He told me he didn’t have a lot of confidence in the Sparrow. They eventually got some aircraft with guns but never used them; despite Top Gun school something like 90% Of his flights were ground attack missions.
Highly recommend folks who are into aircraft warfare pick up a book about how the AIM-9 Sidewinder was developed as a side project at China Lake by the Navy that had to be done under the radar due to politics. It's a great story about engineers driven by a real customer need fought bureaucracy, politics and some interesting technical challenges to build a missile and get it in the hands of pilots. They were up against a military contractor (Hughes) pushing the AIM-4 Falcon which had horrible numbers in the field. The Falcon required like 3 people and 4 racks worth of equipment to troubleshoot it while the Sidewinder required a screwdriver and a voltmeter.
The Sparrow had its own challenges from what I've read. Specifically issues with the acquisition radar being able to track a fast moving target and the missiles ability to receive the reflected signal and apply the right amount of correction. Got to remember that the time when these missiles were being developed it was to target slow moving bombers - not tight turning bandits.
US pilots also had the bizarre order to visually identify targets before shooting (which then meant waiting 4 seconds for the missile to arm before actually firing it.)
Amongst other things, visibility in the tropics is often not 4 seconds worth, and the enemy can use clouds to get real close.
