4. The Fritz X, a guided anti-ship glide bomb developed by the Nazis, was the first precision guided weapon to be deployed in combat
The “Fritz X” (a nickname given by both the Allies and Germans, with the official designation the Ruhrstahl SD 1400 X) was an anti-ship bomb designed to pierce armor and deliver a high-explosive charge. Recognizing the difficulty of hitting moving enemy ships during the Spanish Civil War, the Luftwaffe began experimentation in 1938 with radio-controlled spoilers attached to free-falling bombs; guided by this radio link, the minimum launch height of the Fritz X was 13,000 feet and a range of 3.1 miles, with the requirement for maintaining direct sight exposing the control aircraft to enemy attack.
Entering active service on July 21, 1943, in a bombing raid on Augusta harbor in Sicily, the bomb’s initial usage was so inaccurate the Allies did not realize they were being targeted by guided weapons. Despite this initial setback, on September 9 a pair of Fritz X bombs were responsible for sinking the Italian battleship Roma to prevent it falling into enemy hands after the Italian armistice with the Allies, killing 1,393 men including Admiral Carlo Bergamini; similar successes occurred against the USS Savannah on September 11 during the invasion of Salerno, killing 197 and forcing it to return to the United States for eight months to repair, and against the Royal Navy’s HMS Uganda on September 13, killing 16 men and disabling the ship.
However, by early-1944 the Allies had developed electronic countermeasures capable of rendering the radio-controlled bombs ineffective, an ability soundly demonstrated during the Battle of Anzio on January 22 wherein the British-designed Type 650 transmitter blocked the Nazi receiving frequency; by the time of the Normandy Landings in June 1944, the preponderance of Allied ships had such systems installed and the guided bombs fell out of usage by the remnants of the Luftwaffe.