Despite their obvious differences, Sidewinders and Sparrows often went together because they aren’t just the names of flying creatures and slithering serpents… they are weapons of war.

The Sidewinder

House Sparrows

The Rapier missile system

Chinese Fire Arrows

The Tipu Sultan's artillery rockets

The RS-28 rockets fired by the Polikarpov I-16

The German R4M unguided air to air rocket

The nuclear AIR-2 Genie missile

A Genie launch

The AIM9 Sidewinder

The rotating reticule

The rolleron

Guidance

The warhead

An AIM 9 warhead effect demonstration

The AIM7 Sparrow

A QF4B killed by a Sparrow missile

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to images in the Public Domain, UK Defence Imagery, Wubei Zhi, NASA, Juergen Schiffmann, the USAF, David Monniaux, RoyKabanlit, U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation and the USN.