Historic
The first attempt to build a flying bomb (alternatively called an "aerial torpedo" in the Navy) was undertaken by Elmer Sperry for the US Navy in 1916, called the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane, and was based on a Curtiss N-9 seaplane. This led to a mission-specific Curtiss design, the Curtiss-Sperry Flying Bomb, which was almost completely unsuccessful. The US Army also tried to develop a flying bomb in World War I, the Kettering Bug, but the war ended before the program could mature. The functioning but unsuccessful German Mistel flying bomb was essentially an enormous shaped charge mounted on an obsolete aircraft that was guided by a fighter sitting on top. The fighter first took a course towards the target, then released the Mistel which would continue to its target. The most famous example of a flying bomb is the German V-1, many of which targeted London in 1944 during World War II.
Read more about this topic: Flying Bomb
Famous quotes containing the word historic:
“It is, all in all, a historic error to believe that the master makes the school; the students make it!”
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)
“Never is a historic deed already completed when it is done but always only when it is handed down to posterity. What we call “history” by no means represents the sum total of all significant deeds.... World history ... only comprises that tiny lighted sector which chanced to be placed in the spotlight by poetic or scholarly depictions.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces—in nature, in society, in man himself.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)