Sidewinder: Creative Missile Development at China Lake [Hardcover]

Ron Westrum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1999

The story of how that unorthodox group of scientists overcame Navy bureaucracy and more heavily funded projects to develop the world's best air-to-air missile.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press (September 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557509514
• ISBN-13: 978-1557509512
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,300,635 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting story marred by flawed writing., November 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Sidewinder: Creative Missile Development at China Lake (Hardcover)

The development of the successful Sidewinder (AIM-9) heat-seeking missile deserves a book. This one is almost it. The author discusses not only technical problems and their solutions but also the managerial side of weapons development. Unfortunately, there is too much chronological back-and-forth to allow one to get an idea of how the technical solutions worked off preceding developments; a graphic timeline would have allowed the reader to know what happened when. Westrum doesn't discuss the what the China Lake center was doing, and how it was doing it before the scientists and engineers responsible for Sidewinder showed up. While there is some discussion of the social activities of the Sidewinder personnel, this review er never got a feel for the whole China Lake setting. Westrum relies too heavily on "telling" and not "showing" ; in some places he says that certain defense contractors had problems managing their programs, but provides little evidence of what he would base that on.(Not to say that private industry contractors haven't had problems; this reviewers knowledge of McDonnell Douglas problems makes him sympathetic to any story of How The Navy Could Do It Better.) The author wants to use China Lake and the Sidewinder project as a possible model of how to correctly manage a weapons project, but his story comes off more as a paean to certain personnel. If the secret of success is the right manager or designer or technician, this book might give us some guidance on selecting those people (flexible, open-minded, creative, informal, dedicated, technically competent) but there must also be some managerial methods and organizational that get lost in an emphasis on personality. Still, recommended for anyone interested in modern air combat, aerospace technology, or defense management.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not much technical details, October 11, 2000

By 

Lam WC (Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sidewinder: Creative Missile Development at China Lake (Hardcover)

As a professional engineer I find the book disappointing because there are too little technical details to justify why sidewinder is unique and why its development worth a book. Not that I am looking for classified information. The author has in fact reproduced some drawings from the engineers hand note and patent submission, but seems unable to explain how it works. The emphasis is on 'group dynamics', and 'management for creativity', etc. On that aspect the author clearly pointed out how a creative China Lake Lab was built. If the author is less vague about how the other lab/industry failed, or why China Lake lost its battle to bureaucrats, the picture will be more complete.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Overview Of The Technical & Management Program, January 19, 2003

By 

em "mar2hal" (St. George, UT United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sidewinder: Creative Missile Development at China Lake (Hardcover)

The book is not a technical manual on China Lake products-which are impressive-but describes the unique military-civilian scientist relationship which provided the environment for those outstanding products, and it does it well. As a former China Lake physicist for 33 years who lived and worked in that environment, the book pleased me.