Red Dean

The Red Dean was an air-to-air missile developed by the United Kingdom in the 1950s but cancelled before development was complete. It was a large radar-guided missile using pulse-Doppler radar against enemy bombers.

History
The Red Dean project was split off from the Red Hawk missile project in 1951 as a 700 lb missile to be developed by Folland. Following problems with increasing size and weight as the design progressed, not to mention cost overruns and problems with the seeking head, Folland felt unable to continue the work and the Ministry of Supply passed it to Vickers in 1953.

The Vickers version of Red Dean, Vickers Type 888, was no more fortunate. It continued to suffer from numerous development problems, not the least of which was that ongoing issues with the active radar seeker (for which the designers GEC were pilloried on numerous grounds) caused a size and weight spiral. This in turn detracted grossly from the flight performance, which was dismal for such a large missile. Poor seeker performance in turn demanded a large warhead, which exacerbated the weight problems, while design limitations inherent in the light alloy structure made it unsuitable for use on highly supersonic interceptors.

Operational Requirement F.155 for a fighter to engage enemy bombers with radar and infra-red guided missiles (the missiles were specified under OR.1131) included a scaled down Red Dean under the codename Red Hebe.

Gloster offered a development of their Javelin with Red Dean. The "thin wing" Gloster Javelin development was cancelled in 1956 and Red Dean went with it, despite a major redesign and abandonment of the requirement for autonomous active homing. The limitations on supersonic carriage still remained, and the planned new generation of Mach 2.5 interceptors would need something better.

Examples of Red Dean are held at the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford, the South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum, Doncaster, and Brooklands Museum where Vickers had worked on the design