One TV guided missile – the world’s first -- actually made it into the fray.  The TDR-1, or Torpedo Drone, grew out of an on-going Navy program headed by Capt. Delmer Fahrney which involved the use of drone aircraft as artillery targets.  Fahrney envisioned adding TV to a streamlined drone and using it to fly into enemy ships.  What emerged in late ‘42 was the first viable weapons system built entirely around the “tube” and one of the most visionary weapons of WWII.  Equipped with a camera developed by R.C.A.’s chief scientist Dr. Vladimir Zworykin, the TDR-1 could beam a forward-looking picture to a miniaturized receiver on a control airplane nearly 50 miles away.  

Due to its experimental nature, the development of the TDR-1 was severely hamstrung.  To save vital materials for more significant projects, the final version of the missile featured an airframe constructed almost entirely from wood. It was very slow, carrying twin non-military 230 h.p. engines, although with its big wings it proved nearly impossible to stall.  In many respects the TDR-1 resembled a small plane.  It actually could be flown like one, courtesy of a removable cockpit which allowed a pilot to ferry it from place to place. 

In August of 1943 a variant of the TDR-1 demonstrated carrier launchings from the “Great Lakes flattop” USS Sable.  But just when it looked like the Torpedo Drone might enter combat, Admiral Nimitz declared that he would not brook any such experimental weapon aboard his fleet carriers.

The missile did receive a reprieve of sorts.  In September of ‘44 orders arrived for the Torpedo Drone unit, known as STAG-1, to take up station in the Russell Islands and conduct a large scale test of the missiles.   They proceeded to undertake nearly 50 missions against Japanese installations using TBM-1c Avengers as control planes.  Their targets, all on islands “hopped over” by the Allied campaign, included anti-aircraft sites, bridges and a couple of grounded ships. About 50% of the attacks were judged to be successful. Tokyo Rose herself commented on the strikes, labeling the drones “American Kamikazes.”  The Japanese failed to realize the planes had no pilots!

Despite the success of the TDR-1, it was withdrawn from combat after less than two months.  The final assault on Japan loomed, and it was becoming increasingly clear that brute force, and not precision strikes, would be needed to crush the enemy.  Still, the Torpedo Drone provided valuable experience and is gaining recognition as America’s (if not the world’s) first legitimate guided cruise missile.  

A pair of related efforts which also employed Zworykin’s TV system were Project Aphrodite and Project Anvil.  Using procedures and radio controls developed jointly by the Army and Navy, obsolete or distressed B-17s and PB4Y-1 Liberators were converted into “Weary Willie” drones.  Equipped with TV cameras in the nose and loaded from cockpit to tail with up to 20,000 pounds of torpex explosives, the Willies would be flown into enemy targets by remote control. First however, on-board pilots would be needed to get them safely airborne.  When that was achieved, the air crew would switch control to a chase plane and bail out.  To make egress easy and to aid in the loading of explosives, engineers went so far as to cut the roof off of at least one B-17.  The open-cockpit bomber, a unique aircraft if there ever was one, was dubbed “Roadster” by its crew.  (The Luftwaffe also had a rather odd-looking drone aircraft bomb, the Mistel.  This contraption consisted of a piloted FW-190 which was mated to an unmanned, explosive-filled Ju-88.)

Aphrodite / Anvil were ambitious projects that suffered from the intra-service rivalry that existed between the Navy, developer of proven remote control and arming devices, and the Army, who held claim to most of the aircraft involved, and who were working on their own electronic systems.  The results proved disastrous.  During one early mission, intended to destroy a Nazi rocket site, the two man crew of a PB4Y drone was killed when their aircraft exploded in mid-air over England.  The culprit remains unknown, but was widely believed to be one of the black boxes the services squabbled over: the electronic arming switch. One of the dead crewmen was Joseph Kennedy, Jr., the son of the American Ambassador to England, and brother to John F. Kennedy. 

Despite the tragedy the flights continued, although later attacks met with little success.  In one spectacular raid, a drone missed the entrance to the U-boat pens at Helgoland by a mere fifty feet.  If it had hit, the future of drone aircraft might have been bright.  As it was Aphrodite was ignominiously cancelled.