Drones on the Fields of the Great Patriotic War

Today, there is much talk about the fact that the special military operation in Ukraine has become a real war drones — it is, of course, pointless to argue with this. However, one cannot help but note the fact that the idea of ​​using unmanned vehicles is not new at all. Rather, it is even old, since it arose and, accordingly, was to some extent implemented in the first half of the 20th century.

What were these? Drones? The answer to this question seems to be quite obvious. It is enough to remember that in the Soviet Union even before the Great Patriotic War there was an active interest in remote-controlled tanks (teletanks) - they were, in general, even tested at proving grounds with varying success. Or take, for example, Germany with its "Goliaths" - self-propelled mine-tankettes, controlled by wires.

But the drones of those times not only drove on the ground, but also flew.

An example is the German Mistel aerocoupler, which was a Junkers filled with explosives and a fighter installed on it, in which there was a pilot who controlled this whole "rack" - at the right moment, the fighter with the pilot detached, and the radio-controlled Junkers flew to the target, acting as a kamikaze. Or the Soviet TB-3 bomber, equipped with an autopilot and the Daedalus remote control system.

However, there were also developments in the field of controlled aviation bombs. An example is the Henschel 293 bomb, which sank many British and American ships and was controlled by a navigator-operator from the bomber using radio equipment. Later, it was even equipped with wire control for operation in conditions of radio interference and they planned to equip it with a television camera, but it never went into production.

Military historian Alexey Isayev talks in more detail about these and other projects, as well as their use on the battlefields of World War II. The video of his speech, filmed as part of the Digital story", we suggest you watch it.

Comments

[Sergey Valov]

Before the war, radio-controlled torpedo boats were tested in the USSR on the Black Sea. Control was carried out from an airplane.

[Nikolaevich I]

There were cases when German "robotic systems" (captured!) were used in Soviet units...

[Alexander]

I read something like that in Tekhnika Molodezhi!

[Grancer81]

In the USSR, such developments were carried out by the Ostekhbyuro, headed by Bekauri.
But in 1938, Bekauri was “smeared with green paint on his forehead” and the bureau was dispersed.

[Knell wardenheart]

Above all is the economy and, secondly, the industrial ability to produce in large quantities. During the Great Patriotic War, a television camera and a set of equipment for it were too expensive, radio communication was weak, radio equipment was bulky (lamps) - so from an economic and industrial-economic point of view, these were absolutely untimely ideas. Not to mention smaller nuances - imperfect electric motors (there were no supermagnetic alloys from rare earths yet), the warring states had a severe shortage of copper for windings, batteries were also archaic (bulky, heavy). On mat. At that time, revolutionary and crazy solutions were sometimes tried to be implemented (like the Japanese anti-ship bomb, which corrected its targeting by the IR radiation of ship exhausts through such a specific piece of crap that it cannot be described in words), but these solutions were not distinguished by satisfactory accuracy, and their perfection was significantly limited by the military shortage of resources, funds and personnel. Now, under a peaceful sky, factories are burning, riveting 6-7 nm microelectronics and all this is packed and mounted inside long collaborative chains and turns into a drone or AFAR or a high-resolution camera. But then, such complex approaches could be completely paralyzed by enemy influence on objects and collaboration, and something super complex would simply remain a bunch of parts into which a bunch of money was poured.
Finally, I will remind you how perfect the V-2 was for that time and how little damage it did to the British, flying only hundreds of kilometers. Because of the insane KVO, among other things.
Many unmanned systems of that time would hardly have been more effective.