Whilst researching in the archives and stores at the former Royal Aircraft Estabishment in Farnbrough, England for the exhibition Goodbye Vile Earth!, we came across this odd looking piece of kit that looked like part of an old telephone exchange. At first we assumed it was just part of the telephone network connecting different parts of this once secret aeronautical research facility. Talking to some of the ex-engineers and scientists who were now working as archivists there, we started to get a picture of a technology that was initially used to collapse space and time horizontally to one that redefined it, from the early days of powered flight, vertically.
The RAF were interested in cruise missile technology and pursued research and development in pilotless “target” aircraft, the first of which was called the Fairey Queen, to help train their anti-aircraft gunners from WW1 to the mid- thirties. The QUEEN BEE developed at Farnborough employed pre-set maneuvers, with an operator using radio to select which dance the Bee would perform before it was shot at.
Through a somewhat convoluted path, the name QUEEN BEE is said to have led to the use of the term DRONE for pilot-less aircraft, in particular when they are radio-controlled.
The QUEEN BEE control box (pictured above) was in operation circa 1935 and made use of Post Office (GPO) equipment. The control panel used the rotary dial which, the controller could “dial in” a radio-transmitted command. Numbers on the dial represented different commands for “turn left, turn right, pitch-up, pitch down” etc., with additional controls for operating the ignition and throttle. While the control panel itelf was relatively small, the radio transmitter was the size of a large van. Iterations of the Queen Bee allowed for controls to be beamed to a test plane where the front cockpit had the same controls as the GPO unit. This allowed a test pilot to check the pilotless functions of the aircraft at altitude, with the radio commands operating pneumatic servos.
The Queen Bee tests showed the limitations of anti-aircraft gunnery, with the ‘live’ expendable aircrafts being able to fly about in front of warships for hours that were trying to shoot them down. A test with the ‘top brass’ was even sabotaged by sending it into an uncontrolled dive into the sea in order to ‘prove’ that the Navy had the wherewithall to shoot it down. The demonstrations of this pilotless technology spurred researchers in the United States to begin development. This sort of radio control led to implementation of ‘fly by wire’ technology, at first for military aircraft, and later for civilian use. They weren’t used in combat till World War 2, and have become known as UAV’s (unmanned aerial vehicles). Until the Vietnam war era they were no more sophisticated than any remote control airplane you might buy in a hobby shop.