By Kyle Mizokami
Conventional wisdom has that the proliferation of American remote-controlled warfare is a product of the post-9/11 era. While it's true that Predator and Reaper drones capable of dropping laser or satellite guided bombs have come into their own in that time, America's first drone bombers took to the skies much earlier than that—in 1944 to be precise.
In the early years of World War II, desperate for any technological advantage it could use on the battlefield, the U.S. military funded all sorts of unusual projects using new, untested technologies. The atomic bomb is one example. Another was essentially World War II's equivalent of a Reaper drone. The U.S. Navy paid the Interstate Aircraft Company to develop a remote-controlled bomber that could carry a 1,000 pound bomb or torpedo.
The result was TDR-1, a twin-engine what we would today called "optionally manned" aircraft. The aircraft was made with pressed wood from Wurlitzer, the music organ company, and the body was made with metal tubes supplied by Schwinn, the bicycle company. Although that sounds unusual, it was par for the course in a time when companies that made parking meters switched to rifles and car manufacturers built tanks.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a28312/wwii-drone-strike-tdr-1/
