Originally Posted by
gums
Salute!
Np, sandiego, not classified best I know. and for all...
The Hughes system we had in the 101 and 106 for the Genie was basically a computing lead collision gunsight. It calculated an impact point in front of the target, at which point the nuke detonated. The Genie was unguided and a huge bullet. I fired one at Tyndall and the thing zoomed out from our plane and almost grazed the drone before the spotting charge went off out in front. It went out like a bullet.
The Hughes system set a time of flight in the warhead, so we had a bullet that would explode after a few seconds. Seems to me that the manual backup mode used about 5 seconds.[EDIT: In fact, after remembering some systems after I had to quit flying, I am now thinking that the basic concept was actually the 5 second +/- time of flight that our analog computer was shooting for. BTW, when I say analog, it was not all electronic. Our "computer" actually had mechanical gears and resolvers and synchros and.... The cosmic electronics were in the Hughes radar that had "internal lobing" versus the conical scan in the early systems like the F-102 and such.]
The Genie had the advantage of no onboard electronics for guidance, so you could not jam it once it left my plane.
Our steering was on a small scope in the front seat. The RIO would lock on and then tell me "you got the dot".
The night I had trouble was because the RIO kept trying to upgrade the firing solution and the B-58 EWO kept using a range gate stealer and so every few seconds we would have to start over. However, we had the IR-RDR slave mode and could still get good range for our Falcon heaters.
Gums sends...
Thank you for taking the time Gums, much appreciated! Not a lot out there about about the 101 VooDoo. My great uncle (Dick LaBarre) flew them. What did you think? Imagine they bled lots of speed with maneuvering (granted not their role). Salute back at ya!