Good point there about the capability that the AIM-9L brought to the Falklands, Navaleye. I guess it boiled to down to the following:
- Increased range (this probably allowed Penfold to take the long shot that he did and the second case I assume is the 8 June engagement in which hmmm...you know who
shot a very long shot at a 15ft(?) flying Skyhawk which IIRC crashed on land (he had almost gotten to the coast on his way to escape when he was hit and crashed on shore. I recall one of Dave Morgan's accounts in which he said IIRC that he remembers looking down after he went up through the horizon to clear the engagement area and seeing the Sidewinder streaking towards its target and and a parallel mirror image of its smoke trail a few feet below mirroring on the sea surface looking a bit like a torpedo! DAB Smith I think had said that they couldn't differentiate a definite hit from the explosion of the crash because everything occured mere feet above the surface and the missile detonation and subsequent crash seemed to merge into one)
- Seeker head that may have worked slightly better at extremely low altitudes
- Reliability - only one of Clive Morrell's Sidewinders seemed to have gone stupid and failed to launch, then launched of its own. I don't think however that the AIM-9G was any less reliable, just maybe more sensitive to low altitude heat 'distractions'.
All in all I think it was certainly well worth the effort (by the late Taylor Scott IIRC?) to scrounge for and expedite the shipment of Limas because you never know when you might need the extra capability (in war I guess you want to have all the advantages that you can have up your sleeve). It must have been an additional psychological factor acting on the Argentines and it did result in a small number of additional kills. Apart from the above two, I can't recall from memory any other shootdown that would not probably have occured with the 9Golf as well.