Part One – the early years
Although some trace the ancestry of today’s drones back to the V-1 rockets (‘doodle bugs’) of the Second World War, or even to the use of hot air balloons laden with explosives in the middle of the 19th Century, the real origins of today’s drones lie in the development of the first recoverable and reusable radio-controlled aircraft in the 1930s. The Royal Navy, looking for aircraft to shoot at for gunnery practice, developed out of the De Havilland Tiger Moth a remote-controlled aircraft dubbed ‘the Queen Bee’. Over 400 of these were built and used for target practice by the Royal Navy in the 1930’s and 1940’s.[1] Similarly (and possibly from this aircraft although that is disputed) the US developed a radio-controlled drone for gunnery practice in the late-30s. Read more