?This week in 1959: A rare sighting of the Seaslug

Despite being proposed in the early 20th century, work on surface to air guided missiles didn’t really begin in earnest until after World War II, and during the late 1940s and 1950s the world’s major military powers all began to introduce variants of a technology that was to fundamentally reshape warfare.

In 1959, The Engineer got its first look at the The Armstrong- Whitworth ” Seaslug ”, an advanced new weapon designed to enable the UK Royal Navy to engage reconnaissance aircraft or bombers.

Work on the weapon - which was the navy’s first generation Surface to air missile - began in 1949 and built on the progress made by Fairey Aviation’s LOPGAP (Liquid Oxygen / Petrol Guided Anti-aircraft Projectile) project.

Speculating on what can gleaned from the image, The Engineer wrote that ‘one striking characteristic visible is the way in which the weapon has been optimised for the minimum stowage and handling volume, with short wings and finless boosts : notice also that the boosts now extend virtually the full length of the nose.’