Operation Aphrodite: Remote Controlled Bomber Mission Goes Horribly Wrong

First proposed by Major General Jimmy Doolittle in the later years of World War Two, the Americans drummed up a somewhat daring plan to repurpose B-17 heavy bombers that had been taken out of operational service due to wear and tear, turning them into remote-controlled flying bombs against hardened German defenses.

Codenamed Operation Aphrodite, the idea was to pack old Flying Fortresses known as “weary willies” with high explosives, arranging for a skeleton crew to fly the plane to predetermined targets before handing flight control over to remote pilots flying behind them.

With the crew safely parachuting from the plane, the remote-control pilot would then crash the converted bomber into a strategic target of interest, causing a massive, leveling explosion without the potential sacrifice of Allied airmen in the process.

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Killed in Action

Of the fifteen missions flown during Operation Aphrodite, a plane flown by Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. on August 12th, 1944 went horribly wrong. The son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, not to mention brothers Jack, Robert and Edward, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. of the Eighth Air Force piloted his Fortress on a course bound for the U-boat pens at Heligoland, Germany.

With 21,170 pounds of Torpex high explosive onboard, just as Kennedy and co-pilot Wilford John Willy were about to bail out of the plane, two back-to-back explosions scattered human remains and plane parts over a five-mile stretch of English countryside.

Eight more missions would be flown through January First of 1945, but the missions were deemed largely unsuccessful because their targets were either overrun by Allied ground advances or taken out by conventional fighter attacks or strategic bombing missions.