"I didn't know the rails were never there even when the pod was loaded"
Tarps pod attached directly to the aircraft.
The rails are just too much trouble to install and remove. Most of our jets were adopted for tarps, that means that a cooling air duct was routed from the front of the jet to the pod down the center right above were the recess for AIM-7 is located. The jets broke down all the time, our AEs and ATs were always working. Dont know how many tarps pods we had but it was probably 2-3 at most. So it was important to be able to swap the pods onto jets that were able to fly. Im