Sabres, and were pitted against Soviet-supplied MiG-17s flown by the PRC, which gave the PRC pilots tactical advantages in altitude and maneuvarability. Hence the response from Taiwan's US allies:

The first combat use of the Sidewinder was on September 24, 1958, with the air force of the Republic of China (Taiwan), during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis. During that period of time, ROCAF North American F-86 Sabres were routinely engaged in air battles with the People's Republic of China over the Taiwan Strait. The PRC MiG-17s had higher altitude ceiling performance and in similar fashion to Korean War encounters between the F-86 and earlier MiG-15, the PRC formations cruised above the ROC Sabres, immune to their .50 cal weaponry and only choosing battle when conditions favored them. In a highly secret effort, the United States provided a few dozen Sidewinders to ROC forces and an Aviation Ordnance Team from the U.S. Marine Corps to modify their Sabres to carry the Sidewinder. In the first encounter on 24 September 1958, the Sidewinders were used to ambush the MiG-17s as they flew past the Sabres thinking they were invulnerable to attack. The MiGs broke formation and descended to the altitude of the Sabres in swirling dogfights. This action marked the first successful use of air-to-air missiles in combat, the downed MiGs being their first casualties.[11]

During the Taiwan Strait battles of 1958, a ROCAF AIM-9B hit a PLAAF MiG-17 without exploding; the missile lodged in the airframe of the MiG and allowed the pilot to bring both plane and missile back to base. Soviet engineers later said that the captured Sidewinder served as a "university course" in missile design and substantially improved Soviet air-to-air capabilities.[12] They were able to reverse-engineer a copy of the Sidewinder, which was manufactured as the Vympel K-13/R-3S missile, NATO reporting name AA-2 Atoll. There may have been a second source for the copied design: according to Ron Westrum in his book Sidewinder,[13] the Soviets obtained the plans for Sidewinder from a Swedish Air Force Colonel, Stig Wennerström. (According to Westrum, Soviet engineers copied the AIM-9 so closely that even the part numbers were duplicated, although this has not been confirmed from Soviet sources.)

The Vympel K-13 entered service with Soviet air forces in 1961.

Apparently, an un-detonated AIM-9 somehow got stuck against some part of a MiG-17 fighter! The pilot was still able to fly the plane back safely, and the PRC safely detached the missile from the plane, after which the Soviet's compelled them to turn it over to them for R&D. This enabled the Soviet engineers to reverse engineer the Sidewinder, and develop an IR guided A2A missile of their own (K-13).

There were alleged contributtions to Soviet R&D from espionage, but even so, I imagine having a US IR missile right in front of them made the task much easier for the Soviet engineers versus just reading schematics/blueprints.

This story blew my mind. Where on a jet could a missile become logged and not simply clang off the body and fall to the Earth?! How did the missile fail to detonate? I guess they are triggered by proximity fuse and not impact. Maybe the fuse was faulty, or the ordnance itself? I had read that training missions would sometimes fly with a dummy missile with IR sensors attached but no explosives. Could this have been the case: the wrong missile was put on a combat aircraft?

The odds of this happening seemed like 1 in 1,000,000 to me, maybe less.

Maybe some ATS members have more details on this story. I find it fascinating.

a reply to: SleeperHasAwakened

Could it have been an intentional mistake?

a reply to: SleeperHasAwakened

Early missiles, to put it nicely, sucked. There were reports from Vietnam of AIM-9s tracking the sun, AIM-7s dropping off the rails and the motor never igniting, not tracking, not exploding or exploding too early...

originally posted by: one4all
a reply to: SleeperHasAwakened

Could it have been an intentional mistake?

I don't know how you deliberately lodge an A2A missile into another plane. Even if you /wanted/ to do it on purpose, the design and engineering challenges of essentially playing catch with a missile seem insurmountable.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: SleeperHasAwakened

Early missiles, to put it nicely, sucked. There were reports from Vietnam of AIM-9s tracking the sun, AIM-7s dropping off the rails and the motor never igniting, not tracking, not exploding or exploding too early...

Case in point: AIM fails to explode and embeds itself in enemy plane! I wonder what the respective pilots were thinking at that moment. Do you know the details of /how/ the missile managed to wedge onto the plain like that Zaphod?

One thing I've been considering is, strategically, was it a good idea to equip non-US pilots with the Sidwinders?

So US develops a new weapon technology, in secret. Although the idea is still raw and the technology unproven, having IR missiles (particularly as design kinks are worked out) seems like a major game changer.

Then, US takes new secret weapon technology and basically hands it over to military peers from another country.

Maybe I'm not seeing the big picture, but wasn't that a major risk?

Why not save the tech as an ace in the hole should US need to confront Soviets head on?
What if the Taiwanese fighter was just plain shot down, and the missile recovered from the wreckage?
What if the Taiwanese pilot defected?

I understand the need to get real world testing, but seems like they could've devised a scheme that didn't involve the Taiwanese?

The other question I had was, so after this incident, the Soviet missile program gets a major jolt for new tech. By the time Vietnam rolled around, the MiGs we faced had some form of guided missile to engage our pilots. What if the stray missile would've never been lost? Would it have been possible that the Soviets never produced a viable guided missile, and we had that tech all to ourselves over the skies of Vietnam?

Perhaps overthinking things there, but it seemed like this accident really helped our adversary, and it seems like it could've been avoidable.

a reply to: SleeperHasAwakened

It most likely hit near the engine, where the fuselage is fairly strong, and hit at just the right angle.

It was risky, obviously since a missile was lost, but the return was worth the risk. We ended up with a fairly solid ally in an area we need them. The Soviets were fairly well along in their own missile programs. They had the K-5 (AA-1) which was a beam riding missile, and were working on IR guidance. The AIM-9B certainly accelerated that development, but they would have gotten there fairly quickly anyway.

You missed the best part of the story though. The Chinese gave the missile to the Soviets after they very carefully took it apart, and supposedly the Soviet embassy in China mailed it back to the Soviet Union.

I had never heard of any shooting war between China and Taiwan.

USA supplies Taiwan so they can stop China without direct US involvement.


I think a more likely explanation is that the Chicoms found or stole a Sidewinder and used the 'lodged in plane' story as a dodge.

but, they say truth is stranger than fiction.

a reply to: ElGoobero

It was just after the Chinese Civil War when the Nationalists were thrown out, and Taiwan became a separate country. There was still a lot of tension and many incidents between them.


en.m.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: SleeperHasAwakened

It most likely hit near the engine, where the fuselage is fairly strong, and hit at just the right angle.

It was risky, obviously since a missile was lost, but the return was worth the risk. We ended up with a fairly solid ally in an area we need them. The Soviets were fairly well along in their own missile programs. They had the K-5 (AA-1) which was a beam riding missile, and were working on IR guidance. The AIM-9B certainly accelerated that development, but they would have gotten there fairly quickly anyway.

Yeah, that's a fair point. There's also contention that Soviet spies provided most of the valuable information about building the Soviet version of the missile, so seems like USSR getting the tech was a foregone conclusion anyway.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
You missed the best part of the story though. The Chinese gave the missile to the Soviets after they very carefully took it apart, and supposedly the Soviet embassy in China mailed it back to the Soviet Union.

Yes I must have missed that in the Wikipedia article.

I'm assuming they disassembled and disarmed it (if it wasn't already a dud) before shipment. That is kind of funny that likely top secret weapons tech was mailed back to the USSR though. I guess Chinese postal rates were cheaper (what else is new)?

I used to build sidewinder warheads for the govt back in the day. Not an incredibly complicated device. I'm sure by today's standards, its prehistoric

I remember reading a long time ago about an incident in aerial combat where an IR seeking missile ran up the tail pipe of the target aircraft and jammed there, partially penetrating the side of the aircraft. I'm being intentionally vague because it's been so long since I read it I don't recall the details. Was it a Sidewinder hitting a Soviet or Chicom fighter, or was it an Atoll hitting a USAF/allied fighter? Don't remember, I just recall it happening. Maybe this was the incident.

originally posted by: adoxxvegas
I used to build sidewinder warheads for the govt back in the day. Not an incredibly complicated device. I'm sure by today's standards, its prehistoric

According to the Wikipedia article, newer versions of it are still in use:

Since then the Sidewinder has proved to be an enduring international success, and its latest variants are still standard equipment in most western-aligned air forces.

I'm sure Zaphod would know how factual that is.

a reply to: SleeperHasAwakened

The -9X is still being introduced. It's light years beyond earlier versions. It's capable of high off boresite targeting, lock on after launch, and has increased range. They can actually use a helmet mounted cueing system and lock on to aircraft behind them.

a reply to: SleeperHasAwakened

This was back during the first gulf war so I'd imagine they've gotten better over the years. We built the warheads, and Thiokol built the rocket.

The aim 9 missle that china recovered from one of their aircraft was not a full aim 9.

The IR guidance system and forward part was only recovered, the back tail and motor and tail with the Gyro-actuated rollerons was not recovered

This caused the Russians no end of problems trying to get their copy to work right.

There was one strange model built that homed in on truck headlight.
Only about 150 were built at china lake and used on the Ho Chi Minh trail to take out truck convoys

Thats what I call guts.
I can not belive he did not eject
as soon as the missle hit him!

he must have been sweting all the way back.
or did he think it bounce't off?

originally posted by: buddha
Thats what I call guts.
I can not belive he did not eject
as soon as the missle hit him!

he must have been sweting all the way back.
or did he think it bounce't off?

Exactly! I'm not sure how reliable ejection seats were back in the 50's though, and if this encounter was say 20-30 kilometers out over the South China Sea, that might make me think twice?

I really don't know to what extent that technology was understood by opposing forces at the time. Did they understand that they were set to detonate on proximity? Who knows.

I'd love to hear the account of pilots from both sides, although I'm betting the participants are no longer around, and wouldn't be allowed to speak about it publicly if they were.