Measures for Progress: A History of the National Bureau of Standards

400 WORLD WAR II RESEARCH (1941-45)
winged bomb which would automatically seek out its target and guide itself
to hit the target. NDRC was proved right, but its missile was still a year
away when in August 1943 German planes, out of range of antiaircraft lire,
began to sink Allied shipping in the Bay of Biscay by means of radio.con.
trolled bombs fitted with glider wings.95
The aerodynamic characteristics of the prototype weapon that was
designed and constructed under RCA contract in 1940—41 presented a num-
ber of stubborn difficulties. Early in 1942 NDRC asked the Bureau for help
by taking over the aerodynamic and servomechanism (control) development
of the weapon. Hugh L. Dryden, chief of the mechanics and sound divi-
sion of the Bureau and NDRC consultant, whose fundamental work on
"Aerodynamics of aircraft bombs" was still basic in that field, was put in
charge.96
Under the code name "Robin," several full-scale missiles of new de.
sign, intended to carry a standard 2,000-pound bomb, were constructed for
the Bureau at the Vidal Research Corporation. Tests began in April 1942.
The nose of the flying bomb vehicle contained a special RCA television trans-
mitter with pickup tube for viewing the course of the bomb in its flight. A
ground operator directed the bomb by manual remote radio control, watching
a television receiver in front of him. The test results were not encourag-
ing. Electrical interference and the noise and vibration of the glider serious-
ly affected the television equipment and the servomechanism repeatedly failed
under the varying conditions of flight.97
Among the observers of the flight tests were Navy Ordnance officers
concerned at the time with a radar homing missile under development by
the Naval Research Laboratory and the Radiation Laboratory at MIT.
While one group at the Bureau continued work on the television-guided
"Robin," another, convinced by the Navy of the possible superiority of radar
in the Bureau's glider system, began modifying "Robin" to incorporate
radar homing principles.
Two basic types of a radar missile were available. One envisioned
a glider bomb with a radar receiver tuned to an enemy transmitter that en-
abled the bomb to home in on the transmitter. The other type contained
both transmitter and receiver, in which the transmitter emitted short pulses
of high intensity, guiding the missile by the returning echoes from the enemy
object. As both types came under study in a new special projects section
set up in Dryden's division at the Bureau, the section expanded to more than
Baxter, p. 194.
The 210-page MS report of Feb. 28, 1927, is in NASA Library, File N—7569.
°' NBS War Research, p. 30.