American WWII remote-control flying bomb

The TDR-1 is the machine your thinking about. It was used in attacks against Rabaul and was powered by a pair of Lycomings. I well recall the article and
a reader’s letter follow up showed one in the U.S derelict. Good to see the machine at Pensacola – not sure whether it’s the genuine article or not.

Project Aphrodite. The idea was to pack an aged bomber with 10 tons of explosives and fly it into the impregnable submarine pens on the French coast.

Project based on Fersfield, a satellite station to Knettishall.

Moggy

There’s the Interstate TDR, which was used in the Pacific and remotely controlled from a TBM.

TDR-1 here at Pensacola

Tony Andrews

Good point. I missed that. 😮

The aircraft was not a BAT missile as the mystery machine was driven by a propeller.

More on the BAT bomb here: http://biomicro.sdstate.edu/pederses/asmbat.html

Despite the failure of Project X-ray, a lesser-known weapon system named BAT did in fact exceed expectations and was active in the arsenal of the United States Navy from 1945 through 1953 (Buford and Boyd, 1953; Huff, 1950; Van Vleet et al., 1981). Indeed, the BAT air-to-surface missile (ASM-N-2: Special Weapons Ordinance Device–SWOD Mk 9) was the first fully automatic guided-missile to be used operationally by any of the combatants during WWII (April 23, 1945). During this time, there were many wire-, radio-, and television-guided bombs, either glider-type or self-propelled, that were used by the Germans and Americans during the war (e.g., Henschel Hs-293, GB-4), however, the BAT was the very first, fully-automatic, weapon system, the archetype of what we now term “fire and forget” weaponry. Once launched, the BAT went solo, guided to its target by an early S-band radar unit (see below), developed by the Bell Telephone Laboratories.

Hi,

I vaguely remember the article. Wasn’t it termed ‘Aphrodite’?

Alex

Alastair,

From the same site as mentioned above, confirmation of the Kennedy connection with the B17s:

Radio Controlled Bomber Drone. Project Aphrodite. The idea was to pack an aged bomber with 10 tons of explosives and fly it into the impregnable submarine pens on the French coast. A pilot was required to get the bomber airborne and trimmed so that a controlling plane could fly it to the target. The first plane exploded over England before the pilot had bailed out. The pilot was Navy Lt Joseph Kennedy, eldest son of that family, who was being groomed for the presidency, a post later held by the second son, John F. Kennedy.

There were experiments with war weary B17 and B24s , if I remember correctly B17’s had the cockpit removed so the pilot could bale out after take off , the B17s were then steered towards their target from another B17 – one of these blew up over SE England killing the pilot – he was a member of the Kennedy family ( as in JFK Kennedy ) . I’m sure there is somebody out there with the full accurate story ..

Al

The following quote comes from this site: http://www.ww2pacific.com/ideas.html

23April45 –PB4Y Privateer’s launched two Bat glide bombs against the enemy shipping in Balikpapan Harbor, Borneo, in the first combat employment of the only automatic homing bomb to be used in World War II.

Would this fit with what you were meaning?

Would this be the Batbomb? (And no Batman jokes please!) I’ll see if I can dig up more info on this.