Talk:Malkara (missile)

Untitled

There is something odd about the details in the Malkara missile article. During 1958/9, whilst working for Pye Ltd. at Cambridge, I was part of a team designing an anti-tank, vehicle launched and wire guided missle, called Malkara and with an Australian provenance. But the system was not then in service (as the article suggests) and it was controlled by vectored thrust using a servo-driven, ceramic exhaust nozzle - rather than control surfaces. Was this a 'Malkara II' to replace an earlier design? If so I am not aware that any of us lowly designers were aware of this. In 1959, when I moved on to other work, the missile was undergoing static tests (at Cranfield) and was in preparation to be given live flight tests. If it ever came to production, it could not have seen service before 1961 or 1962 at the earliest − perhaps it just suffered an MOD change of course, as so many other defence projects? P J O'Neill 18:30, 2 March 2007 (UTC)P J O'Neill

Hello P.J. O'Neill. I don't know what you were working on in Cambridge in 1959, but all references I have found agree that a) the air frame, motor and guidance system were developed in Australia, not the UK (UK developed the warhead, and all support systems); b) the motor and flight control surfaces must have been finished a lot earlier than 1959, because they passed test flights in 1953; and c) in 1957 the system passed trials, and the UK government placed a formal order for several hundred Mk I Malkara (that date according to two references I read; one other says 1958). Stating that they entered service in 1958 may not be completely correct, however; apparently there was a fair bit of faffing about with launch vehicles (two alternative designs considered), and the first military unit to actually receive missiles did so in 1960.

Perhaps you may have been working on Orange William: an entirely British ATGM, produced by Fairey Engineering. Clearly based on Malkara, and with a development schedule that was mostly about 3 ~ 4 years after Malkara, it "test-bedded" a number of more advanced concepts (of which the thermal battery ended up in Malkara Mk IA) but it was cancelled in 1959. -- Securiger (talk) 08:36, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

That missile referred-to by the original poster was possibly the Pye PV later 'Python'. [1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.24.215.105 (talk) 09:53, 9 September 2014 (UTC)