Sword of Shiva - Страница 22

Senior political officials and upper echelon military leaders were stunned by the motion picture films of the test attack. Few people who watched the films had any doubt that they were witnessing a major shift in the nature of warfare.

Admiral King, who had recently been promoted by President Roosevelt to Chief of Naval Operations, ordered Commodore Smith to proceed with the production of 5,000 assault drones. King also directed Commodore Smith to create eighteen drone squadrons, to serve under the command of a new Special Air Task Force.

Although Project Option had support at the highest level, the program was not by any means universally popular. Ironically, the fiercest opposition came from Rear Admiral John H. Towers, who had replaced Admiral King as head of the Bureau of Aeronautics. Admiral Towers insisted that it was unwise to commit valuable resources to an unproven weapon system. (His opposition seems doubly ironic in view of the struggle that Towers himself had endured in the 1920s and 30s, while attempting to gather support for naval aviation over the objections of leaders who openly doubted the effectiveness of aircraft carriers and airplanes in a world dominated by cruisers and battleships.)

While Fahrney clearly believed in the assault drone concept, he recognized the need to give the program’s detractors as little justification for criticism as possible. He decided that the full-production model torpedo drones should be manufactured using the smallest feasible quantities of war-critical resources. As a result, the first generation of torpedo drones, designated TDN-1, were constructed almost entirely of wood.

With a high wing and small twin engines, the TDN-1 could carry a torpedo or 2,000 pound bomb under its fuselage, at an average airspeed of 175 MPH. The drone was light, inexpensive, and it required a bare minimum of critical materials. Unfortunately, the TDN design was not well-suited for mass production. Only about 114 units were built, nearly all of which were used for evaluation, or expended as unmanned flying targets. None of the TDN-1 drones saw actual combat.

Official enthusiasm for the assault drone concept was beginning to decline, in part due to continuing derision from Admiral Towers and other vocal critics of the program. Commodore Smith and Commander Fahrney were undiscouraged. The Project Option team immediately moved forward with production of the TDR-1 series, a second generation of assault drones that were more suited to rapid manufacturing.

In May of 1944, after intense lobbying on the part of Commodore Smith and Commander Fahrney, Special Task Air Group One (STAG-1) deployed to the South Pacific for combat against the Japanese.

The TDR-1 drones of STAG-1 were controlled by specially-modified Grumman Avenger torpedo bombers, outfitted with radio control systems and television reception antennas. The drone flight controls included a joystick for use by the Avenger pilot, and a telephone dial connected by radio to the TDR-1’s autopilot system to manage flight patterns and the arming and dropping of torpedoes or bombs. The control system was only equipped with four radio channels, limiting each Avenger aircrew to controlling a maximum of four drones at a time.

The first live TDR-1 attack occurred on July 30, 1944, against an abandoned Japanese freighter that had run aground near the island of Guadalcanal. Six TDR-1s were committed to the mission: four designated for the attack, and two standing by as backups. All six drones were armed with 2,000 pound bombs.

It was not to be an auspicious beginning. Two of the drones cracked up during takeoff. Two others hit the target, but their bombs turned out to be duds. The remaining two drones conducted successful attacks, and their bombs destroyed the target ship.

The film footage of the exploding Japanese freighter was impressive, but the popularity of the assault drone concept had fallen so low that Commodore Smith had to lobby intensely to prevent immediate cancellation of the program.

Approximately eight weeks later, STAG-1 embarked on an intensive series of drone strikes against Japanese installations on the island of Bougainville. The attacks began on September 27th and ended on October 26th. A total of 46 TDR-1s were expended, 37 of which penetrated Japanese antiaircraft coverage and successfully reached their assigned target areas. At least 21 of these struck their intended targets.

The Japanese were stunned by the fury of the drone strikes, believing that the American Navy had taken up aerial suicide attacks — a tactic that Imperial Japan had embraced only weeks earlier.

While the results of the Bougainville attacks were encouraging, they were not dramatic enough to prevent the cancellation of the assault drone program. The officers and men of Project Option were understandably disappointed, but by late 1944, it was clear that the war in the Pacific was going to be won without the help of STAG-1’s strange flying bombs. The TDR-1, which had once seemed like a crucial technological breakthrough, was no longer regarded as a significant factor in the outcome of the war.

The next generation of drones, the TDR-3, was already under development when the program was cancelled. A number of photographs of the TDR-3 still exist, but it’s no longer clear if this was a functional prototype, or merely a mockup of the airframe. Either way, the Navy’s quest for an unmanned aerial assault drone, was effectively dead.

* * *

Running roughly parallel to the Navy efforts, the U.S. Army Air Force was engaged in its own attempts to develop an unmanned flying bomb. The A-1 program centered around a radio-controlled monoplane that could carry a 500 pound warhead to targets over 400 miles away. A handful of A-1s were built before the effort was terminated in 1943.

Under a program codenamed Project Aphrodite, the USAAF worked jointly with the Navy in developing a series of aerial torpedo designs with the cryptic designation of ‘BQ’. One of the most ambitious examples was the BQ-7 concept, in which aging B-17 Fortress bombers were modified for radio control, and packed with 20,000 pounds of explosives for use as unmanned assault drones.

Each BQ-7 was manned by a human pilot and copilot during takeoff. The roof of the cockpit was cut away, allowing the crew to bail out and parachute to earth after the plane was airborne. In theory, the BQ-7 would then continue to its target under radio control.

About 25 BQ-7s were built. Most were earmarked for use against hardened military installations in Germany, under a plan known as Project Perilous. Regrettably, the codename turned out to be accurate.

There were a number of attempts to use the BQ-7 in combat, none of which were notably successful, and several of which were nearly disastrous. In one reported case, a BQ-7 lost radio lock and circled repeatedly over an English city before the terrified controllers were able to reestablish a radio link and divert the malfunctioning bomber to a safe area. In another case, a BQ-7 failed to respond to radio control signals and crashed in the English countryside, leaving a massive crater to mark the site of the explosion. Project Perilous was abandoned before more serious mishaps could occur.

A follow-on effort, codenamed Project Anvil, utilized converted B-24 bombers in a new (and supposedly improved) BQ-8 configuration. But the BQ-8s were not destined to fare any better than the BQ-7 series had done.

The first Anvil mission took place on August 12, 1944. The modified bomber exploded in flight, while the two crewmen were still aboard. The pilot and copilot, Navy Lieutenants Wilford J. Willy and Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., were both killed instantly.

It’s of historical note that Lieutenant Kennedy was the eldest son of prominent businessman and political figure Joseph Kennedy Sr. At the time of his death, Joseph Junior was being groomed for the American presidency. His younger brother, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, would later go on to become the 35th President of the United States.

The second Anvil mission was launched on September 3, 1944. This time, the BQ-8 missed its assigned target due to spotty television reception, but managed to inflict some damage on an unrelated German facility.

The BQ series was subsequently cancelled, due to lackluster — and sometimes dangerous — performance.

Like the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Army Air Force was out of the flying bomb business, at least in the short term. Nearly three decades had passed since the first efforts of Elmer Sperry and Charles Kettering, and the United States military had still not managed to produce an operationally reliable unmanned aerial weapon.

Unfortunately for the inhabitants of England, the Germans had finally cracked the problem wide open.

The citizens of London were about to find out the hard way just how deadly such weapons can be.

CHAPTER 23

WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM

WASHINGTON, DC

THURSDAY; 27 NOVEMBER

10:34 AM EST

President Dalton Wainright ignored the blue-jacketed briefing folder on the table, and nodded toward the image on the wall-sized Situation Room display screen. “Okay, gentlemen, what am I looking at here?”

The Sit Room Duty Officer was a Navy Captain with a hawk nose and gray at his temples. “Sorry to interrupt your Thanksgiving morning, Mr. President,” he said. “This is an architectural diagram of the Three Gorges Dam, on the Yangtze River, in the People’s Republic of China.”