Weird Weapons of WWII - History Channel

[M.D. Holloway]

I watched some of it last night. Hear of the Ice ship from Mythbusters, also heard of the Grandslam earthquake bomb and the bats with small incendiary devices attached to them but what was a true mind blow was the first drone aircrafts that were flown with tons of explosives and remote controls and TV cameras on board. To add icing to this cake was the fact the Joe Kennedy was a pilot for one but died. I had not heard that. I knew he died flying but sans details. Wow.

The show made me went to look up other strange and novel ways to kill en mass...

[GG Allin]

The drone blew up in front of Joe Kennedy's plane I believe.

[M.D. Holloway]

They made it sound like he may have been the pilot (or co-pilot) that would have set the controls prior to parachuting out. I guess there was a short circuit and it set of a spark thus igniting the explosives prematurely.

[M.D. Holloway]

You could only volunteer for this sort of mission and if you did then it was counted as 5 missions and you got the DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross) if you came back...

[RPKESQ]

Look up the Bates Eight Barreled Bottle Thrower.

[MRM]

Yes, Kennedy was supposed to pilot the airplane, set the controls and jump out. But the plane detonated prematurely. They pretty quickly realized that was a bad idea and didn't try it any more.

A couple of JFK biographers find the Joe Kennedy flying bomb incident pretty intriguing and spend some time on it. Joe, of course, was the number one son in a very competitive family. JFK was the joker younger brother. Joe was the hotshot pilot that everyone looked up to. JFK was the weakling who had to go into the Navy because he wasn't physically fit enough to be a pilot. Joe was being groomed as a war hero read made for presidential politics. JFK was an afterthought.

But as the war wore on, JFK ended up the hero of PT 109 (at least in public perception) and Joe was stuck in England not doing anything that a thousand other pilots were doing at the same time. The manned bomb program was super secret and a lot of people were promoting the program as the next big super weapon and that anyone who got in on the ground floor would be a hero.

It really wasn't a good idea in any way, shape or form, so why an experienced pilot like Kennedy would volunteer is a good question. There is considerable suspicion that he volunteered in part to match JFK's PT 109 heroics. And the result of that decision changed world history.

JFK, who would never have entered politics but for his brother's death used his looks, charm and personal story to beat Richard Nixon by about a hundred thousand votes out of 34 million case. Joe Kennedy, who was born and bred to run for president but who was as stiff as a tailor's dummy, wasn't there to run in 1960. Had he survived, he almost certainly would have run in place of JFK. And if he did, he probably couldn't have touched Nixon.

What a different world we would live in if Joe Kennedy's manned bomb project worked out as planned.

[Super_Dave_D]

That offered a lot to the thread. As usual from the WWII master.

Look up the Bates Eight Barreled Bottle Thrower.

[M.D. Holloway]

Originally Posted by RPKESQ

Look up the Bates Eight Barreled Bottle Thrower.

Google Searched it...




and





sorry man, don't see it, little help?

[m21sniper]

Too bad JFK and RFK didn't go down in that plane too.