In the waning days of World War II, the US turned worn-out bombers into missiles targeting Germany. It didn’t go well. The Remote Control Bombers By Walter J. Boyne 86 AIR FORCE Magazine / November 2010 he United States Army Air Forc- es dominated the skies over Ger- many in 1944 with conventional weaponry. However, a late-war spurtT in German scientific activity inspired a futuristic American response: The US would use remotely piloted bombers, loaded with explosives, to target hardened German targets. The result was a pair of top-secret programs, the AAF’s Aphrodite and the Navy’s Anvil. War-weary B-17, B-24, and PBY4-1 bombers were stripped of standard equipment and laden with ex- plosives, so that they could be guided by A B-17 before it was stripped of all nonessential parts and made into a flying bomb. a “mother plane” to dive into a heavily This aircraft fell short of its target during its Aphrodite flight. defended target. It seemed like a good idea at the time, British losses and the adverse effect of the Gardner to begin experiments with ex- but failed badly in practice. The effort V-weapons on British morale was so great plosive-packed bombers flying under is today remembered largely for killing that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme radio control. At the same time, Spaatz Navy Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the son allied commander, directed Crossbow initiated an in-theater experiment, which of the former ambassador to Great Britain have absolute priority over all other air became known as Aphrodite (sometimes and the brother of future President of the operations, against the strong advice of coded with other names such as Anvil or United States John F. Kennedy. Lt. Gen. Carl A. Spaatz, commander of Castor) to use radio-controlled bombers Aphrodite and Anvil came about through US Strategic Air Forces in Europe. as guided missiles. a combination of desire to match advanced What we now call unmanned aerial weapons being employed by Germany, Assault Drones vehicles or remotely piloted aircraft were to equal contemporary British advances, Spaatz was convinced the bombing op- earlier simply called pilotless aircraft. and to thriftily employ bombers that were erations being conducted under Crossbow They were of immediate interest to the no longer suitable for routine combat were ineffective in that the typical target American military services. Considerable missions. size of a V-1 or V-2 launching area did effort was made with autonomous cruise Lt. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle was then com- not warrant the massive expenditure of missiles presaging the Nazi V-1 as early as manding Eighth Air Force. He approved bombs being used. Later, Crossbow was World War I, when the famous Kettering the Aphrodite project in June 1944, and recognized as a failure in its efforts to Bug was built and tested. the Navy’s Anvil was developed along a reduce German V-1 and V-2 launches, even In the post World War I years, both parallel path. though it consumed almost 21 percent of the US and Great Britain experimented By that date, Nazi Germany was fac- the Allied strategic bombing effort during with full-size aircraft flown under remote ing defeat on every front. In desperation, its course. Spaatz proposed that attacks control, but the most successful efforts it sought to change the course of the war should be concentrated on major targets, were those inspired by the Hollywood with the introduction of spectacular new such as the Pas-de-Calais electrical grid, character actor Reginald Denny, whose weapons. and the development of a new bombing line of radio-controlled target drones The greatest Nazi successes were to technique against hardened targets. frustrated American gunners for years. come with the crude but relatively effec- Under his urging, Gen. Henry H. “Hap” His Radioplane firm manufactured more tive V-1, a pulse-jet cruise missile with a Arnold directed Brig. Gen. Grandison than 17,000 target drones, all flown with 1,900-pound warhead, and the radical V-2, the first ballistic missile. (The V-2 was far more expensive and carried roughly the same size warhead, but could not be defeated in flight.) Both missiles caused extensive British civilian casualties and were a heavy burden on morale for a nation engaged in its fifth year of World War II. The Allies were therefore conducting preventive attacks under Operation Cross- bow, intending to forestall deployment of both the V-1 buzz bomb and the V-2 ballistic missile. Crossbow was intended to destroy German long-range weapons by every means, including the destruc- tion of factories, launching sites, and of course, missiles in flight. Concern about Left: A converted B-17 used in Aphro- dite and a sequence of photos from a A pilot with the Aphrodite project sits inside one of the stripped-down bombers. test of the remotely controlled bomber. Once airborne, the crew had to bail out. AIR FORCE Magazine / November 2010 87 reasonable precision under radio control In their initial operations, a rivalry American, Col. Elliot Roosevelt, the son from the ground. The US Navy con- developed in which both the AAF and the of the US President. (Roosevelt special- ducted radio-control experiments during Navy teams kept their methods private, ized in reconnaissance work and ended the 1930s, during which the aircraft, a not sharing all the information that they the war with 300 combat missions and a Curtiss N2C-2, was controlled from the might have. Neither team had the expertise Distinguished Flying Cross.) air by a mother aircraft. The AAF adopted on hand to evaluate their instructions on Anticipating bailout in about 10 min- the concept and subsequently flew Culver how to load, wire, arm, and successfully utes, Kennedy turned control of the BQ-8 PQ-8 and PQ-14 target drones usually detonate the huge loads of Torpex. The over to the mother ship, which had com- flown from a Beech C-45 mothership. Torpex went aboard the aircraft in indi- pleted one turn by remote control when Thus it was not completely extraor- vidual boxes weighing about 60 pounds. something detonated the Torpex. The BQ-8 dinary that someone should suggest that These had to be stored, stacked, and and its crew disappeared in a blinding flash war-weary B-17s and B-24s could be wired in such a way that they detonated of light, with scattered wreckage falling adapted for this purpose. simultaneously on impact. over Blythburgh, in Suffolk. More than Things moved swiftly during World The AAF apparently followed tradi- 50 people were injured on the ground. War II, and after Doolittle approved tional means in both arming and detonation Spaatz, Doolittle, and Arnold were all the plan on June 26, the 562nd Bomb techniques. Operation Aphrodite might too aware of the political sensitivity of the Squadron began work. In a parallel well have been forgotten by now, if the incident as Roosevelt’s Mosquito returned, effort, the US Navy began to modify Navy had done the same. damaged, to base. The Navy launched Consolidated PBY4-1s to become as- Instead, a new electronic safety device a board of review. The possibility that sault drones, under Anvil. was incorporated in the Navy arming sys- Kennedy had caused the explosion by The 562nd quickly stripped worn- tem. According to the accounts in Aphro- prematurely arming the system was re- out Flying Fortresses of all nonessential dite: Desperation Mission, by Jack Olsen, jected, and he was posthumously awarded equipment, and tried to make the cockpit essential ground personnel were aware the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Flying as easy as possible for a volunteer pilot of a fatal flaw in the system that could Cross, and the Air Medal. Willy received and flight engineer crew to both use. Here allow movement of the control switch to the Navy Cross. was the trick: The pilot and flight engineer not only arm but detonate the explosive. What caused the explosion may never would get the stripped-down bomb trucks When the vital discrepancy was pointed be known, but given the complexity of airborne, and then they had to bail out. out, the official Navy reaction was that the wiring new radio control equipment Two television cameras were set up device had been designed by experts and into a war-weary airplane, and the well- to allow a view of the main instrument was not to be altered in the field. known assessments of the arming system panel and the ground to be transmitted to by Navy personnel, it is probable that the mother ship, and radio remote-control Joe Kennedy Jr., Aphrodite Pilot the controls Kennedy operated while equipment developed for the Azon guided On Aug. 12, 1944, a single drone aircraft preparing to bail out somehow triggered bomb was installed. The entire aircraft of the Navy’s Anvil program was assigned the explosion. was then packed with 20,000 pounds of to attack the already destroyed site at Despite the lack of success, the members the powerful British Torpex explosive. Mimoyecques in France. Unfortunately, of the Aphrodite team were undeterred by This changed the center of gravity and the the former AAF B-24, converted first to their succession of failures and pressed to flying characteristics of the drone. Navy PB4Y-1 designation, and then given have the concept developed for the conclu- The operational concept called for the the drone designation BQ-8, exploded sion of the war against Germany and for drone to take off and fly to an altitude of over the Blyth Estuary in Britain.