A Henschel team, under Herbert Wagner,[1] developed it the following year by adding a Walter HWK 109-507 rocket engine underneath, providing 590 kgf (1,300 lbf; 5.8 kN)[2] thrust for ten seconds.

[2] The first flight attempts took place between May and September 1940, with unpowered drops from Heinkel He 111 aircraft; the first Walter rocket motor-powered tests had been conducted by the end of 1940.

As attacks were taking place at Anzio, the United Kingdom began to deploy its Type 650 transmitter which employed a different approach to interfering with the FuG 203/230 radio link, by jamming the Straßburg receiver's intermediate frequency section, which operated at 3 MHz.

This appears to have been quite successful, especially because the operator did not have to attempt to find which of the eighteen selected Kehl-Straßburg command frequencies were in use and then manually tune the jamming transmitter to one of them.

Following several intelligence coups, including a capture of an intact Hs 293 at Anzio and recovery of important components of the Kehl transmitter from a crashed Heinkel He 177 on Corsica, the Allies were able to develop far more effective countermeasures, in time for the invasion of Normandy and Operation Dragoon.

In contrast to the experience at Anzio, the jammers seemed to have had a major impact on operations after April 1944, with significant degradation observed in the probability that a Hs 293 missile could achieve a hit or damaging near miss.

The closest Allied weapon system in function and purpose to the Hs 293 series was the US Navy's Bat unpowered, autonomously radar-guided unit.

[2] On 25 August 1943, an Hs 293 was used in the first successful attack by a guided missile, striking the sloop HMS Bideford; the warhead did not detonate, and the damage was minimal.

On 27 August, the sinking of the British sloop HMS Egret by a squadron of 18 Dornier Do 217 carrying Hs 293s led to anti-U-boat patrols in the Bay of Biscay being temporarily suspended.