The Norden couldn’t compensate for bad weather, and even with its advanced level of accuracy discrete targets such as bridges, factories or V-1 “buzz bomb” launching sites often required multiple attacks before they could be considered destroyed.   In some cases, especially with fortified targets, only a precise strike would have any effect. The quest for a truly accurate, guided weapon challenged Axis and Allied engineers alike. The Nazis produced such developments as the Hs-293, a radio-guided bomb, and the FX-1400 (aka “Fritz-X”) wire-guided air-to-surface missile which sank the Italian battleship Roma.  The American industrial machine produced weapons with similar capabilities, and then some. 

One of the simplest, yet most effective and widely-produced items on the American side was a high angle weapon which could be steered in azimuth during its descent.  Known as the Azon VB-1 / VB-2, it consisted of a standard one or two thousand pound bomb casing equipped with a special radio-controlled tail shroud.  The genius of the Azon lay in the fact that it allowed attacking planes to stay away from areas with high concentrations of flak guns while delivering a lethal attack.  In early 1944 VB-1s dropped from Flying Fortresses devastated a series of bridges in the Bremmer Pass, effectively cutting a major Wehrmacht supply line to Italy.  In Burma a squad of ten B-17s flew mission after mission, dropping Azons on Japanese supply lines.  The effects on enemy logistics could best be described as catastrophic.  At the airbase a new sign went up on the door to the ready room: “Dentist’s Office.  Bridges Our Specialty.”

Equipped with an apparatus sensitive to high temperature emissions on its nose, Felix represented an early heat-seeking weapon.  Like Azon and Razon, this robot bomb steered itself into a target through the use of vanes mounted on its octagonal tail shroud.   		While nearly 15,000 Azons were produced the Razon VB-3 / VB-4,  a massive one or two thousand pound weapon guidable in azimuth and range, missed the war by a few months.  A similar fate met the Felix, the Air Force’s first heat-seeking bomb. While the idea behind the weapon was bold a truly reliable, miniaturized heat-seeking electronics package would not be perfected for some time to come.  

Another guided weapon was the glide bomb.  Developed by Aeronca, Bellanca and other companies, these weapons consisted generally of standard bombs to which a pair of wooden wings, a tail, and an electronic receiver were added.  Designated GB-1 thru GB-15,  they were supplied pre-set guidance, radio guidance, or wire guidance depending on type.  In May of 1944 fifty-eight B-17s flew one of the most unique missions of the war.  Rendezvousing at Cologne, they released 116 GB-1s over the city.  Fewer than half hit their designated targets, but still the results were felt to be favorable.  Subsequently, Major J.M. Pomykata of the Air Technical Service Command undertook a series of experimental attacks against U-boat pens, a factory, and an oil refinery.  Yet Pomykata failed in efforts to have the GBs assume a greater role in the conflict.  

Glide bomb: Essentially a standard aircraft bomb to which a 12’ monoplane wingspan and tail were attached, glide bombs represented a low-cost solution to the problem of accuracy.  Note in the top photo the moveable elevators and radio guidance electronics package on the tail just aft of the wing.  Fifteen different types were built during the war. 
Late in the war the Navy revisited the idea, producing larger, more sophisticated weapons known as “glombs” because they were adapted from pre-existing glider aircraft.  McDonnell also embraced the idea, producing the Gargoyle, a glide bomb equipped with a rocket engine that produced tremendous dive speeds.  Successful flight tests of the weapon however didn’t occur until 1946.  

Originally envisioned as a glide bomb by McDonnell engineers, the Gargoyle ended up as a super weapon.  Equipped with a liquid fueled rocket engine and a highly aerodynamic airframe, it could allegedly reach dive speeds near 600 mph.
Gargoyle as seen suspended in shackled below a Curtiss SB2C Helldiver, one of the many launch aircraft used for the entire series of new remote controlled glide bombs – the first American ‘precision weapons’ of sorts.

In 1943 several types of training gliders received modifications that would allow them to become “glombs”. Although inexpensive to produce and capable of TV control, the concept was eventually deemed impractical.  


Glide bomb: Outfitted with a torpedo, the GT-1 glide bomb was intended to be used against convoys of enemy ships.  Once it hit the water, the wooden wings and tail would break away, and the torpedo would proceed unencumbered to its target. 
In 1945 a series of tests were conducted with Bat and Pelican.  Although both proved highly successful, the former was deployed and the latter stillborn.  Nearly 3,000 Bats would be constructed by V-J Day.  Their victims included a destroyer that was sunk in spectacular fashion.

The Bat, an anti-ship weapon first proposed in 1942, would have a far more illustrious career.  Developed by Dr. Hugh Dryden of the Bureau of Standards, the Bat and its undeployed cousin the Pelican used radar homing devices to find and destroy ships.  A twelve-foot-long flying bomb with a ten foot wingspan and an inert weight of 600 pounds, Bat could carry a one or two thousand pound explosive payload.  Usually carried beneath the wing of a Navy Privateer patrol plane, Bat would be pointed towards a target ship or submarine and released at about 20,000 feet.  As it dove down to sea level, it would send out radar pulses and follow the returns in towards its hapless victim.  (Pelican relied on a similar system but required the launching plane to “paint” the target with radar emissions during the attack.)  

A precursor to the Bat, the Pelican relied upon the launching aircraft to “paint” its target with radio waves.  The glide bomb would then follow the beam reflections in for the kill.   Aerodynamicists Hunter Boyd and Harold Skramstad's design for the Bat was essentially an enclosed glide bomb with a forward electronics package.  This contemporary photo taken at NAWCWD Point Mugu shows the Bat's rear compartment just aft of the wing.  The bomb casing is clearly visible surrounded by a lightweight wood body.
The Bat’s bite could certainly do plenty of damage, and if it had appeared in time for the Battle of Leyte Gulf it might have become legendary.  But unfortunately the Bat didn’t leave its perch until the spring of 1945 by which time it was difficult to find enemy naval targets.  Nevertheless, the Navy produced nearly 3,000.  Nearly a dozen enemy vessels felt their nip including several coastal freighters that were severly damaged and a Japanese ammunition ship that vanished in a massive fire ball.
While the Bat represented a breakthrough, another radar-based weapon had a much broader impact on the war: the Radio Proximity or Variable Time Fuse.  The concept sounded simple: put a miniaturized, hardened Doppler radar  -- one that could sense when it was within range of a target -- into a standard anti-aircraft shell. In practice, miniaturizing and hardening anything electronic circa 1941 required something close to a miracle.  Dr. Paul Weeks of Ratheon delivered one: a radio receiver the size of a fist that could survive spin accelerations of 15,000 Gs.  It ended up in hundreds of thousands of munitions, and accounted for untold enemy aircraft losses.  They are especially credited with saving lives during kamikaze attacks.  










Slung on either wing of a Privateer, the Navy’s largest land-based patrol plane, Bat flies a mission in May of 1945.  The radar-guided bomb represented a genuine technical achievement.  Had it existed earlier in the war, it would doubtless have taken a heavy toll on Japanese shipping. 

VT fuses also found a home aboard small air, sea and ground launched rockets.  These included barrage weapons such as the 3.5” diameter Forward Firing Aircraft Rocket, the 5 inch “Holy Moses” High Velocity Aircraft Rocket, and the gigantic, ten foot long, 11.75 inch “Tiny Tim”.  They also served aboard the “Little Joe”, an anti-aircraft missile developed late in the war.  

Rapidly developed to meet the kamikaze threat, Little Joe had four small solid rocket engines for launching, and a main engine – essentially a modified JATO bottle -- for pursuit.  In the lower photo the missile is shown on a launching ramp.  

Notably, all of these armaments grew out of research conducted by Dr. Robert Goddard beginning in the 1920’s.  Despite his amazing record of achievement – in 1935 one of the professor’s more advanced missiles soared a mile and a half into the atmosphere – his work remained chronically underappreciated in the United States. Thus America missed its chance to build something similar to the V-2.  Ironically, Wernher von Braun and his associates in Germany recognized Goddard’s genius and avidly followed his efforts.  It is not by accident that the V-2’s intricate in-flight stability system had a design nearly identical to Goddard’s.  Given newfound respect and funding at the outset of hostilities, the Father of Modern Rocketry responded by helping to develop a host of useful items including propulsion systems for many of the rockets and missiles already mentioned, plus JATO (jet assisted take-off) bottles for aircraft use and a critical weapon for infantry use, the bazooka.

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