Part 1: When Model Airplanes First Went to War
THE ARMY called them OQs. The Navy called them TDDs (Target Drone, Denny). By either name they proved to be highly effective antiaircraft training tools. The WW II antiaircraft gunnery crews loved them. Until then, the men had pretty much been limited to towed target sleeves for practicing their aim. These sleeves had several drawbacks. They flew only in a straight line. They didn't look like airplanes. And you couldn't be sure you'd hit one until someone reported the color of the paint around the bullet holes in the sleeve.
Part 2: When Model Airplanes First Went to War
PART ONE of this two-part article traced the design and development in the 1930s and 1940s of radio-controlled target drones used by World War II antiaircraft gunnery crews. In what follows I'll describe some of my own wartime experiences with these forerunners of modern RPVs. I was a member of the U.S. Navy's TDD Unit 37 in 1944-1945. We first flew TDD-2s and subsequently TDD-3s. Initial training for Units 36, 37, and 38 took place in 1944 at the local airport outside Durant, Oklahoma. Before being shipped overseas, Units 37 and 38 received further training at the Naval Lighter-Than-Air Base in Santa Ana, California.
