Flying bombs, aerial torpedoes, and Kettering bugs: America's first cruise missiles (Peter Cooper Hewitt, Elmer Sperry, Lawrence Sperry, Charles Kettering)

Prior to the First World War, inventors such as Peter Cooper Hewitt and Elmer Sperry were giving thought to how they could combine the recently invented aeroplane and automatic control devices based on the gyroscope, already in use by the Navy in underwater torpedoes, into a new, secret weapon. Their intent was to develop an unmanned, small aircraft that could either drop bombs then automatically execute a preprogrammed return to the launch point, or dive destructively onto the target. The horrors of trench warfare and the realities of a war of attrition on the front lines in Europe resulted in the hope that the “aerial torpedo” or “flying bomb” as it was variously called, would be a secret weapon that could turn the tide of battle. On Long Island, New York, Elmer and Lawrence Sperry working for the Navy, and in Dayton, Ohio, Charles Kettering doing similar work for the Army, believed that they could create such a weapon. Although their efforts were unsuccessful for both technological reasons as well as shifts in military strategy, Sperry and Kettering's work nevertheless served as a benchmark for later development.; Moreover, in the years following the Great War, both the Army and Navy continued low-level research and testing, although it was not marked by any more success than earlier efforts. Technological shortcomings and lack of focused interest following the war eventually led to project abandonment in the United States. German engineers, however, overcame remaining technological hurdles and fielded their own secret weapon, the V-1 “Buzz Bomb” during the Second World War. While most people think of the V-1 as the grandfather of today's cruise missile, this paper demonstrates that Navy and Army development of the “aerial torpedo” at the time of the First World War, actually preceded by over two decades Second World War German development. The author will examine the numerous technological innovations and challenges faced by inventors such as Sperry and Kettering, who sometimes made up for lack of engineering sophistication with large measures of Yankee ingenuity and determination.