British Aerial Ordnance Exotica

[Admiral Beez]

British Aerial Ordnance Exotica - Weapons and Warfare

Toraplane

weaponsandwarfare.com

Given Britain's interwar experience with drone aircraft I have to wonder if they'd had more luck with radio controlled glide weapons rather than this attempt at predictable, unguided bearing and glide slope.

 

[EwenS]

There are two issues with your plan.
1. The weight and volume of early radio control equipment and therefore the size of the machinery required to contain / carry the torpedo itself (I'm not referring to the launch aircraft, although it would have an effect on that also)
2. The weapon is then not, in modern day terms, "fire & forget". A launch aircraft needs to hang around to direct it. And that exposes it to long range AA fire & enemy fighters.

Siemens in Germany developed a wire guided glide torpedo in WW1 for dropping from Zeppelins but it was never used.

Siemens torpedo glider - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

The USN developed a glide torpedo as far back as 1917/18.

The USAAF restarted development of a glide torpedo in WW2 eventually deploying one squadron in the 41st Bomb Group to Okinawa with the GT-1 in mid-1945 where they were used operationally on a number of occasions before the war ended.

GT-1 glide torpedo / USAAF / USN Library / Forums - Axis and Allies Paintworks

The GT-1 (Glide Torpedo 1) was an early form of missile developed by the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. Intended to deliver an aerial torpedo at a safe range from the launching aircraft, the weapon proved successful enough in t...

axis-and-allies-paintworks.com

While various success claims were made for them, most (all?) were not verified, which proved the biggest problem in their use. For example the carrier claim was not correct as no carriers were present at Kagoshima in July/Aug 1945.

When the Germans deployed the Hs293 glide bomb in 1943, one effect was to trigger the restarting of development of faster firing, high elevation, longer ranged, 6" AA guns and turrets by both the RN and the USN. That weapon, and the freefall guided Fritz X bomb fell victim to firstly jamming (within a few months) then better fighter cover to down the carrier aircraft. And of course the Hs294 never reached operational service.

 

[Shortround6]

If I may add to this

2. The weapon is then not, in modern day terms, "fire & forget". A launch aircraft needs to hang around to direct it. And that exposes it to long range AA fire & enemy fighters.

In WW II (and for a while after that) the hang around and direct it, part usually meant flying over the target or close to it. Which allows some medium range AA fire to get in a few shots. Trying to judge 'aim' while being off axis is rather difficult. If you are directly over the bomb/torpedo you have a much better chance of figuring out if it is going left or right of the target. Going long or short is harder. But trying to do that when flying a different course with a changing angle on both the target and "weapon" is pretty much luck.

It wasn't until they could put a TV camera in the nose of the weapon and screen in the cockpit that the dropping aircraft could really follow a different course.

Simple radio control was very simple indeed. A command to 'steer left' was quite simply that. The weapon (bomb/missile) turned left and adopted a new course/heading. It did NOT displace to the left and resume the original course on a parallel track. That required 2nd generation guidance.
1st generation required the operator to input a 2nd command to turn the weapon back onto the original course, amount of turn and distance covered between turns is up to the experience of the operator. 1st Generation anti-tank missile tracks often resembled a series of S bends (and over corrections) of diminishing size.
Please note that the 1950s AT missiles had an auto-pilot to hold elevation and the operator was looking through a scope/sight trying to line up the flare on the missile with the target. Operator was NOT moving.

Early radio control (at least in small units) was not proportional. They often had full left, full right and "neutral" which often meant the rudder was actually banging back and forth between the stops and since if spent the same amount of time on each side the weapon actually followed a somewhat straight line.
The DH Queen Bee used air power to power the control surfaces, with electrical components to operate the air valves.