The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Today they are called drones in the vernacular, and most people believe them to be a late twentieth century weapon. In fact the unmanned aerial vehicle designed to fly by itself to strike a target was first developed in World War I, and though it was not used in combat it demonstrated its ability to strike pre-selected targets accurately in several tests by its developers and the US Army. The weapon was built by the Dayton-Wright Aeronautical Company, designed by Charles F. Kettering, and used a guidance system developed by Elmer Sperry. Henry Ford produced the engines, guaranteeing the Army that they could be mass produced at a cost of $40, and Orville Wright worked on the project designing the wings.
The aircraft was called the Kettering Bug. Rather than a pilot it was designed to carry a bomb, which would detonate on impact. A revolution counter was installed that counted the engine rpms, which when a preset count was reached would initiate a fuel cut off switch, shutting down the motor. It also triggered a cam which retracted the bolt holding the wings to the fuselage, which simply dropped away and the Bug would plummet to the ground. A gyroscope based guidance system ensured the Bug remained on course until it reached its target, and the operators calculated wind speed as part of the proper revolutions computation.
The Bug was designed to be launched from a sled-like system using a dolley and pulley arrangement, which the Wright brothers had used in the development of the Wright Flyer. Once airborne, an altimeter steadied the aircraft at a preset altitude and the vehicle could reach speeds of up to fifty miles an hour while carrying a bomb of up to 180 pounds. The entire cost of the airplane was just over $400. Officially known as the Kettering Aerial Torpedo, the first version built used a pilot rather than carrying a bomb, and flew near Dayton, Ohio in October 1918
Many of the Army veterans of World War I were leery of the idea of unmanned bombs flying over their heads in any war of the future, unimpressed with the technology of the device. Bombing from aircraft manned by pilots was to them a much more reliable and for the ground troops safer means of delivering bombs to the enemy. Though more than forty Bugs were delivered to the Army before the war ended none were deployed, and the Army continued development following the war, with the entire program being kept highly classified. The Army finally canceled the program when depleted budgets led to cutbacks in spending in the 1920s.
The Bug remained classified until the 1940s, though no further work was done on its development, at least not officially. But the concept of the unmanned aerial vehicle remained, and is present today in remote controlled and preprogrammed drones and cruise missiles. They are of course far advanced from the papier-mache and cardboard technology of the Kettering Bug, but it nonetheless was the first attempt by a military to create a self-guided flying bomb. The next would be the V-1 flying bomb developed by the Germans during World War II.