Sword of Shiva - Страница 14

By the time he was back on friendly soil, the People’s Republic of China would have implemented their information-control strategy. Based on past history, it seemed likely that the Chinese government would try to cover up the incident completely, deny that this bloodbath had ever taken place. If they did admit that the shootings had occurred, they would probably try to minimize the size of the protest, and the number of casualties. They might claim that all reports of injuries and deaths were fabricated by untrustworthy dissidents. They might even try to blame everything on the protestors, falsely accusing them of acts of violence against police or military forces.

Whether they resorted to outright denial or spin control, it was a near certainty that the Chinese government would do everything within its power to hide the ugly truth of what had happened here today. The video recording on Bill’s phone was absolute proof. It would shatter their denials and evasions. If they found out about it, he had little doubt that they would go to extreme lengths to silence him.

His plans to distance himself from politics didn’t seem to be working out too well at the moment, but perhaps that was part of the greater plan of the universe. Perhaps — at this point in his existence — his purpose was not to set himself apart from the affairs of man. Possibly, it was his destiny to become the agent of truth.

He would mediate and pray on the matter. That would usually bring him clarity of thought and unity of purpose.

But even if prayer and meditation didn’t yield the answers, he had a strong feeling that the universe was about to let him know what it had in mind.

CHAPTER 13

FINAL TRAJECTORY:

A DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY OF THE CRUISE MISSILE

(Excerpted from working notes presented to the National Institute for Strategic Analysis. Reprinted by permission of the author, David M. Hardy, PhD.)

In 1915, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels established a small panel of inventors to help the United States military prepare for possible involvement in the Great War in Europe — what we now refer to as World War I. Daniels observed that the technologies of combat in the early 1900s were evolving at an unprecedented rate, and he was concerned that the U.S. military was not properly armed or trained for mechanized warfare.

The resulting organization, the Naval Consulting Board, was comprised of 24 inventors whose charter was to provide ‘machinery and facilities for utilizing the natural inventive genius of Americans to meet the new conditions of warfare.’ Floundering under this lofty but somewhat vague mission statement, the board had no legal status, no funding, and no staff for the first year of its existence. In August of 1916, Congress appropriated an operating budget of $25,000, and the Naval Consulting Board was finally in business.

Despite the high hopes of Josephus Daniels, the board accomplished very little of note beyond approving camouflage paint schemes for civilian ships. One of the more significant exceptions was the development of the so-called aerial torpedo.

The brainchild of Elmer Sperry, one of the pioneers of practical gyroscope applications, the aerial torpedo was intended as an unmanned flying bomb, capable of attacking distant targets without human guidance or intervention. Sperry was fascinated by the remarkable potential of such a weapon, and he hoped that such awesome destructive power might actually deter countries from starting wars.

It should be noted that Sperry’s attitude toward destructive deterrence, as naive as it may appear in hindsight, was relatively common among arms developers of the early twentieth-century. Sperry and his contemporaries believed that — if the frightfulness of warfare could be escalated far enough — human beings would have no choice but to abandon war. Sadly, two World Wars, countless smaller wars, and a global nuclear arms race have disproved that theory.

Elmer Sperry may have been wrong in predicting the end of armed conflict, but his vision for an autonomous flying weapon captured the attention of the Naval Consulting Board. In 1917, the board awarded the Sperry Gyroscope Company a $200,000 contract to develop an aerial torpedo.

Sperry began by developing a gyroscopic autopilot system, and installing it on a Curtiss N-9 biplane. He wanted to start by demonstrating that an aircraft could regulate itself in flight, without a human at the controls. The N-9 carried a pilot to handle take-off and landing procedures, but the intent was to eventually transition to fully automatic flying. In the meantime, the pilot was also tasked to observe the plane in flight, and report on its performance under control of the autopilot.

After a number of successful test flights, Sperry supervised the construction of a purpose-built aerial torpedo airframe, powered by a two-cylinder engine. The actual manufacturing and assembly of the torpedo airframe prototype was carried out by the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company.

The torpedo prototype was modified to carry a pilot, on the assumption that human observation and assistance would be helpful in identifying and ironing out bugs during the early developmental tests. Sperry’s son, Lawrence, became the test pilot. Although the exact number of test flights is no longer certain, it’s commonly accepted that the Sperry Aerial Torpedo crashed at least four times with Lawrence Sperry at the controls. Available technical data suggests that these incidents were caused by mechanical problems in the prototype, rather than error on the part of the pilot.

In spite of these challenges, Elmer Sperry eventually felt that his torpedo design was sufficiently mature to operate without human assistance. The first unmanned flight of the Sperry Aerial Torpedo took place on March 6, 1918, in what is now regarded as the first successful launch of a guided missile.

Operating completely under automatic control, the torpedo climbed from its launch position to a pre-designated altitude, and continued in smooth, stable flight until the autopilot’s distance control ended the test at a preset range of 1,000 yards.

The maiden test of the Sperry Aerial Torpedo was a success. Unfortunately, it was not to be repeated.

Future flights did not go well, as the unmanned aircraft failed to achieve stable flight, deviated from its intended flight path, or simply fell out of the air. Ultimately, Sperry engineers discarded the purpose-built torpedo airframe, and returned to the Curtiss N-9 test bed to re-examine their entire approach to the design.

* * *

While Sperry and Curtiss were struggling with numerous technical challenges, the United States Army Aircraft Board decided to undertake its own aerial torpedo project. The Army asked inventor-engineer Charles Kettering to design an unmanned flying bomb, capable of striking a target at a range of 40 miles or more.

Kettering, who had observed tests of Sperry’s aircraft autopilot in 1917, agreed to take on the challenge of developing an aerial torpedo. While he recognized the potential of Sperry’s earlier engineering in unmanned flight control, Kettering wanted a cheaper and less complicated design.

Working in consultation with Orville Wright and the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company, Kettering developed a lightweight airframe with dihedral biplane wings and a tapered cylindrical fuselage constructed of wood laminates and papier-mâché. Powered by an air-cooled 40 horsepower De Palma engine, the unmanned craft was 12.5 feet long, weighed 530 pounds, and was designed to carry a 180 pound explosive warhead.

Its official title was the Kettering Aerial Torpedo, but people began referring to it as the Kettering Bug almost from the start, possibly in reference to its dragonfly-like silhouette.

Kettering designated independent engineering teams to handle various parts of the developmental research. One of these teams designed an inexpensive portable launch system, consisting of a four-wheeled cradle which rode on two parallel rails.

Although he had set out to develop an autopilot that was cheaper and simpler than the version used in Sperry’s earlier N-9 tests, Kettering was not able to produce a workable model of his own. Ultimately, he asked Elmer Sperry for assistance. Although they were technically competitors, Sperry agreed to help with the autopilot problem.

At last, with the preliminary engineering problems resolved, the Kettering Bug was ready for testing in September of 1918. After several preliminary ground trials, the first full test flight was conducted on 2 October.

The flight began with a smooth takeoff, but it did not go well after that. Instead of turning onto its assigned heading and leveling off, the Bug climbed too steeply until it stalled and then crashed.

The Kettering Aerial Torpedo was not off to an auspicious start, but a number of subsequent tests were more successful. The Army was encouraged enough to order 100 prototypes, but only about 45 were produced before the Armistice was signed and World War I over.

Seeing no further immediate need for the technology, and frankly not entirely impressed with the results up to that point, the Federal Government decided to combine the Army and Navy aerial torpedo programs. Competitive test events were more favorable for the Sperry design, and the Kettering Bug was abandoned.

The U.S. military conducted limited experiments over the next two years, before cancelling the project entirely in 1920.