OVERVIEW

By November 1917, Elmer Sperry was achieving consistent enough results to merit a demonstration of his gyrostabilized N-9 seaplane (with a safety pilot onboard) to a visiting group of Navy dignitaries. Major General George O. Squier, chief signal officer of the Army, attended as an invited guest of the Navy. At that time, all Army aircraft activity was overseen by the Signal Corps; it was they who had purchased the first U.S. military airplane from the Wrights in 1908. The demonstration on 21 November impressed General Squier enough to appoint a four-man board to evaluate the military potential of Sperry's aerial torpedo for Army use the following month. Within the month, three of the members recommended against pursuing the Sperry drone and, further, dismissed the idea of using planes without pilots for military purposes. The fourth member agreed that the Sperry drone was impracticable because certain of its components did not lend themselves to mass production but rejected the majority opinion that unpiloted airplanes had no potential role in war. On the strength of that single vote, the Signal Corps' Aircraft Production Board recommended the establishment of a parallel Army program for a "torpedo airplane." The lone dissenter was Charles Franklin "Boss" Kettering.

Kettering's minority report (and subsequent lobbying) was not purely altruistic. Already a well-recognized inventor and entrepreneur, he had formed the Dayton Wright Airplane Company in Dayton, Ohio, the year before from the profit earned from selling his previous enterprise, the Dayton Electrical Company, or Delco. He...