Uncle Jack in World War I: The Kettering Bug

While researching Uncle Jack at Carlstrom Field in central Florida in 1919 and 1920, I came across an interesting bit of military history.

Uncle Jack was born Orville P. Bonn on 18 September 1896 in Montevideo, Minnesota and died age 89 on 13 October 1985 in Prescott, Arizona.  He served three years in the U.S. Army Air Service 1917 – 1920, primarily with the 34th Aero Squadron at Tours Aerodrome, France, an instructional unit.

Uncle Jack remained in the Army for another 10 months after his return to the United States in May 1919.  He would have been present at Carlstrom Field, Arcadia, Florida when the Kettering Flying Torpedo – nicknamed the Kettering Bug – was flight tested there in October 1919.^[1]Youtube video – “F-0180 Aerial Test of Torpedo,” posted by San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives on 21 September 2012.  This was a secret military operation to develop an unmanned flying apparatus that could drop munitions on an enemy location up to 75 miles distant.  It is considered a forerunner of today’s cruise missiles!

The secret project to develop the Kettering Bug was codenamed Liberty Eagle.^[2]Michael H. Taint, Lt. Col., “Twenty-five Years Ahead of its Time: The American Aerial Torpedo in World War I,” Proceedings of the Ohio Academy of History, 2018; digital webpage, www. … Continue reading  It is one of the first “black” R&D projects in U.S. military history.    Here’s an interesting video of the bug’s development.

The Kettering Bug was not yet ready for operational launch before the war ended on 11 November 1918, so it never deployed in combat.  However, the U.S. Army continued to develop the device after the war.  Earlier tests in 1918 were performed at Dayton, Ohio and Amityville, New York.  In fact, there was an amusing incident in October 1918 when the Bug finally succeeded in flying, just not in the direction intended.

“Unfortunately, instead of flying straight, it went off course and circled the city of Dayton, cars in pursuit. The main concern wasn’t what might happen if it crashed in the city but whether the enemy might get wind of the Kettering Bug.  The entourage searched the vicinity where they thought it had come down and came upon some excited farmers who reported a plane crash—but they couldn’t find the pilot. One of the passengers in the pursuit team was a flying officer in a leather coat and goggles, and a quick-thinking colonel explained that he was the pilot who jumped out of the plane in his parachute. General Arnold again: “Our secret was secure. The awed farmers didn’t know that the U. S. Air Corps had no parachutes yet.”^[3]David Hunt, “World War 1 History: The Kettering Bug, the World’s First Drone,” 7 November 2023, owlation.com/humanities/.

A year later, testing moved to Carlstrom Field in a remote section of Florida.  In September and October 1919, a number of tests were performed, most of which were failures.  Adjustments, however, were made after each failure.  Then, on 28 October 1919, the Bug successfully launched and flew 16 miles, as the video below reveals.

Orville P. Bonn was transferred to Carlstrom Field on 22 September 1919 and would have witnessed these historic experiments.

Funding for the Bug dried out during the 1920s and no original Kettering Bug survives.  The one on display at the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio is a full-sized replica.