08/28/2026
Would you have guessed that the Navy's first TV-guided cruise missile was an old surplus F6F Hellcat?
On 28 August 1952, during the Korean War, the U.S. Navy's Guided Missile Unit 90 launched an explosive-laden Grumman F6F-5K Hellcat drone from USS Boxer (CV-21) against a railroad bridge at Hungnam, North Korea. The pilotless Hellcat was remotely controlled from an accompanying Douglas AD Skyraider, while a television camera aboard the drone transmitted a view of the target back to its controller. The operator could use that image to steer the Hellcat toward its target, turning one of the Navy's most famous World War II fighters into an early television-guided precision weapon. The mission marked the first combat use of an unmanned Hellcat and the Navy's first combat launch of a guided missile from an aircraft carrier.
The idea of using unmanned aircraft as weapons was not new. During World War II, the United States experimented with radio-controlled, explosive-filled bombers under the Army Air Forces' Operation Aphrodite and the Navy's Project Anvil. Hellcats themselves had also been converted into drones before Korea, including unmanned F6Fs used to collect samples from the radioactive clouds produced during the 1946 Operation Crossroads atomic tests at Bikini Atoll. What made the Korean War program different was its combination of carrier operations, airborne remote control, television guidance, and an expendable aircraft carrying explosives against an enemy target.
Guided Missile Unit 90's system offered a potential solution to one of the most dangerous problems facing naval aviators over Korea. Bridges, tunnels, power facilities, and other important targets could be surrounded by heavy antiaircraft defenses. Rather than sending a pilot directly into that fire, the Navy could send an obsolete Hellcat while the crew controlling it remained farther from the target. The concept resembled a primitive cruise missile, except that instead of building an entirely new weapon, the Navy repurposed surplus fighters that had already fought their war.
The August 28 attack was the first of six combat missions flown by the F6F-5K drones between August 28 and September 2, 1952. The targets included bridges, railroad tunnels, and power facilities in North Korea. The experiment demonstrated that an unmanned aircraft could be launched from an operational carrier, controlled from another aircraft, flown into enemy territory, and guided toward a specific target using a live television image. The combat results, however, were mixed. Fewer than half of the missions were considered successful, and the Navy did not continue the Hellcat attack-drone program as an operational weapon.
The technology was more significant than the brief combat career of the F6F-5K might suggest. Television guidance and remotely controlled aircraft continued to develop, while unmanned Hellcats remained useful as target drones for testing newer weapons. The six missions flown from Boxer were an early glimpse of a form of warfare that would become commonplace decades later. In 1952, though, the Navy was already launching pilotless, television-equipped aircraft from a carrier and steering them toward enemy targets from another airplane. It just happened to be doing it with one of the great piston-engine fighters of World War II.
