This new potential weapon was called "Aerial Target" (AT), a misnomer to fool the Germans into thinking it was a drone plane to test anti-aircraft capabilities.
All the 1917 "Aerial Target" aircraft from the various designers used the radio control system devised by Archibald Low at the RFC's Experimental Works in Feltham.
[9] The mechanism was later exhibited by the IWM as "The original model receiving set installed in the radio controlled monoplane used in the trial flight.
[13] Nevertheless, the Aerial Target was later acknowledged as a viable weapon, stating "aircraft carrying high explosive charges are capable of being controlled by wireless.
[18] However, as control by the Munitions Inventions Department over military research was introduced, a centre for the Royal Flying Corps radio guided weapons was established.
They provided ‘distractions’ for the Zeebrugge raid[20][21][22] and its Commanding Officer Archibald Low travelled to France and into neutral Spain during the war to debunk reports of ‘fantastic’ weapons.
His officers included his second in command Henry Jeffrey Poole, his radio engineer George William Mahoney Whitton, the talented inventor Ernest Windsor Bowen and the carburation specialist Louis Mantell.
[24] Low was commended for this work by a number of senior officers including Sir David Henderson (the wartime commander of the RFC) and Admiral Edward Stafford Fitzherbert (Director of Mines and Torpedoes).
wrote to Low in March 1918, saying "I know of no man who has more extensive and more profound scientific knowledge, combined with a greater gift on imaginative invention than yourself.
[27] On 26 January 1918 colonel Ernest Swinton provided his friend J. H. Morgan with an assessment of Clifton West as "...a clever man and very ingenious, but tends towards the type of inventions 'crank'.
He is also the most perfect mug in the world, as I have told him and is like a bit of toasted cheese to all the rats and crooks within a hundred miles: they smell him coming and get out their Bowie knives."
[28] Clifton's plagiarism case involved his Land Torpedo, a rolling cable drum device to snag and destroy barbed wire defences, similar to that patented under instruction from his superiors on behalf of the RFC by Archibald Low.
Thornycroft were contracted to design these new DCB’s (and the conversions of some of the existing CMBs) to carry this large and heavy explosive payload in the bow.
The Feltham Works were still under Low's command and this is where the redevelopment and production of equipment was carried out, clock-driven impulse senders for DCBs being ordered on 13 March 1918.
The port/starboard demand from the controller's sender units in the aircraft caused a gyroscope on the boat to change the direction of its axis by "precession" to the "new" required heading.
Section of the Royal Navy's Signals School, Portsmouth, was set up to develop aerial radio systems for the control of unmanned naval vessels from 'mother' aircraft.
Section had access to many vessels including a submarine HMS C4 and to the necessary support of aircraft, pilots and the trained radio control operators.
Considerable resources would have been required (and put at risk) to get DCBs within range to launch attacks and this had to be balanced against the chances of success.
Following a request from the Commander-In-Chief Grand Fleet on 22 July 1918 the report of the Dover Trials assessed the employment of these boats in the Bight or for fleet operations and this report of the 27 September 1918 began with the declaration that stated "Wireless controlling gear for steering a vessel from an aircraft, ship or shore station, is an accomplished fact, and can probably be fitted to any type of vessel.
However, the DCB Section accessed the work of others such as the Birmingham inventor George Joseph Dallison and the Russian Air Force officer Sergey Alekseevich Oulianine who was based in Paris at this time.
Commanders of the areas covering the targets assessed in the Plans Division report were advised of the capabilities of Distantly Controlled Boats including, on the 7 October 1918, Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe, C-in-C, Mediterranean.
[33] Before the Feltham Experimental Works were closed John Knowles Im Thurn who was at this time the assistant director of Electrical Torpedo and Mining[34] wrote to Archibald Low on 19 May 1919 stating "It is a matter of great regret to me that the Armistice and consequent demobilisation came too soon for your enlarged establishment to fill the important place we had assigned to it, as an experimental offshoot of the Signal School, Portsmouth.....Your extraordinary ability and originality as a designer, combined with your sound scientific training will be a great loss to us.." The Works closed on 13 October 1919.
"[14] The Questions Committee said on the subject of the DCBs that "it is difficult, if not impossible, for an enemy to interfere with the control by wireless jambing, since each boat works on a different wave length and the discovery of the wave length is a delicate operation" and "these weapons are already capable of being handled in numbers: two of them can be controlled by one aircraft, three of them have been manoeuvred close to one another simultaneously without mutual interference, and probably as many as eight can be handled in a group if the groups are not within about four miles of one another."
The committee concluded the DCB weapon "is in a different category from all others in that it is capable of control up to the moment of hitting, and this fact alone justifies close attention to development" into ultimate form as "into a shallow or surface-running torpedo of great size".
While they thought that "In its present state of development...that it is not a great menace to the Capital Ship", they said it merited "uninterrupted research both in the perfection of the weapon itself and in the preparation of counter measures".
Four veterans of the RFC (and its successor, the Royal Air Force) link the 1917 Aerial Target to these subsequent US drone developments.
[44] They were both veterans of the RFC, they both visited close relative living on the boundaries of Richmond Park in London and they were both flying and making films in Hollywood in the 1930s when Denny became interested in radio controlled aircraft.
On 29 June 1955 Low and Lord Brabazon presented a model of the AT and the various artefacts from the Feltham Unit to the Imperial War Museum for their planned exhibition.
Prior to 2019 no known source had published details of the Royal Flying Corps secret patents or demonstrated that they matched and described the items in this IWM collection.
[51] References to the post war influence of the Feltham Works success as it passed via Biggin Hill to the Royal Aircraft Establishment have now been researched.