Historical quiz

[GregLocock]

Was this proposal made by:

1 A German in Novermber 1939
2 A Russian in June 1940
3 An American in June 1938
4 An Englishman in 1933
5 An American in May 1916
6 A Frenchman in January 1915
7 A Frenchman in April 1907

A proposal was made to design a pilotless aircraft, made out of non-strategic materials and powered by a pulse-jet engine that would carry a 1,000 pound explosive warhead to attack an enemy capital. The pilotless aircraft in question was made of metal, had short, straight wings and the pulse jet was mounted above the rear fuselage. It would be set on its correct course by radio signals from an accompanying aircraft.



Cheers

Greg Locock


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[IRstuff]

I looked it up, but it was I expected.

I think you gave too many clues.

TTFN
faq731-376

 

[SomptingGuy]

Well it sounds like the V1, but that wasn't remote controlled. Maybe it was proposed to be initially?

- Steve

 

[btrueblood]

Would have to look it up too, if the stupid new netnanny here at work would let me.

FWIW, I did look up some information on self-sealing fuel tanks this morning, after waking up wondering how they worked. The Goodyear patent from WW2 described in wikipedia, (US 2401627) is quite interesting, claiming that the self-sealing ability of a (poured and dried) latex film is much better than a calendared unvulcanized rubber sheet (the prior technology), because the rate of dissolution (in fuels) of the poured-and-dried latex film is much lower than the sheet produced by friction/heating/rolling of the dried (crumb) rubber. This meant that US fighters (well, at least the ones using the new bladders) likely wouldn't need repairs to their shot-up fuel bladders as often, vs. German fighters, and so the planes could probably kept in the fight more often. Funny how little things like that might mean a lot towards winning wars.

 

[berkshire]

"""A proposal was made to design a pilotless aircraft, made out of non-strategic materials and powered by a pulse-jet engine that would carry a 1,000 pound explosive warhead to attack an enemy capital. The pilotless aircraft in question was made of metal, had short, straight wings and the pulse jet was mounted above the rear fuselage. It would be set on its correct course by radio signals from an accompanying aircraft."""

This sounds like the V1 except the V1 had wooden wings and used a magnetic compass to guide it, no radio signals.
The Junkers Ju EF126 "Elli" was piloted.
The experimental Russian 212 cruise missile in 1937 was rocket powered.
I guess I will have to give up on this.
B.E.

The good engineer does not need to memorize every formula; he just needs to know where he can find them when he needs them. Old professor

 

[SAITAETGrad]

All of the above is very likely.

 

[GregLocock]

An early pulse jet was patented in 1907 by a Frenchman, Lorin. Working pulse jets were demonstrated around that time. He proposed the above device in 1915.

The pulse jet itself is no huge deal, but in my opinion the radios of the time would have been the tricky bit (however the RFC tested a radio controlled plane in 1917). Also, given that description, I find it hard to believe that the mother ship would keep up!

Interestingly the Russians were working on a V1 equivalent at the same time as the Germans, and it looked remarkably similar.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[thruthefence]

here's a guy ahead of his time in missile guidance:

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/22567

Well, maybe not...............

 

[KENAT]

It's amazing how early some of the radio wave applications were thought of.

The idea of radar came up very early - decades before Watson What applied it.

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[berkshire]

Through the fence,
It sounds like anothe of those pigeon brained ideas that came up between the wars.
B.E.

The good engineer does not need to memorize every formula; he just needs to know where he can find them when he needs them. Old professor

 

[jmw]

Knowing the military they'd use homing pigeons.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[ornerynorsk]

"organic homing device". Ha! No doubt it was in the plans for General Mills to provide the feed to those ill-fated avians.

I can see it now, bird doesn't particularly fancy his last meal and directs the malevolent payload back to its keepers, much like the recent story of the chimp learning to ambush unwary zoo-goers with a hidden stash of stones.

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.