Came up in another thread, the AGM-114Ks we have on the Apache AH1, do they have the correct range?
I had a look and found mixed results, some suggesting 11km, others 9 and a few the 8 we have. But none Id consider reliable sources. Anyone know the answer for this?
There are photographs in the Putnam’s Westland volume ( Westland Aircraft Since 1915 , Derek James, 1991) showing two Whirlwinds of JEHU in Army markings.
A Whirlwind 2 (XK969/‘D’) with ‘an experimental machine-gun installation’ , what looks like a water-cooled Vickers machine gun, on tripod, mounted to fire at 90 degrees to the direction of flight, through the main door.
A Whirlwind 2 (XK970/‘E’) with two forward-firing box launchers for ‘small air-to-ground milssiles’ ( I assume Vigilant) suspended from the hoist mounting.
Was able to find some additional digital images from googling the aircraft’s serial
Whirlwind HAR.9 XL898 with SS.11 launchers
Port side mount looks different. Maybe the rocket platform previously seen on the HAS.7, or just a shield to deflect the exhaust gas
Was also able to find an image of another HAR.9 with SS.11. This time XN386 equipped with live missiles!
The warhead of another SS.11 appears to be visible on the other side.
You can see XN386 still has the mounting point for the SS.11 bracket where it resides today in Doncaster at the South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum. This isn’t present on every HAR.9, so may be helpful for spotting serials of other Whirlwinds (potentially other Marks) that were modified for carrying weapons
I don’t think so. There are at least 3x HAS.9 airframes with this modification. All appear to have been HMS Endurance’s helicopter at some point, operating in the Antarctic (penguin decal): XL898, XN386 and XN359.
4x according to research presented in this thread.
The mounting for the HAR.10/HC.10 shown on the photo you got, appears to be different to the HAR.9 mounting. With a platform suspended from the side of the fuselage similar to the Wessex weapon platform, rather than a simple socket. I haven’t been able to find photos of the Mk.10s that were apparently modified for Nord (XP301, XP332, XP358 and XP393) showing a semi-permanent mount like the HAR.9 have
The modification to Mk.9s seems like it was probably done at the end of the 1960s. There are photos of XL898, XN386 and XN359 in 1966, 1967 and 1969 respectively without the Nord mounting point that’s visible in photos of the same aircraft in later years. I think 1968 is probably when the first aircraft was equipped since this is apparently when XL898 deployed to the Antarctic with Endurance.
So this would be several years after the RAF started using the missiles on Mk.10s in South-East Asia (1962-1964 IIRC) and is likely why there are different engineering solutions to how the missiles were mounted. RAF one resembling the Wessex arrangement from the same 1962-1964 time period, and the Navy one being similar to the arrangement seen on Scout, Wasp (and Alouette, Huey, Gazelle) that entered service later.