Kettering Aerial Torpedo was a self-guided flying bomb developed for the United States Army during World War I. - AsNotedIn

the device was supposed to strike a target, at a range which was almost exactly the longest uninterrupted flight that had ever been made in an airplane. So problems arose, problems to which there was no answers either in books or anywhere else. And as a result, a lot of test work on the control and guidance system of this device was done in the wind tunnel in Mr. Wright's laboratory on Broadway. It was one of the few wind tunnels in existence at that particular time. And of course, Mr. Wright was very much interested in the work, that is advice, his help where-ever he could. And for a period of about a year, we was in and out of that place almost every day.... The explosive was in the fuselage, that was a rather interesting device. I said Mr. Wright designed the air frame he did, but Dayton-Wright Airplane Company worked out some very unique manufacturing schemes to build it. It was a very nice little aircraft. It had a wing span of about thirteen feet. It was about ten feet long. But it was designed to use up all the scraps of the spruce wood that they couldn't use for making DH airplanes at Dayton-Wright Airplane Company, because in those days, all aircraft was built of wood.... The wings were covered with paper, the fuselage was a cylinder of cardboard impregnated with rosin, about five feet long. The tail section was a cone of cardboard, and it was so designed that it could be put together very quickly.... The explosive was in the lower half of the fuselage and the control guidance mechanism was right above it. And it was so designed that when it reached its range, the mechanism operated a latch that released the wings, the wings just folded up the device, the wings folded away and then the fuselage with its engine, became a free falling bomb.