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Battlecruiser_Siegfried

Did you know they had carrier launch-capable drones in WWII?

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Because I didn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Aircraft_Factory_TDN

 

4IhZ7ED.jpg

 

The crazy thing is, it even vaguely resembles the MQ-9 Reaper - especially in the nose.

Edited by Dreadnought_Hyuga
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Beta Testers
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Well if its drones then I will feel half bad when all my planes get shot down by BB. Since you know planes now a days are like tissue paper. Anything will shred it so.

So when all my 24 or so planes die in 5 seconds I wont have to worry for the people in it if they're all drones. #makeAAabitweakerplz

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Alpha Tester
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Is that like a fake person in the cockpit?

 

Nah the remote navigation equipment could be removed and a cockpit installed so a pilot could take it up for test flights, make sure everything was in working order. 

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Yes.  But, they proved pretty marginal.  There were also problems with the technology of the era.  Radio control had serious range limits and could be problematic under certain conditions causing loss of control.  Television was a relatively new technology and picture quality was poor.  The equipment was heavy and bulky and transmission of the pictures took considerable bandwidth.  Then there's the fact this plane can barely manage to get over 100 mph with a 2,000 lbs. torpedo loaded on it.

The later TDR was barely better.  Even the widely deployed DASH helicopter drone for ASW work in the 60's had issues related to its electronics.  This was a technology that was before its time.

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IJN did several radio controlled ship experiments

most of the major nations did radio controlled flight tests with the controls on another flight nearby

Ohka was originally intended to be radio controlled

Fritz-X was more successful

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The Soviets also experimented with teletanks in the same decade - but as above posters noted, control problems were the main issue.

 

It wasn't until the development of fly-by-wire systems and digital transmissions that true remote control technologies could come to fruition.

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IJN did several radio controlled ship experiments

most of the major nations did radio controlled flight tests with the controls on another flight nearby

Ohka was originally intended to be radio controlled

Fritz-X was more successful

 

The Japanese were hardly the only ones.  The USS Utah was a radio controlled target ship.  She was sunk at Pearl Harbor mistakenly taken to be a battleship...  Aviators are notoriously bad at ID'ing ships... :)

The USN used the BAT guided missile / glide bomb towards the end of the Pacific War in much the same capacity as the German Fritz X or Hs 293.  It used either semi-active radar homing or television command guidance for homing.

Edited by Murotsu

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The Japanese were hardly the only ones.  The USS Utah was a radio controlled target ship.  She was sunk at Pearl Harbor mistakenly taken to be a battleship...  Aviators are notoriously bad at ID'ing ships... :)

The USN used the BAT guided missile / glide bomb towards the end of the Pacific War in much the same capacity as the German Fritz X or Hs 293.  It used either semi-active radar homing or television command guidance for homing.

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