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Concept
ASM-N-2 Bat
Summary
The ASM-N-2 Bat was a United States Navy World War II radar-guided glide bomb which was used in combat beginning in April 1944. It was developed and overseen by a unit within the National Bureau of Standards (which unit later became a part of the Army Research Laboratory) with assistance from the Navy's Bureau of Ordnance, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Bell Telephone Laboratories. It is considered to be the first fully automated guided missile used in combat.
In January 1941 RCA proposed a new TV-guided anti-shipping weapon, called Dragon, for which an operator would use the TV image sent from the nose of the weapon and operate aerodynamic controls during the weapon's fall. The National Bureau of Standards (NBS) would provide the airframe for use with a standard bomb, and was the same guidable ordnance airframe design used for the earlier, abortive Project Pigeon weapons program. The Pelican was a June 1942 modification using semi-active radar homing. By mid-1943, a modification of the design was proposed to use a new active radar homing system from Western Electric with a (one short ton) general-purpose (GP) bomb, the same basic "AN-M66" ordnance unit as used for the heavier USAAF VB-2 version of the Azon radio-controlled ordnance. This Pelican version entered testing in summer 1944 at Naval Air Station New York, where it hit its target ship in two out of four drops.
The Bat was the production version which combined the original NBS airframe with a AN-M65 GP bomb, the same basic ordnance that was used in the contemporary Azon guided munition, and the Pelican active radar system. Gyrostabilized with an autopilot supplied by Bendix Aviation, the steerable tail elevator was powered by small wind-driven generators. The Navy's Bureau of Ordnance in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) supervised development and the NBS was in charge of the overall development. Flight tests were conducted at the Naval Air Ordnance Test Station at Chincoteague Island, Virginia.
Official source
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