The U.S. Army Air Corps was impressed by the German V-1 missile in 1944, most not least because the weapon forced the Allies to devote significant resources to countering it. The Americans arrived at Wright Patterson field on July 12, 1944, with nearly a ton of parts for a V-1 missile, and their superiors demanded that 13 imitation bombs, known as the JB-2 (Jet Bomb II, also known as the Lightning Bugs), be produced immediately. Surprisingly, the engineers completed the task in just three weeks, and the U.S. military immediately drafted a report on mass production of the weapon. The U.S. Department of War was not very interested in the proposal, arguing that the weapon was inferior to mass bombing because of its low accuracy in hitting. But the War Department eventually approved the production of the weapon because it understood that its navigation system could be improved.
At the end of July 1944, the U.S. Army Air Corps ordered 1,000 JB-2 missile hulls from Republic and Willys, as well as an equal number of engines from Ford. Since the U.S. military did not grasp the details of German missile launchers, Northrop designed a new launch ramp with rocket trolleys for this weapon. The U.S. Army Air Corps planned to produce 1,000 JB-2 missiles per month and increase its monthly production to 5,000 in September 1944.
In 1944, the U.S. Army Air Force was debugging a replica of the V-1-JB-2 missile.
General Spaatz (commander of the U.S. Strategic Bomber Force in the European Theater) was not keen on deploying the JB-2 to Europe because he felt that the weapon would have a negative impact on the U.S. military's existing conventional weapons supply, and the accuracy of the weapon had not yet been improved enough to offset the trouble it caused. After the initial enthusiasm subsided, the U.S. military carefully assessed the limitations and high cost of such weapons and decided to shelve the production plan. At the end of January 1945, the U.S. Department of War terminated all production contracts for the JB-2 missile. By the time production of the JB-2 was completely halted in September 1945, 1,391 missiles had already been produced.
In October 1944, the U.S. military launched the first JB-2 Lightning Bug missile from Eglin Air Force Base. The U.S. Army Air Corps encountered the same problems as the Germans in their experiments, and by early December 1944, only 2 of all 10 tests had been successful. By June 1945, records showed that the launch success rate had improved, with 128 of the 164 test launches being successful.
In 1948, the U.S. military's JB-2 missiles were inspected for the final inspection before a launch experiment.
The U.S. Army Air Force tested a number of different launch methods, including a 120-meter ramp, a ramp with rocket trolleys, and a 15-meter-long trailer slide. The U.S. military also experimented with air-launched missiles, with a B-17G bomber firing two JB-2 Lightning Bugs in the air. The U.S. Army Air Corps also attempted to improve the navigation system, tracking information recorded by missile trajectories through radar, providing it to Radio Command for upgrading the inertial autopilot system. When the U.S. military launched all the remaining JB-2 missiles in the 1949 experiment, the U.S. Air Force abandoned the JB-2 because of its low accuracy and excessive limitations of the intermittent combustion jet engine, which was never used in actual combat.
The U.S. Army Air Corps conducted air-launched experiments with B-17G bombers, and one aircraft could carry two JB-2s.
However, the relevant technology used in this new weapon was not abandoned by the Americans, and the U.S. Navy asked the U.S. Army Air Force in 1945 to hand over 351 JB-2 missiles, and the Navy gave it the LTV-N-2 "Submarine Bird". In the Derby program, the Navy launched such missiles from shore-based launch ramps and surface ships. Many problems were still encountered in the experiment, with only 5 of the 84 tests conducted between January 1946 and December 1947 being successful. So the Americans shifted their focus to how to launch cruise missiles from submarines in 1946, and on February 12, 1947, they first launched a cruise missile from a submarine sailing on the surface.
In 1951, the LTV-N-2 Submarine Bird missile was launched from the USS Cusk, a U.S. Navy submarine.
The U.S. Navy wanted to develop a lighter launcher and developed a new launch ramp using an improved rocket booster, which was first tested on January 26, 1949, on the U.S. Navy's Norton Sound missile test ship. At the end of the experiment from January 1948 to March 1949, 37 of all 70 tests were successful. However, because the U.S. Navy had always been dissatisfied with the performance of the Submarine Bird, they began to develop the Regulus jet cruise missile (Regulus) in November 1947. Some believe that the U.S. Navy launched a number of Submarine Bird missiles in actual combat between 1950 and 53, but this claim lacks detailed information to support it. Interestingly, a Hollywood movie starring Glenn Ford, "The Flying Missile," is set against the backdrop of missile submarines from this period.
■ The LTV-N-2 Submarine Bird missile on display in the open air in a museum in Minnesota, USA today.