US BQ-7: The World's First Kamikaze Drone

Reference News Network reported on October 19 The U.S. magazine "National Interest" published an article titled "The World's Earliest Military Drone, Older Than You Think," on October 11, authored by Harrison Kass. The full translation is as follows:

Long before modern one-way attack drones like Iran's "Shahed"-136 or the U.S. low-cost unmanned combat aerial systems appeared, the U.S. military had attempted to turn entire bombers into flying explosives, effectively borrowing the Japanese "Kamikaze" concept, but without the need for pilots to perish with their aircraft.

Starting in 1944, the U.S. Army Air Forces initiated "Operation Aphrodite," planning to convert damaged or obsolete B-17 "Flying Fortress" bombers into radio-controlled giant flying bombs. Like the Japanese "Kamikaze" aircraft, these planes would be filled with explosives and directly crash into heavily fortified German targets.

Although this plan was technically ambitious, the radio control technology at the time was unreliable, and the entire project was ultimately deemed a failure. However, looking back 80 years later, it seems to have foreshadowed a significant trend in modern warfare.

By World War II, the idea of controlling an aircraft's speed and direction via radio waves was no longer novel. In the late 1930s, brothers Walter and William Good had even built a radio-controlled model airplane and successfully flown it. However, creating a small plane that could fly overhead is one thing; converting a full-sized aircraft into a remote-controlled plane and sending it on a mission is another. The reason is that the latter would have a much greater flight distance, and once the operator issued commands, the aircraft's responses could not be instantly relayed back to the ground, meaning the aircraft's status could not be monitored in real-time.

However, by 1944, the Allies began facing heavily fortified German military installations and found that conventional bombing was largely ineffective against some of Germany's most protected fortifications. U.S. military planners urgently needed a weapon that could deliver massive amounts of explosives directly into the target's interior, and the B-17 provided a suitable modification base. Thousands of these bombers had already been produced, and some of the older airframes were severely worn or no longer suitable for conventional combat missions. Planners proposed that instead of scrapping these aircraft, they should be converted into giant guided bombs to strike Germany.

The modified B-17 was designated as BQ-7. During the modification, all machine guns, armor, and most of the original internal equipment were removed from the aircraft. After extensive weight reduction, space was freed up to install approximately 20,000 pounds (about 9 tons) of explosives. To control the BQ-7 over long distances, technicians connected the radio control equipment to the flight control system, throttle, and autopilot. Additionally, the aircraft was equipped with television cameras to transmit images to a nearby control aircraft; there were two cameras, one aimed at the cockpit instruments to allow the operator to see the flight instrument readings, and the other facing forward to provide a view ahead. Meanwhile, another aircraft, usually a B-17 control plane, was responsible for guiding the BQ-7 to its target.

The problem lay in the radio control technology, which was not reliable enough at the time to allow the aircraft to complete the entire flight independently. Therefore, the BQ-7 required two crew members on board during takeoff and initial climb. The crew's task was to start the engines, take off, climb the aircraft to the designated altitude and heading, then activate the remote control system, connect the explosive fuse to put the explosives in a ready state, and finally transfer control to the accompanying control aircraft. After all this was completed, the crew members would parachute out, and the BQ-7 would continue flying toward Germany under remote control. The danger of this approach is self-evident, as during the first half of the flight, the two crew members were essentially sitting in a giant flying bomb.

In August 1944, "Operation Aphrodite" began executing combat missions, with aircraft taking off from bases in England to targets within Germany. These missions exposed the limitations of the technology, and almost without exception ended in failure: some BQ-7s lost radio contact, some crashed due to malfunctions, some were shot down by enemy anti-aircraft fire, and others veered off course.

From August 1944 to January 1945, the aircraft of "Operation Aphrodite" flew a total of 15 missions, none of which were successful. Even more lamentable is that the original hope for these remote-controlled bombs was to reduce casualties among Allied aircrew, yet the plan itself proved to be exceptionally deadly, with approximately six crew members losing their lives in parachute failures or aircraft control incidents.

In January 1945, the U.S. Army Air Forces halted the program. To be fair, the ambition and ingenuity of "Operation Aphrodite" are commendable, but it was constrained by the technological conditions of the time and ultimately ended in failure. However, what it produced can be considered the world's first one-way attack drone, leaving a model for future aviation pioneers to emulate. (Translation by Liu Yuehua)