Joseph Kennedy Jr. and Project Aphrodite

poncho · Jun 10, 2005

Project Aphrodite
This involved taking war weary B-17F bombers and packing them with 20,000 lb (9070 kg) of Torpex or 10 tons of RDX explosive. A volunteer two man crew conducted the take-off and flew the plane to cruising altitude. After arming the plane, hopefully without setting off an explosion, the crew would bail out while a chase plane, another bomber, usually a B-34 (an-RAF Ventura,) would direct the bomb laden plane into the target via a radio control link. The idea worked better in practice than in actual combat as several of the planes exploded prematurely and the basic stability of the B-17 in flight frustrated efforts to nose the bomber down into the target. Seven of these missions were flown in the month of August under the code name Aphrodite. The first Aphrodite mission was flown against V-2 rocket sites in the Pas de Calais area of France on August 4, 1944.
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SOURCE The History Channel

I found this bit of history interesting. We had the technology to fly planes by remote control and use them as guided bombs in 1944, but we didn't have the technology to fly planes by remote control and use them as giuded bombs in 2001. I haven't heard to much about Joseph Kennedy Jr. either come to think of it.

rsr · Jun 10, 2005

"We had the technology to fly planes by remote control and use them as guided bombs in 1944, but we didn't have the technology to fly planes by remote control and use them as giuded bombs in 2001."

It didn't work so well in 1944, which is why Joe Jr. was killed.

We didn't need it in 2001 because of remotely-piloted drones, tomahawk missiles and precision-guided munitions.

You don't hear much about Joe Jr. because he died young. Joe Sr. had picked out Joe Jr., as the eldest, to be president someday. Joe Jr. was the fair-haired boy of the family and graduated from Harvard cum laude before attending Harvard Law, which he left early to become a pilot.

It was only after Joe's death that Jack inherited the family's political mantle. If Joe had lived through the war, history might have been much different.

poncho · Jun 11, 2005

I guess the technology still needed some tweaking in 1944. The bugs have been mostly removed in the remote control technology now, I doubt it took more than a fews years to do it though. I thought it odd that President Bush would say the technology didn't yet exist in 2001. Apparently he was mistaken.

I just saw this on the History Channel tonight and did a search on it. Thanks for filling me on Joe Jr.

Joseph Kennedy Jr. and Project Aphrodite

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Joseph Kennedy Jr. and Project Aphrodite

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