On August 16th, 1956 two stateoftheart F89D Scorpions intercepted a runaway Hellcat drone over Southern California. In a two hour engagement, they fired 208 folding fin aircraft rockets without hitting the slowmoving Hellcat. Instead, the rockets rained down on the unsuspecting residents of Palmdale California, who endured an aerial bombardment that destroyed cars, damaged houses and ignited a huge brush fire that burned for days.

Analysis after the fact should have shown USAF planners the folly of relying on immature missile guidance and computer control technology. Instead, they doubled down in their belief that the gun was dead. A decade later, this failure to challenge their dogma would risk the lives of US aviators in the skies of Vietnam.

This video is the first in a short series that explores the American interceptors of the 1950s and ‘60s. I hope you enjoy it as I find it a fascinating period of startling ambition, extraordinary progress and tragic folly.

I’d also like to thank all of you who watched my last video, on the HAVE DRILL. It's been really exciting to see how many people have a shared interest in the depths of dogfighting history. I recognise that the audio on that video wasn’t the best and have worked hard to improve it on this one. Comments and suggestions on that, or any other topic much appreciated.

Notes:
I have done my best to show a realistic map of the Hellcat's path on the day, but I failed to find any good sources of information on it. Please therefore take the maps as my best guess, intended to help someone who is not resident in LA understand the layout, but in no way authoritative
None of the contemporary or more recent reporting specifies the type of aircraft used as the mother plane. I believe it was an Avenger because those were used in other drone trials. The Korean War muddies the picture because an A1 Skyraider was used to control the Hellcat 'missiles'. In this case I am relatively sure about the Avenger because Kurowski had only 200 rounds of 50 calibre to fire at the Hellcat. This tallies with the ammunition capacity of a late model Avenger

Sources:
I used numerous sources to understand the drone programme, the capabilities of the F89 Scorpion and the events of August 16th 1956. These are the main ones:

I based the 'dramatic' elements of the story on this Pageant Magazine article from 1957: https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/lw2...
This set of forum posts has a good amount of detail on Project Option: https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/thre...
I found this dissertation on drone combat enlightening for the early history of Project Option. It is also philosophically interesting if a little long. https://escholarship.org/content/qt0f...
Initial commentary on the F89's history, role and so on came from the excellent (but now sadly out of print) Aerofax Datagraph #8 F89 Scorpion by Gerald Balzer
Much of my information about the F89's characteristics and about how its computer controlled fire control system functioned came from the technical manual issued to aircrews. Warning, this is a 400 page read! https://archive.org/details/NorthropF...
This NACA (now NASA) research memorandum contains some interesting details on the function of the E4 (note, not 6, but comparable) fire control system and how the pilot used it: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/1...