The Predator. The Reaper. The Gorgon Stare. The Dennymite.
Today's high tech UAVs have the lure of Hollywood to thank for their existence. One of the first drones was built by an English WWI pilot who hopped the pond to pursue his acting dream. In between small roles alongside Greta Garbo and Frank Sinatra, Reginald Denny turned his remote control airplane hobby into a military contract. His first RP-1, designed for military target practice, would become the US military's first mass-produced unmanned aerial vehicle. "He pitched basically a radio controlled airplane to fly as a target," says Tony Chong, the in-house historian at Northrop Grumman, which purchased Denny's company in 1952. "A lot of people knew how to fly radio controlled planes back then. It wasn't a big leap to teach military personnel how to use them."
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Reginald Denny, OQ-3 launch, 1940.
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And that's where he found a young woman named Norma Jeane working the assembly line. That led to a screen test. Shortly thereafter, Norma changed her name to Marilyn Monroe.
How's that for morale?