RAE Larynx explained

The Royal Aircraft Establishment Larynx (from "Long Range Gun with Lynx engine") was an early British pilotless aircraft, to be used as a guided anti-ship weapon. Started in September 1925, it was an early cruise missile guided by an autopilot.^[1]

Design

A small monoplane powered by a 200hp Armstrong Siddeley Lynx IV engine, it had a top speed of 200 mph (320 km/h), faster than contemporary fighters.^[2]

It used autopilot principles developed by Professor Archibald Low and already used in the Ruston Proctor AT, a radio controlled biplane that was intended to be used against German Zeppelin bombers.

Project history

• First test: 20 July, 1927. Launched from cordite-powered catapult fitted to the S class destroyer . Crashed into Bristol Channel.^[3]
• Second test: 1 September, 1927. Thought to have flown 100 miles (160 km) and was then lost.
• Third test: 15 October, 1927. 112 mile (180 km) flight, hit five miles from target.
• Two more launches in September and October 1928 from, another S class destroyer.^[3]
• Two launches May 1929. Launched from land, one overflew target and other was successful.

See also

• Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane
• Kettering Bug
• V-1 flying bomb

External links

• (1.0) The Aerial Torpedo
• Remote Piloted Aerial Vehicles : The 'Aerial Target' and 'Aerial Torpedo' in Britain
• Interwar British Experiments with Pilotless Aircraft pay to access
• "Automatic Flight" a 1958 Flight article
• The Mother of All Drones - Article Vintage Wings of Canada

Notes and References

1. Book: Werrell, Kenneth P.. The Evolution of the Cruise Missile. September 1985. Air University Press. Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama. 17. AD-A162 646. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20190416103307/https://media.defense.gov/2017/Apr/07/2001728474/-1/-1/0/B_0006_WERRELL_EVOLUTION_CRUISE_MISSILE.PDF#page=33. 16 April 2019.
2. Book: Gibson . Chris . Buttler . Tony. British Secret Projects: Hypersonics, Ramjets and Missiles . 2007 . Midland . 978-1-85780-258-0 . Hinckley . 310094852.
3. Book: Everett, H.R. . Unmanned Systems of World Wars I and II. Cambridge MA . MIT Press . 2015 . 978-0-26202-922-3. 15.