Bumblebee, Lark, and Little Joe: US Navy Guided Missiles 1944-1955

RIM-8 Talos

Today guided missiles are an integral part of the United States Navy and warships armed with the Aegis combat system are considered the pinnacle of surface combatant development. However, unlike most new weapons systems, the naval guided missile was not the result of incremental advances over time. Instead, it was the result a decade long project designed to create the theoretical weapon that was deemed necessary to counter an emerging threat.

The First Naval Missiles

While rockets have been a part of warfare for centuries (British ship-launched Congreve rockets are immortalized in the American national anthem), they had always been inaccurate ballistic devices that were clearly inferior to guns. This changed with the introduction of aircraft and the development of radio at the end of the 19th century. Suddenly it became possible to construct a missile (not necessarily a rocket) that could not only change course in flight, but receive targeting information and course corrections from an off-board operator. The first experiments with with such missiles took place during WWI and the resulting weapons resembled the canvas-covered multi-winged aircraft of the day. These were not a great success and the end of the war ended interest in expensive weapons projects.

The 1918 Siemens Schuckert Werks wire-guided torpedo glider

Missiles again surfaced in WWII as the belligerents researched every possible in an attempt to more swiftly defeat their enemies. The massive interwar leaps in aeronautics and radio had rendered the guided missile a clearly viable concept but they still needed to be made into a militarily useful weapon. 

The Navy would soon find a use for them in air defense. During the war the Navy had developed an efficient multilayer air defense system composed of 5” guns, 40mm cannon, and 20mm cannon all aimed by a combination of electromechanical ballistics computers and radar and optical directors. However, beginning in 1943, German radio-controlled glide bombs were used with deadly effect against allied shipping. Dropped from an altitude of over 20,000 feet and with a range of several miles, defeating such weapons was beyond the capability of even the most powerful guns.

Analysis of the problem in 1944 suggested that the solution lay in developing a supersonic radar guided missile with a range of at least 10 miles and an altitude of 30,000 feet. Given that the technology of the day was limited to subsonic jets, short range rockets, and manual radio command guidance, this was an extremely ambitious specification  However, the Navy, working with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, pressed ahead with an innovative ramjet missile under the name Project Bumblebee . At the time, projections suggested that the weapon would require 2-3 years to develop and could even be operational before the end of the war (then envisioned as occurring in 1946).

A New Threat Accelerates Development

In late 1944 an even more pressing threat appeared - the kamikaze. Unlike in conventional air attacks where heavy antiaircraft fire would demoralize pilots and disrupt formations, a kamikaze had to be physically destroyed. This requirement for a hard kill greatly reduced the value of the heavy antiaircraft guns and rendered the previously highly effective 20mm guns virtually useless. Thus, it was decided that a guided weapon capable of reliably hitting a kamikaze was required. Given that Bumblebee had not yet left the drawing board and that its supersonic long range capabilities were unnecessary against this threat, in 1944 the Navy started an emergency program for a guided anti-kamikaze weapon that could rapidly enter service.

This resulted in Lark, a subsonic rocket with simple radio command guidance that, unlike Bumblebee, required no new technologies. In January 1945 a contract was issued to Fairchild for 100 missiles to be delivered by the end of the year. However, production delays resulted in a second contract in June going to Convair for another 100. Even then, Lark did not begin flight tests until 1946.

SAM-N-2 Lark

With the pressing nature of the Kamikaze threat, in February the Naval Air Material Unit proposed an even simpler solution. They would add radio command guidance along with control surfaces and a warhead to an off the shelf JATO booster. While such a weapon was extremely limited in range and altitude (2.5 miles and 8,000 feet), it took little time to develop and prototypes were ready in July. However, it proved less than successful in initial tests and when the war ended in August, Little Joe was quickly cancelled.

Lark though was kept in development. While it served as a hedge against the failure of the Bumblebee program, it also gave the Navy valuable experience with guided missiles. After initial flight tests, in 1947 the guidance system was upgraded. The Fairchild variant kept the radio command system for midcourse flight but added semi active radar homing for the terminal stage. Convair went with a more ambitious radar beam riding combined with active radar homing.

Project Bumblebee

Meanwhile Project Bumblebee was proceeding apace. After testing a series of smaller ramjets from 1945-1947, development of the final 28” diameter XPM ramjet was begun. In order to gain more experience with supersonic flight (still a relatively unknown area in 1947) while XPM was being built, a two stage guided test rocket (STV) was constructed. By 1948, STV had proved so successful that if the instrumentation package was replaced with a warhead it could meet Bumblebee’s specifications.

Still, XPM promised even greater performance. Therefore the Navy decided to develop STV under the name Terrier to meet the original 10 mile specification while XPM (under the name Talos) would be given the even more ambitious goal of a 50 mile range and 60,000 foot altitude. At such a distance pure beam riding guidance would no longer be effective as the beam would become too diffuse. Therefore terminal semi active radar homing was added to the missile (beam riding was retained for initial guidance as it allowed a more fuel efficient trajectory). This led to further complications when it was discovered that if multiple targets were flying in close formation the new semi active radar homing could see them as a single target and steer the missile between them. To solve this problem, a nuclear armed variant (Talos W) without terminal homing was created that had sufficient large lethal radius to overcome the shortcomings of beam riding guidance.

RIM-2 Terrier

By this point the Navy had three separate guided missiles that were nearing the end of their development and it was time to begin considering what ships would be armed with them. Because of the massive military expenditures of WWII, the 1940’s were characterized by small naval budgets. Therefore, instead of new construction the Navy examined conversions of ships in the large reserve fleet. Destroyers were too small for the missiles and their associated radars while battleships and carriers were considered too valuable to convert. This focused planning on the cruisers. After toying with the idea of a massive rebuild of the incomplete Alaska-class large cruiser Hawaii (CB-3), which included launchers for derivatives of the German V-2 ballistic missile, it was decided to begin with an austere conversion of a heavy cruiser. However, lack of money meant that this design failed to make it into either the 1950 or 1951 budgets.

Still, the conversion of the old sea plane tender Norton Sound into a guided missile test ship had been funded and, in 1950, Lark became the first guided missile fired at sea. While these tests were generally successful, Lark was cancelled after their conclusion. It is likely that this cancellation was because Terrier had assumed the role of the low risk fall back and because the subsonic Lark was increasingly insufficient against the high speed jet aircraft then entering service.

Guided Missiles Reach the Fleet

1950 also brought the start of the Korean War and a corresponding increase in military funding. Because of this the 1952 budget finally funded two heavy cruiser conversions (Boston and Canberra). The design chosen had the aft 8” turret replaced by two Terrier launchers with the intention of doing the same to the forward turrets at a later date. The radar fit was fairly basic and and only included two guidance channels. Given that Terrier’s pure beam riding guidance required targets to be illuminated for the entire flight of the missile, this choice meant that the ships could only engage two aircraft simultaneously. Still, given the ships could only fire 4 missiles per minute, this was not a crippling limitation.

At this point development of guided missiles was reaching the final stretch. In 1952 Talos made its first intercept of an aerial target, successfully demonstrating its terminal semi active radar guidance. In 1953 Terrier underwent basic at sea tests aboard Norton Sound and in 1954 conducted operational testing aboard the former battleship Mississippi. The missile performed well, downing a variety of targets including a remote controlled F-86 jet fighter. Finally, in 1955 the final milestone was reached and, after 10 years of development, the converted cruiser Boston commissioned as the world’s first guided missile warship.

USS Boston (CAG-1)