TABLE OF CONTENTS The difficulties encountered in simply launching a pilotless plane into the air and flying it stably shoved any plans to add the complexities of remote control of the plane to the back burner. By 1920, both the Navy's and the Army's efforts seemed to have a handle on catapulting these planes into stable flight, so attention turned to the radio engineers. Parallel projects by both the Army and Navy that were to eventually lead to remotely controlled flight were undertaken that year.
Lawrence Burst Sperry reentered the world of unmanned aviation after his brief absence when his firm, the Sperry Aircraft Company, was awarded an Army contract in April 1920 to build five Messenger biplanes. Designed by Alfred Verville, an aeronautical engineer employed at McCook Field (later Wright-Patterson AFB) in Dayton, Ohio, the Messenger addressed an Army Air Service requirement for a small, lightweight plane to serve as an airborne runner between the front and headquarters. As such, it had to have short takeoff and landing distances and a rugged undercarriage to allow operation from unprepared fields when necessary. The contract had two further stipulations. Sperry was to modify three of the five Messengers as well as three existing Standard E-1 scout planes for unmanned, gyrostabilized flight. If these planes validated the concept, the Army planned to produce Messenger Aerial Torpedoes (MATs) in quantity.
The Messenger weighed only 623 lb when empty and had an endurance of 4 h, a top speed of 84 kt, and...
