video - US Navy used drones in WW 2 - guided by motherships using primitive TV

[msongs]

unmanned flight used to blow up various japanese military things in the pacific war zone. drones are nothing new!

[AllaN01Bear]

1. i had read somewhere in a book where in ww2 the army af took old worn out bombers ,

packed them full of explosives . rigged a tv camera and piloted via rc and slammed them in to mountains and went ka boom a.

[msongs]

2. one suspects a huge amount of mountains and trees were blasted to bits back then nt

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Pilots did the takeoff, armed the bombs & remote, then bailed. The first one blew up prematurely, killing Joe Kennedy Jr

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_P._Kennedy_Jr.#Operations_Aphrodite_and_Anvil

Joe Sr. had every intention of seeing his son elected to the Presidency, and turned his plans to JFK only after Joe Jr. died. Joe Jr had volunteered despite having fulfilled his 25 missions. IIRC his father told him not to volunteer.

There were no TV cameras -- technology was not ready -- they used radio remote control from a second plane.

FWIW, this was the last such mission under this program the Navy was involved in. I don't know what they did in the Pacific theater.

I heartily recommend this book -- https://archive.org/details/darkeagles00curt

[AllaN01Bear]

3. this

The first pilotless vehicles were developed in Britain and the USA during the First World War. Britain's Aerial Target, a small radio-controlled aircraft, was first tested in March 1917 while the American aerial torpedo known as the Kettering Bug first flew in October 1918