B-17 Flying Bombs – WW2 Attack Drones
B-17 Flying Bombs – WW2 Attack Drones
Operation Aphrodite, the 1944 US operation to use radio-controlled B-17 bombers packed with explosives to destroy huge German bunkers.
Dr. Mark Felton is a well-known British historian, the author of 22 non-fiction books, including bestsellers ‘Zero Night’ and ‘Castle of the Eagles’, both currently being developed into movies in Hollywood. In addition to writing, Mark also appears regularly in television documentaries around the world, including on The History Channel, Netflix, National Geographic, Quest, American Heroes Channel and RMC Decouverte. His books have formed the background to several TV and radio documentaries. More information about Mark can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Felton
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Folks think our technology today is so advanced, it’s all just "Variations on a Theme" of World War 2.
im polish living in Norwich you are always welcome!!
I think I know something about WWII, but very often Mark tells me something I had never heard of.
Who would want to be a Kennedy?!!
Radio Jamming could have ended this threat in WWII and Radio Jamming efforts in Cold War kept both sides out of much efforts on drones. In Iraq after ISIS stopped Iraq Army with armed drones US sent radio jammers which ended the use of drones.
Radio Jamming in Cold War was to actually stop radio communication which is way less sensitive than drone communication needs thus drones not a unstoppable wave of modern warfare also drones easy to shoot down from the air in slow moving planes.
Great they could even try this WWII if they had started working on it a few years earlier might have worked
Great
Who knew? Thanks for another unveiling of forgotten history . . . .
I knew about Joe Kennedy Jr being killed in WWII and he was on(or flying a plane) and it was some type of special project but didn’t know it was THIS specifically, and thanks to Mark Felton, now I know, which isn’t something I’m just saying for the first time! lol Great stuff, just the absolute best when it comes to WWII history on here, seriously, my all time fave! Keep it up!😉👍👍
I am your biggest fan. It amazes me every time, where do you keep finding these amazing footages. Mark, keep on doing this. Love it! Kind regards from Holland.
I wonder if their success rate could have been changed if they flew the bombs closer to the deck, not giving the german guns a chance to target them? Probably wouldn’t be able to pilot it well remotely that close to the ground though.
Premature detonation? They got pills for that nowadays.
Me: Haha! I already know about this topic Mr Felton!
Mark Felton : Well yes but actually no 😉
Too rushed. A need it to work now without test of concept without explosive before even considering risking pilots with explosive armed planes.
The might have went with less explosive protecting it with some armor. But very clear to me they needed manned planes to engage the anti aircraft fire to get the drones in.
There were remotely driven suicide bomb planes in ww2? Thats real?
Kamikaze pilot: Hold my sake
Amazing film wonderful quality and I love the subject world war II these are things we must never forget I am curious though …would you be capable of covering the American revolution and how Mel Gibson single-handedly destroyed the entire English army
Bunglers! Always putting to work what is unfit for the needed success.
American private in 1944: "Why don’t we just let the British bomb the bunkers?"
His supervisor: "You have an attitude problem!"
The English translation of "Vergeltungswaffen I" is "doodlebug"
Good video but you missed a most interesting side-story. The Aphrodite arming mechanism had an inherent fault. A junior technical officer discovered this and his persistence earned him some disciplinary rebuke. Post-war he had hoped to meet John Kennedy to discuss his brother’s death but but JFK’s assassination also killed the meeting. There’s a YT video that contains this interesting historical footnote.
Why didn’t the Americans reassign a handful of B-29 Superfortress to handle the oversized bombs? If they could handle the atomic bomb surely to God they can handle the tallboy…
Or would that be just too simple?
8:55 32 Lancaster bombers dropped 29 Tall Boy bombs on the Tirpitz. , scoring 2 direct hits and several near misses, which still had destructive effects. I have not seen any mention in historic accounts of any Grand Slams being deployed in this raid.
Thanks
The German had more success with the Mistel composite. But not by much. I read of an account of one pilot in an FW190 who escorted a Mistel on one of the few successful attacks that he got too close and the blast wave and it cracked his perspex canopy and ripped off his radio antenna.
I had never heard this before… excellent
I wonder what the hell we were taught in school
They should have just left the heavy lifting to the Brtts.
where do you get all your background footage and is it in the public domain?
Remote bombers in WW2? Wow, I didn‘t know that either. Mainstream documentaries always repeat the same old stories everybody knows about (Dday, Barbarossa, Hitler killing himself in his bunker etc.). Thank you so much for your work!
WW2 is always throwing up mysteries , here is one to add to the list. How did the RAF who could only area bomb according to some Americans , Drop Grand Slam and Tallboys with such accuracy without a Norden Bombsight .
The History Channel’s Dogfights series recreated one of these missions in an episode but, the History Channel documentary made it seem like it was the only attempt at a remote controlled attack drone, using TV cameras and remote controls. It was the attempt to wipe out the long range German canon imbedded in a bunker. The B-17 exploded while in route to the target, as Mark described. They later found out that the cannon was already abandoned before the allied invasion. Mark clarifies that this was a program with many attempts at remote controlled attack drones, using large bombers that were slated to be retired anyway but, all of these attempts failed.
Hello dear, your videos are special, you could put subtitles or translate them into Spanish, I think you would have more people like me appreciating your videos,
God bless you
Martin
Good upload.
A.I. Kamikaze missions
What happened to older variants normally ? Were they just scrapped or did they get used for other purposes?
Dr felton, you should cover the story of the fritz X.
Aphrodite …
A Kennedy and a godess of love, somehow it figures.
Well done video Dr. Felton……as always
American ingenuity at best.
Probably would have just been easier to use Lancasters and Earthquake bombs, TBH, Lancasters in USAAF olive drab would be interesting sights, to say the least.
I’ve been talking about remote controlled bombers and tanks for YEARS now and no one believed me… if they won’t watch this and realise what was going on then they are choosing to be dense.
As said many times nothing bad ever happened to the Kennedy’s
War weary B-17 & B-24’s for the usaaf, PB4Y for the navy
How did the pilot flying the drone close the hatch once he bailed out, or did it not have a door?
Wunderwaffen seems like a crazy marvel comics universe
Absolutely fantastic, thank you Mark.
"Couldn’t lift them". B-17 is shown lifting 30,000lbs. US had no reason to modify for those two bombs. although it gave a good excuse for R&D into RC.
"In 1944, the United-States had a problem." Well, that’s an understatement!
American and Germans: we can’t seem to figure out how to make a bomb air plane that works and doesn’t kill the pilot
Japan: neither can we 😅
I read once about two drones that I thought were an RAF project-maybe it was part of the USAAF trials. Apparently the idea was abandoned following a scare when the drone lost all radio contact and started circling an Engish industrial city.