The Secret Drone Program That Killed JFK’s Brother

Of all prominent American families, few are more popularly associated with tragedy than the Kennedys. Most infamous of these misfortunes are, of course, the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and that of his brother, Robert, in 1968. Also well-remembered is the death of John F. Kennedy Jr, his wife, and his sister-in-law in a plane crash in 1999. More obscure are the death of Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy in a 1948 plane crash; and the 1941 lobotomization of Rosemary Kennedy, which left her permanently incapacitated and institutionalized for the rest of her life. But nearly forgotten today is the 1944 death of Joseph P. Kennedy Jr, the eldest Kennedy brother and the family’s original hope for reaching the White House. A pilot in the U.S. Navy, Joe Kennedy was killed while taking part in a top-secret wartime project to destroy heavily-fortified targets using giant, radio-controlled drones packed with explosives. This is the story of Operation Aphrodite.

As we previously covered in our videos Tesla, Hollywood, and Inventing the Drone, Creating the Smart Bomb, and Well This Probably Won’t Explode, the Second World War saw great advances in the development of unmanned aerial vehicles and guided munitions – what today we would call drones and smart bombs. On the Allied side, the California-based Radioplane Company manufactured thousands of inexpensive target drones used to train anti-aircraft gunners; while on the Axis side, German engineers produced numerous radio-controlled air-launched bombs like the Fritz X, which in September 1943 became the first guided munition to sink a ship in combat. The Allies also produced a number of radio-guided gravity bombs like the Azon, which was used in limited numbers in Europe and Burma to take out bridges. But the largest and most ambitious Allied drone project was launched in 1944 in response to an unprecedented technological threat.

In August 1943, Allied reconnaissance aircraft began spotting a number of strange new structures being built across occupied France, the purpose of which was at first a mystery. These structures fell into three basic types. The first was a low bunker from which projected a long, shallow ramp supported on concrete pillars. Four of these installations were being built by the Germans at Siracourt, Desvres, Tamerville, and Couville. The second type was a giant concrete dome 71 metres in diameter being built into the side of a disused chalk quarry at Wizernes. A similarly-sized rectangular bunker was also under construction nearby at Éperlecques. The third and final installation was a complex of deep underground tunnels and angled shafts being built at Mimoyecques in the Pas-de-Calais, the closest point in France to the United Kingdom.

These strange installations, as the Allies would soon learn, were the launch sites for a new generation of high-tech weapons systems, which the Germans called vergelstungswaffe – or “vengeance weapons.”

The ramp sites were built to launch the Fieseler Fi-103 – better known as the V-1 or “buzz bomb” – an early cruise missile powered by a crude pulse-jet engine. The bunker was used to store and assemble the missiles while the ramp contained a steam-powered catapult used to accelerate the weapons towards their targets – in this case the Greater London area. Once launched, the V-1 would cruise across the English Channel at an altitude of 1000 metres until a wind-driven propeller in its nose reached a certain number of revolutions. The missile’s elevators would then spring downwards, sending the weapon and its 1-ton explosive warhead diving towards the ground.

The giant dome at Wizernes was designed to launch the more sophisticated A-4 or V-2, the world’s first operational ballistic missile. The V2 was fuelled by ethanol and liquid oxygen, the latter of which boiled off and had to be continuously manufactured. The Wizernes bunker thus incorporated a liquid oxygen plant and an underground workshop where missiles could be prepared and fuelled before being transported via narrow-gauge railway to open-air pads for launch. In this manner dozens of missiles could be launched against London every day. Unlike the V-1, whose distinctive high-pitched buzzing sound could be heard for miles around and which could be shot down by antiaircraft guns or sufficiently powerful fighter aircraft, the V-2 gave no warning of its approach and was essentially unstoppable, streaking down onto its target from the edge of space at twice the speed of sound.

Finally, the underground fortress at Mimoyecques was built to house the V-3 or “millipede”, a giant long-range cannon with a barrel 100 metres long. Staggered along the barrel were angled chambers loaded with propellant, which would ignite sequentially as the shell passed by. This would gradually accelerate the shell to a muzzle velocity of 1,500 metres per second, allowing it cross the English Channel and strike London. With a total of 25 gun barrels capable of firing 10 shots a minute, the Mimoyecques battery was designed to bombard its target with up to 600 shells every hour.

These massive installations were initially opposed by high-ranking German officers, who saw them as too vulnerable to aerial attack. Instead, they argued for mobile launch facilities which could be easily packed up and moved to a different location before Allied air forces could respond. However, they were overruled by Adolf Hitler, who had a megalomaniacal obsession with monumental structures. Eventually, a compromise was struck, with Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe or air force, approving the construction of four fixed and 96 mobile launch sites for the V-1 flying bomb. Due to their distinctive J-shaped hangars, which resembled a ski from the air, these installations became known to the Allies as “ski sites.”

The V-1 campaign finally began on June 13, 1944, exactly one week after the Allied landings in Normandy. This was soon followed by the first V-2 launches in September. Within a few months, nearly 100 missiles were raining down on London every day. While the British quickly developed effective aerial defences against the V-1, the supersonic V-2 was impossible to intercept and shoot down; the only way to counter it was to destroy production facilities and launch sites. Indeed, such an undertaking, codenamed Operation Crossbow, had already been underway since before the V-weapons campaign had even begun. On the night of August 17, 1943, RAF Bomber Command launched Operation Hydra, a 600-aircraft raid against the Luftwaffe research centre at Peenemünde in northern Germany where the V-1 and V-2 had been developed. While the raid was largely successful, destroying considerable infrastructure and killing many scientists and engineers, it only disrupted V-weapons development for two months. The RAF, along with the American Eighth Air Force, thus turned their attention to destroying the launching sites in Northern France, the first raids being launched in December 1943. However, the heavily-fortified fixed sites proved all but impervious to conventional bombs. Something much more powerful would be needed to break through. Enter Operation Aphrodite.

It is not known who first proposed the idea for Aphrodite, but the project was officially approved on June 26, 1944 by Major General Jimmy Doolittle, then-commander-in-chief of the Eighth Air Force. The plan called for obsolete or war-weary Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bombers to be converted into giant remote-controlled drones by fitting them with radio control gear. The airframes would then be packed with high explosives, flown to the combat area by a radio operator in a trailing “mother ship”, and crashed into their targets. Development of the Aphrodite drones, officially designated BQ-7 and BQ-8 but commonly nicknamed “robots”, “babies”, or “Weary Willy”, was assigned to the 562nd Bomb Squadron based at RAF Honington in Suffolk, England. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy launched a parallel program called Operation Anvil using converted PB4Y-1s – the Navalized version of the B-24 Liberator.

At RAF Honington, the surplussed B-17s and B-24s were stripped of all turrets, guns, seats, armour, and other superfluous equipment, removing nearly 5,400 kilograms of weight. This allowed the aircraft to be loaded with 4,000 kilograms of high explosives – twice its usual combat load. The preferred explosive was Torpex, a mixture of TNT, RDX, and aluminium powder 50% more powerful by weight than plain TNT.

The stripped-down aircraft were next sent to the USAAF servicing station in Burtonwood in Cheshire for conversion to radio control. As no purpose-built radio-control gear was available, the aircraft were fitted with the control system from the Azon radio-controlled bomb. Short for AZimuth ONly, the equipment only allowed control along one axis of motion, so two sets were needed for each aircraft. To maintain the secrecy of the program, the control equipment was wrapped in explosive primacord linked to the main detonator to ensure its destruction.

To allow attacks to be carried out at long standoff distances, the drones were fitted with two television cameras: one in the nose to provide a forward view, and one aimed at the instrument panel. This was among the first uses of television technology in actual combat. As missions would be carried out at extremely low altitudes, a high-precision radio altimeter was also fitted, while a smoke canister mounted under the fuselage could be ignited to give the operators a better view of the drone. Said operators controlled the drone from a pair of modified B-17 or B-24 ‘motherships’ known as CQ-4s. Meanwhile, the Navy’s Operation Anvil used one B-17 and two Lockheed PV-1 Venturas as motherships. In addition to the drones and motherships, missions typically flew with an escort of fighters, one or two camera planes to record the mission, and a de Havilland Mosquito light bomber to fly ahead and scout the weather over the target.

It was originally intended for the drones to be remotely piloted throughout their missions, but testing revealed that the Azon equipment was not sophisticated enough for taxiing and takeoff. The drones thus needed to be piloted into the air by a two-man crew, who would then bail out once the onboard explosives were armed and the aircraft switched over to radio control. To make it easier for the crew to bail out, the escape hatches were removed and enlarged, and in some cases the entire cockpit roof removed. This also made it easier to load crates of explosives into the aircraft. Ground crews jokingly referred to these roofless aircraft as “roadsters.”

The initial Aphrodite force comprised ten drones and four motherships. Initially, it was decided to send the 562nd Bomb Squadron to RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk, which had a long runway ideal for the heavily-loaded drones. However, Woodbridge was a major alternate airfield for damaged aircraft returning from bombing raids, and the fear that one of these aircraft diverted to Woodbridge might accidentally collide with an explosives-laden drone resulted in the squadron being sent to RAF Fersfield in Norfolk instead.

The first Aphrodite mission was launched on August 4, 1944 against the Mimoyecques V-3 cannon site, the Siracourt V-1 bunker, and the V-2 bunkers at Wizernes and Eperlecques. It was a complete failure. The crew of the first drone managed to bail out successfully, but the drone soon spun out of control and crashed into the ground before ever reaching the English Channel. The second drone kept entering an uncontrolled climb when it was switched over to radio control, forcing the pilot to re-take control. On the third attempt to hand over control to the radio operator, the aircraft pitched up sharply, stalled, and spiralled to the ground. The autopilot engineer managed to bail out, but the pilot was trapped onboard and died on impact. Similarly, the third drone lost control soon after the first crewman bailed out. The aircraft spiralled to the ground and the explosives detonated on impact, blasting a giant crater, destroying 8,000 square metres of countryside near Orford, Suffolk, and vaporizing the second crewman. Only the fourth drone made it across the English Channel and reached the target area. However, during final approach clouds obscured the operator’s view and the drone missed the target by nearly 500 metres.

On August 6, the 562nd tried again, launching a 4-drone attack against the V-2 bunker at Watten. The results were much the same as before, though mercifully all four drone crews managed to bail out safely. The first two drones immediately crashed into the sea, the third suffered flak damage and crashed near Gravelines, France, while the fourth lost control and began to circle uncontrolled over the English city of Ipswich. For many long, tense minutes, the motherhship crews heard their breath until, finally, the wayward drone crashed harmlessly in the English Channel.

On August 13, a raid was launched against the naval base at Le Havre. Both drones missed their targets, while one of the Mosquitoes photographing the raid flew too close to the explosion and was seriously damaged. The pilot managed to bail out and was captured by the Germans, but his observer was killed. Two more missions against Le Havre were flown on August 19 and 26, but these were also unsuccessful.

These failures revealed serious flaws with the Aphrodite system, so the operation was temporarily halted until all the kinks could be worked out. Meanwhile, the Navy was getting ready to launch its Operation Anvil missions from RAF Fersfield. The first mission, against the Mimoyecques V-3 cannon site, was to be crewed by autopilot engineer Lieutenant Wilford J. Willy and pilot Joseph P. Kennedy Jr, son of the U.S. Ambassador to Britain and scion of the powerful Kennedy political dynasty. After volunteering for the U.S. Navy and completing his flight training in 1942, Kennedy flew Martin Mariner flying boats from Puerto Rico before transferring to the PB4Y-1 Liberator and joining Squadron VB110 in Dunkeswell, Devon. After safely completing his regular combat tour of 25 missions, Kennedy, ever the patriot, volunteered to fly 10 more – somehow convincing his entire crew to stay with him. Then, just prior to what would have been his 40th and final mission, Kennedy learned of a top-secret assignment involving low-level flying and parachuting and immediately signed up.

Lieutenant Willy, meanwhile, had joined the Navy in 1933 as an able seaman and worked his way up through the ranks, eventually qualifying as a PB4Y-1 pilot and becoming an expert in radio control systems. Indeed, it was Willy who had designed much of the control equipment for the BQ-8 drone. Having spent the entire war working on various top-secret Navy projects, Willy was desperate to see action, and decided to pull rank in order to replace Joe Kennedy’s original engineer, Ensign James Simpson, on the first Operation Anvil mission.

At 6 PM on August 12, 1944, Kennedy and Willy took off from RAF Fersfield and headed east towards Halesworth to join up with the rest of the formation, comprising two Lockheed Ventura motherships, an escort of four North American P-51 Mustang fighters, two Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighters, a Boeing B-17 camera plane, and two de Havilland Mosquito weather scouts from the 325th Photographic Reconnaissance Wing. In a strange coincidence, one of the Mosquitoes was piloted by one Colonel Elliott Roosevelt, son of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and member of another venerable American political dynasty. After forming up and departing Halesworth, Kennedy switched the drone over to radio control. The operators aboard the motherships then completed a number of test turns, whereupon Kennedy radioed the codewords “Spade Flush” to indicate that he and Willy were about to bail out. Willy then switched on the drone’s television cameras.

Then, at 6:20 PM, as the formation was flying over Blythborough, Suffolk, the BQ-8 drone suddenly exploded into a giant fireball. Nine-year-old Mick Muttitt of nearby Darsham, witnessed the entire incident, later recalling:

“All of a sudden, there was a tremendous explosion and the Liberator aircraft was blown apart, with pieces falling in all directions over New Delight Wood, at Blythburgh…I vividly remember seeing burning wreckage falling earthward while engines with propellers still turning, and leaving comet-like trails of smoke, continued along the direction of flight before plummeting down. A Ventura broke high to starboard and a Lightning spun away to port, eventually to regain control at tree-top height over Blythburgh Hospital.

While I watched spellbound, a terrific explosion reached Dresser’s Cottage in the form of a loud double thunderclap. Then all was quiet except for the drone of the circling Venturas’ engines, as they remained for a few more minutes in the vicinity. The fireball changed to an enormous black pall of smoke resembling a huge octopus, the tentacles below indicating the earthward paths of burning fragments.”

The blast felled hundreds of trees and scattered debris over an area of 50 square kilometres, damaging nearly 150 properties, injuring 50 people, and striking Colonel Roosevelt’s aircraft. Thankfully, no civilians were hurt and Roosevelt managed to land safely. However, no trace of either Kennedy or Willy’s bodies was ever found.

The loss of Joe Kennedy came as a bitter blow to his family, who had grand plans for him after the war. Indeed, it was hoped that he would become the first Irish Catholic in the White House – a feat that would only be achieved sixteen years later by his younger brother John. More tragic still, strategically Kennedy’s sacrifice had been for nothing. On July 6, Tallboy “earthquake” bombs dropped from RAF Lancaster bombers had severely damaged the Mimoyeques bunker – and for more on this extraordinary weapon, please check out our previous video That Time Disney Helped Give the World a Weapon of Mass Destruction. This, combined with the rapidly-advancing Allied ground forces, prompted the Germans to abandon the site by July 30. However, news of the abandonment had not reached the U.S. Navy. Nonetheless, Kennedy and Willy were both posthumously awarded the Navy Cross, Distinguished Flying Cross, and Air Medal, the citation for Kennedy’s Navy Cross reading:

“For extraordinary heroism and courage in aerial flight as pilot of a United States Liberator bomber on August 12, 1944. Well knowing the extreme dangers involved and totally unconcerned for his own safety, Kennedy unhesitatingly volunteered to conduct an exceptionally hazardous and special operational mission. Intrepid and daring in his tactics and with unwavering confidence in the vital importance of his task, he willingly risked his life in the supreme measure of service and, by his great personal valor and fortitude in carrying out a perilous undertaking, sustained and enhanced the finest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”

Due to most of the aircraft being vaporized, the cause of the explosion that killed Kennedy and Willy remains a mystery to this day. The leading theory is that a lack of adequate shielding on the television camera transmission cables resulted in stray electromagnetic fields accidentally closing an electrical relay in the detonator circuit, setting off the explosive payload. Indeed, this potential design flaw had been pointed out many times by Navy ground crews, but their warnings had fallen on deaf ears.

Despite this tragedy, on September 3, 1944 a second Anvil mission was launched – this time against the Nordsee U-boat pens on Heligoland Island in the North Sea. While this time the crew bailed out safely, once over the target the radio operator lost sight of the drone and attempted to carry out the attack using television images alone. Unfortunately, he became disoriented and instead flew the drone into a navy barracks on nearby Düne Island. This incident convinced the Navy that the entire concept was untenable, and Operation Anvil was soon cancelled.

Meanwhile, the Air Force continued to press forward with Operation Aphrodite. Once it was realized that the original ‘double Azon’ control system used by the Aphrodite drones was simply not up to the task, it was replaced by a more sophisticated control system codenamed Castor, which required just one receiver, transmitter, and operator. The drones were also fitted with a modified version of the Eureka/Rebecca radio navigation system commonly used to drop men and supplies to European resistance group. This allowed the drones to automatically home in on their motherships, preventing them from accidentally wandering out of radio command range. Finally, the attack profile was changed. Previously, the drones had flown at an altitude of 600 metres, making the very vulnerable to German anti-aircraft fire. Consequently, a radio-controlled throttle was added to allow the drone to be flown at 3,000 metres before dropping down for the attack run.

Aphrodite missions resumed in mid-September 1944. By this time, the U.S. Army Air Force had concluded that the drones were of marginal utility against hardened targets like V-weapons bunkers. Indeed, more conventional British Tallboy and Grand Slam bombs had proven far more effective, for the “earthquake” effect they were designed to inflict meant that even a near-miss could be extraordinarily destructive. Furthermore, by September 1944 Allied ground forces had overrun all the fixed V-weapon sites in France. All subsequent launches would be carried out by mobile units. Thus, the USAAF ordered that all further Aphrodite missions be directed against industrial targets inside Germany.

The first Castor-equipped Aphrodite mission was launched on September 11, 1944 against the Heligoland U-boat pens. Tragedy struck almost immediately when the drone pilot bailed out and his parachute failed to open. He was killed instantly. The drone, meanwhile, made it all the way to Heligoland, but was struck by flak and crashed 100 metres short of the target.

Two days later another mission launched against an oil refinery in Hemmingstedt. Three drones malfunctioned and crashed into the English Channel, while the fourth crashed short of the target due to the operator becoming disoriented. However, the enormous blast inflicted enough damage and casualties for the mission to be declared a minor success.

Two more missions were flown against Heligoland on October 15 and 30, but due to poor visibility, enemy flak, radio control issues, and other difficulties, neither achieved any success. Indeed, one operator grew so frustrated with his malfunctioning drone that he pointed it in the general direction of Berlin and let it go. Amazingly, it actually ended up coming down near its target, inflicting extensive damage and casualties. Meanwhile, another drone crash landed without exploding and was only lightly damaged, giving German intelligence an opportunity to inspect the radio control system.

The final two Aphrodite missions took place on December 5, 1944 and January 20, 1945, targeting the Herford marshalling yard and the Oldenburg power station, respectively. Cloud cover over Herford forced the crew to divert to Haldorf, but as so many times before, poor visibility through the television cameras caused the drones to fall short of their targets. Meanwhile, the two drones bound for Oldenburg were shot down by flak before they ever reached the target. Unimpressed by these failures, on January 27 General Carl Spaatz, Commander-in-Chief of the United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe, sent General Doolittle an urgent message:

“Aphrodite babies must not be launched against the enemy until further orders.”

Those “further orders” never came. Though American and British planners debated launching further drone strikes against Germany’s industrial heartland in the Ruhr Valley, the imminent end of the war led to these plans being abandoned, and Operation Aphrodite was officially cancelled on April 27, 1945.

In the end, both Operation Aphrodite and Anvil proved dismal failures. Of the 25 converted bombers launched over 14 missions between August 1944 and January 1945, only one came anywhere close to striking its target. While outwardly simple in concept, the technology of the day was simply not up to the task. After the war, plans were made to convert more advanced B-17G models into similar explosive drones called MB-17Gs, but by this time technology had advanced sufficiently that the concept had become obsolete, and no MB-17Gs were ever built. Yet despite their failures, Aphrodite and Anvil were nonetheless important first steps in the development of guided munitions, weapons which have become the cornerstone of modern warfare. As they say: you have to start somewhere…

Expand for References