Page 157 - How It Works - Book Of Amazing Answers To Curious Questions, Volume 05-15

History

How were drones

used in WWII? Drones that fi ght

While ‘aerial torpedoes’ represented the

How UAVs first took to the skies over 70 years ago destructive capability of drone technology
– the end result being Nazi Germany’s V-1
ow synonymous with distant pilots could serve as target practice – building up vital and V-2 rockets – the seeds of the concepts
soaring high above a battlefield they will skills for the coming conflict, which would see air for modern UAVs were also sewn behind the

Nnever see first hand, the roots of today’s superiority play a pivotal role. red banners of the Third Reich.

sleek and sophisticated unmanned aerial In 1933, a modifi ed floatplane called Fairey Dr Fritz Gosslau proposed Fernfeuer in
vehicles (UAVs) actually stretch back almost Queen was tested as the fi rst fl ightless drone 1939 – a vision for a remotely-piloted plane,
which could drop its payload and then
a century. aircraft. It crashed on two out of three trials, but return to base. Plans for Fernfeuer were

With World War I (1914-1918) providing a in 1934, Queen Bee, a modified Tiger Moth halted in 1941, but paved the way for
crucible for technological innovation, aircraft, followed with greater success. development of the V-1 fl ying bomb.
experiments began in unmanned fl ight. The Training gunners on these rudimentary In March 1944, the US Navy deployed the
result was an American ‘aerial torpedo’ called models wasn’t a very realistic simulation, but a TDN-1 assault drone in the fi ght against
the Kettering Bug. A forerunner to the modern solution was soon to come from the United States Japan. On 19 October 1944 it successfully
guided missile, it could carry an explosive in the form of British-born actor Reginald Denny, dropped bombs over targets in the Pacifi c.
warhead at up to 80 kilometres (50 miles) per and his Radioplane Company. After years of Unlike the planned Fernfeuer and current
hour. A timer could be set, shutting off the engine trying desperately to interest the US Navy in the UAVs though, TDN-1 had no way of
fl ying home.
and dropping the wings so that it could plummet Radioplane-1, Denny succeeded in 1939 and over
like a bomb, but military planners were wary of the course of the war some 15,374 models of

flying these inaccurate explosives over their Radioplane were built.
own lines. Fast, agile and durable, Radioplanes were
In the run up to World War II (1939-1945), fitted with responsive radio control and were

Britain’s Royal Navy experimented with fi tting better able to mimic the speed and agility of the
wooden biplanes with radio control so that they enemy’s fi ghters.
Beneath the hood of the fi rst UAVs
Empty cockpit
The cockpit of the Royal Navy’s
Fairey Queen housed a pump in the Artificial intelligence
rear which drove the pneumatic The Fairey Queen’s mass-produced
actuators. These were motors successor – the Queen Bee – could
powered by compressed air that land itself if it lost radio contact. A
moved the controls remotely. trailing wire antenna would sense
when the aircraft was near the ground
and automatically begin a landing. It

could even shoot off a signal flare to let
Steering trouble the pilot know where it was!
Without controls sophisticated
enough to guide them, the ailerons

– the flaps on the wing used to roll or
bank the plane – were locked in a
neutral position and the pilot had to Spread your wings
steer using only the rudder. The Fairey Queen’s wings had a
larger dihedral – the upward
angle of the wing in relation to
the ground – which made the
plane more stable. It crashed
four times out of fi ve, regardless.

Remote control Blast off!
Rather than a modern joystick, a Many warships carried catapults for
rotary dial like that on an old launching reconnaissance aircraft in
Before becoming Marilyn
Monroe, Norma Jeane telephone transmitted commands the era before radar. This was ideal
assembled Radioplanes by radio signal. Different numbers for the Fairey Queen, reducing the
© Mary Evans
in a factory in the 1940s represented up, down, left, right, amount of work the pilot had to do to
ignition and throttle. get his UAV airborne.

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