One of the key Taiwanese who help to develop the Hsiung Feng I anti-ship missile was Chiang Hsiao Kun. In this video, Chiang gave an insight into some of the difficulties encountered during the missile’s development. The missile was reverse-engineered from the Israeli Gabriel Mk 1.
During the delivery of a batch of missiles from Israel to Taiwan, the Taiwanese wanted to cargo to be offloaded in Keelung and truck to Kaohsiung so that a missile can be diverted away for study. The Israelis were told that the missile required 4 days to transport to the south due to curfew as a coverup.
But tragedy struck when the Taiwanese tried to remove one of the antennas on the missile, one of the screws was broken and the antenna could not be fixed back. Luckily, an engineer unrelated to the program saw the part and realized that it was similar to the antenna on the C-119 cargo plane.
Chiang also talked about how Taiwan had to develop its own radar altimeter as reverse-engineering the Israeli part was impossible. At one time, the missile was lifted up by a helicopter and a person sat on the missile to take measures from the radar altimeter.
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