Malafon

Malafon, whose name contracts Marine Latécoère Fonds, was a French ship-launched anti-submarine missile system developed in the 1950s and 1960s to take advantage of the longer detection ranges of towed sonar arrays. It entered service in 1966 and was manufactured by Groupe Latécoère. In essence it was a glider-delivered version of the L4 torpedo. A circular launcher turned the weapon to the right bearing and fired it at a fixed elevation of 15 degrees; two solid booster rockets accelerated it to 830 km/h within four seconds before falling away, and the unpowered glider then flew at an altitude of 100 metres under radio control from the launching ship until it dropped the torpedo near the target. Its effective range was 13 km. As a large weapon of 1,330 kg it was carried only by larger vessels. It was never used in war, was declared obsolete in 1997 and was replaced by Westland Lynx helicopters using Mark 46 torpedoes.