> Home > Contact Us

The BAT air-to-surface missile was the first fully automatic guided missile to be used operationally by any of the combatants during WWII. During this time, there were many wire-, radio-, and television-guided bombs, either glider-type or self-propelled, that were used by the Germans and Americans during the war, however, the BAT was the very first, fully-automatic, weapon system, the archetype of what we now term "fire and forget" weaponry. Once launched, the BAT went solo, guided to its target by an early S-band radar unit, developed by the Bell Telephone Laboratories.

The BAT was a relatively simple glide-bomb constructed of steel and plywood with a gross weight of 1,700 pounds, including its 1,000-pound charge. Though designed primarily an anti-shipping weapon, it was also used as a gunnery target. It was responsible for sinking at least one Japanese destroyer and many cargo ships. In April, 1945 a "Bat" missile sank a Japanese submarine at a distance of 20 miles from the launching aircraft.

The Bat's guidance system was particularly sophisticated for the time. After being dropped, it glided toward the target on a preset course using a gyrostabilizer system to keep it on track. As it neared the target, the bomb locked on with its own radar system that guided it into the target. While the weapon was not developed at China Lake, one of our most famous technical directors, Dr. William McClean, helped develop the gyrostabilizer system while he worked at the Bureau of Standards prior to coming to China Lake.
The Bat also included a self-destruct mechanism to keep it from falling into enemy hands, and obtained its electrical power from four small windmill generators.

The Bat was put into operation in May 1945, on Navy PB4Y-2 Privateer patrol bombers, maritime derivatives of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator. One Bat was carried under each wing. BAT was active in the arsenal of the United States Navy from 1945 through 1953.