thunderbird in flight

This missile was used by the British Army for medium range air defence from 1960. There are few examples remaining and it is often mistaken for the slightly larger and longer range Bloodhound used by the RAF. The Thunderbird missile was built by English Electric.

The missile had a range of about 30 miles and used semi active homing in conjunction with the non coherent pulse radar Type 83 "Yellow River" built by British Thomson-Houston Co. Ltd (BTH). It has replaced in 1965 by the mark 2 Thunderbird which worked with the Ferranti (Edinburgh) AD10 coherent CW radar for improved low altitude performance.