The Navy’s secret wartime project in Traverse City
Graydon DeCamp and his parents, James and Anne DeCamp (pictured outside the Sip and Bite), attended a wedding in 1944 at the restaurant that is now US31 Discount Liquor store, but for years was the Hacienda and before that the Sip and Bite. Courtesy photo
By Graydon DeCamp
My earliest memories of our enchanted corner of Michigan are from boyhood summers in Leland and later as a camper and counselor at a small boys’ camp on Burt Lake. Michigan remained a second home until my wife and I made it our permanent home 37 years ago. To spare you the math: I am now 92, she is 78. We live in Elk Rapids.
The Boardman has poured a lot of water into West Bay since my childhood, but few of the years were as interesting as the ones during World War II when TC became my year-round home when my Cincinnati lawyer father joined the Navy after Pearl Harbor. At first, we followed him to duty at a Navy air station in dry and red-dirt dusty Oklahoma. His transfer after a few months to Traverse City was an event the whole family greeted with unalloyed delight.
Enough personal reminiscence for now. My story is not about me. It’s about what the Navy was doing here back then.
Called “Project Option,” it was very hush-hush. At the time, as a 10-year-old, I simply regarded this as a suitably logical place for the Navy, what with the Big Lake and all. It was only after the war that I learned that Project Option’s real purpose was developing and testing a new kind of weapon – the pilotless drone.
The Navy’s presence here was certainly no secret. It would have been impossible to conceal, and we kids occasionally rode our bikes out Garfield Avenue to watch Navy planes take off from the Naval Air station we now call TVC. Among the planes we saw were powerful Grumman torpedo bombers towing funny little aircraft. Although naturally curious, we had no idea of what those little planes were or what the Navy’s purpose was.
In those days, the Navy had two ersatz aircraft carriers on the lake, the USS Sable and USS Wolverine. These were old coal-burning, excursion sidewheelers, stripped to the gunwales and outfitted with flight decks. They served mainly to train pilots from Chicago’s Great Lakes Naval Air Station, including a future president named George Herbert Walker Bush, who went on to ace status in carrier-based torpedo bombers, all named “Barbara”). By coincidence, however, the carriers’ occasional visits to our bay also bolstered the official story: Project Option’s planes were just gunnery targets for those pilots-in-training. Indeed, some may have been used for that purpose, too.
The officer in charge of Project Option’s secret activity was a visionary named Delmar Fahrney, who had been experimenting with pilotless aircraft since the mid-30s. When World War II erupted, Fahrney was put in charge of three Special Task Air Groups. “STAGs” the Navy called them. They were destined for combat in the Pacific war.
The drones from Traverse City were inexpensively manufactured of light plywood from Cincinnati’s Wurlitzer Piano Co., mounted on tubular steel frames from Chicago’s Schwinn bicycle people. Their two engines gave them the power to carry a 2,000-pound torpedo or bomb. The Navy designated them as the “TDR-1.”
Fervent as Fahrney was, upper-echelon brass were skeptical about his vision, so Project Option bucked headwinds almost from Day One. Nonetheless, his drones eventually flew several combat missions in the Pacific, with some success.
By today’s standards, his drones would seem crude – because they were. Not only crude, but intentionally expendable. They had rudimentary cockpits for use when ferried from place to place by a living pilot. When the TDR flew as a drone, its cockpit could be removed. The landing gear could also be dropped, making the TDR lighter but impossible to land.
This raised security questions in Oklahoma, where farmers may have found airplane wreckage, but with no pilot or even a cockpit. In Traverse City, a drone could simply be left to vanish in Lake Michigan.
In combat, the TDR-1 drones were radio-controlled by pilots, safely out of antiaircraft range in chase planes. They could see where the drones were headed because each drone had a TV camera in the nose that sent a fuzzy picture to the pilot on an early 5-inch TV screen.
To show they could actually hit something, Traverse City’s drones sometimes attacked the small islands off Wilderness State Park’s Waugoshance Point. The Navy explained the explosive rearrangement of those islands as the result of being bombed by pilots-in-training from Sable and Wolverine – a deceit that may have been true.
In the Pacific war, of course, the Navy had thousands of real combat planes and real pilots on real carriers, so Fahrney’s STAG-1 wasn’t sent to sea until June of 1944. That July, four of the drones flew a demonstration mission against a beached, derelict Japanese freighter. Three hit it. The skeptical brass back in Pearl Harbor raised their eyebrows and greenlighted further combat.
Fahrney’s drones sortied 40 more times, once flying more than 150 miles to attack anti-aircraft guns, a ship, and a bridge on New Guinea. The results were mixed. About half damaged their targets, but a third of them never reached their objectives.
Not until after the war did the Navy officially conclude in a report that they were “capable of precision attack” provided the targets were of “sufficient size and sufficient definition to be visible on the television screen.”
That grudging recognition was too late. Before 1944 was out, the drones were grounded. The skeptics said the Navy was doing just fine with conventional weapons, and the drones’ radio controls just weren’t sufficiently reliable. Altogether, of 46 drones launched in September and October 1944, only 18 hit their targets. Although Project Option had shown potential, it was far ahead of its time. All but one of the remaining drones were used for target practice. The only one remaining today is in the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida.
As 1945 dawned, Project Option was shut down and the Navy moved out of Traverse City. My Dad was transferred to Hawaii until war’s end, and the rest of the family moved back to Cincinnati.
After the war, however, Fahrney pursued his work in California and eventually realized his vision. When he retired as a rear admiral with the Legion of Merit, he was widely known as “the father of the guided missile.” Today, drones smaller and far more sophisticated than the TDR-1 are regarded by many as the future of warfare.
In WWII Traverse City, gasoline rationing meant seldom venturing afield. But one of those ventures came when a young naval officer married an Elk Rapids girl and we attended a reception at the old Sip and Bite restaurant, later the Hacienda, and now the 31 Discount Liquor store south of town.
One of my own fondest memories of life in wartime TC is of a fellow named Ray Darrow. Pre-war, he operated a marina dock on West Bay at the foot of Monroe St. The Navy commandeered his marina for rescue boats in case any pilots ditched in the lake. If I remember correctly, Darrow signed on as a warrant officer to look after them. As his dock was within easy bike range of our home on Sixth Street, I spent considerable time there. However, it wasn’t crash boats that captured my attention. It was Darrow, who spent a lot of the Navy’s time showing me how best to catch perch off his dock.
I imagine the Navy paid him well for the use of his dock, too, because after the war he built a new marina farther up the bay in Greilickville, and we know what that became.
Ray’s name is still remembered in Darrow Park at the corner of Bay and Monroe Streets. Whenever I drive by, I have a brief reminiscence attack about wartime life in TC.
About the author: Cincinnati native Graydon DeCamp has written and edited for many newspapers and magazines, including the afternoon Cincinnati Post, the morning Cincinnati Enquirer, and the weekly Enquirer Magazine.
He moved to Traverse City in 1988, where he had lived as a child during WWII. He was part-time senior editor of Traverse magazine from 1989 to 1994. He also authored Blue and Gold, the Annapolis Story and a history of the Enquirer. He has written/edited histories about Cincinnati Milacron Corp., Mackinac Island State Parks, and the Northport Point resort community.
Graydon and his wife, Sherrill, moved to Elk Rapids in 1990. Together they have written a best-selling restaurant guide-cookbook, The Connoisseur Up North, and a 2004 sequel, Dining In Dining Out.
My earliest memories of our enchanted corner of Michigan are from boyhood summers in Leland and later as a camper and counselor at a small boys’ camp on Burt Lake. Michigan remained a second home until my wife and I made it our permanent home 37 years ago. To spare you the math: I am now 92, she is 78. We live in Elk Rapids.
The Boardman has poured a lot of water into West Bay since my childhood, but few of the years were as interesting as the ones during World War II when TC became my year-round home when my Cincinnati lawyer father joined the Navy after Pearl Harbor. At first, we followed him to duty at a Navy air station in dry and red-dirt dusty Oklahoma. His transfer after a few months to Traverse City was an event the whole family greeted with unalloyed delight.
Enough personal reminiscence for now. My story is not about me. It’s about what the Navy was doing here back then.
Called “Project Option,” it was very hush-hush. At the time, as a 10-year-old, I simply regarded this as a suitably logical place for the Navy, what with the Big Lake and all. It was only after the war that I learned that Project Option’s real purpose was developing and testing a new kind of weapon – the pilotless drone.
The Navy’s presence here was certainly no secret. It would have been impossible to conceal, and we kids occasionally rode our bikes out Garfield Avenue to watch Navy planes take off from the Naval Air station we now call TVC. Among the planes we saw were powerful Grumman torpedo bombers towing funny little aircraft. Although naturally curious, we had no idea of what those little planes were or what the Navy’s purpose was.
In those days, the Navy had two ersatz aircraft carriers on the lake, the USS Sable and USS Wolverine. These were old coal-burning, excursion sidewheelers, stripped to the gunwales and outfitted with flight decks. They served mainly to train pilots from Chicago’s Great Lakes Naval Air Station, including a future president named George Herbert Walker Bush, who went on to ace status in carrier-based torpedo bombers, all named “Barbara”). By coincidence, however, the carriers’ occasional visits to our bay also bolstered the official story: Project Option’s planes were just gunnery targets for those pilots-in-training. Indeed, some may have been used for that purpose, too.
The officer in charge of Project Option’s secret activity was a visionary named Delmar Fahrney, who had been experimenting with pilotless aircraft since the mid-30s. When World War II erupted, Fahrney was put in charge of three Special Task Air Groups. “STAGs” the Navy called them. They were destined for combat in the Pacific war.
The drones from Traverse City were inexpensively manufactured of light plywood from Cincinnati’s Wurlitzer Piano Co., mounted on tubular steel frames from Chicago’s Schwinn bicycle people. Their two engines gave them the power to carry a 2,000-pound torpedo or bomb. The Navy designated them as the “TDR-1.”
Fervent as Fahrney was, upper-echelon brass were skeptical about his vision, so Project Option bucked headwinds almost from Day One. Nonetheless, his drones eventually flew several combat missions in the Pacific, with some success.
By today’s standards, his drones would seem crude – because they were. Not only crude, but intentionally expendable. They had rudimentary cockpits for use when ferried from place to place by a living pilot. When the TDR flew as a drone, its cockpit could be removed. The landing gear could also be dropped, making the TDR lighter but impossible to land.
This raised security questions in Oklahoma, where farmers may have found airplane wreckage, but with no pilot or even a cockpit. In Traverse City, a drone could simply be left to vanish in Lake Michigan.
In combat, the TDR-1 drones were radio-controlled by pilots, safely out of antiaircraft range in chase planes. They could see where the drones were headed because each drone had a TV camera in the nose that sent a fuzzy picture to the pilot on an early 5-inch TV screen.
To show they could actually hit something, Traverse City’s drones sometimes attacked the small islands off Wilderness State Park’s Waugoshance Point. The Navy explained the explosive rearrangement of those islands as the result of being bombed by pilots-in-training from Sable and Wolverine – a deceit that may have been true.
In the Pacific war, of course, the Navy had thousands of real combat planes and real pilots on real carriers, so Fahrney’s STAG-1 wasn’t sent to sea until June of 1944. That July, four of the drones flew a demonstration mission against a beached, derelict Japanese freighter. Three hit it. The skeptical brass back in Pearl Harbor raised their eyebrows and greenlighted further combat.
Fahrney’s drones sortied 40 more times, once flying more than 150 miles to attack anti-aircraft guns, a ship, and a bridge on New Guinea. The results were mixed. About half damaged their targets, but a third of them never reached their objectives.
Not until after the war did the Navy officially conclude in a report that they were “capable of precision attack” provided the targets were of “sufficient size and sufficient definition to be visible on the television screen.”
That grudging recognition was too late. Before 1944 was out, the drones were grounded. The skeptics said the Navy was doing just fine with conventional weapons, and the drones’ radio controls just weren’t sufficiently reliable. Altogether, of 46 drones launched in September and October 1944, only 18 hit their targets. Although Project Option had shown potential, it was far ahead of its time. All but one of the remaining drones were used for target practice. The only one remaining today is in the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida.
As 1945 dawned, Project Option was shut down and the Navy moved out of Traverse City. My Dad was transferred to Hawaii until war’s end, and the rest of the family moved back to Cincinnati.
After the war, however, Fahrney pursued his work in California and eventually realized his vision. When he retired as a rear admiral with the Legion of Merit, he was widely known as “the father of the guided missile.” Today, drones smaller and far more sophisticated than the TDR-1 are regarded by many as the future of warfare.
In WWII Traverse City, gasoline rationing meant seldom venturing afield. But one of those ventures came when a young naval officer married an Elk Rapids girl and we attended a reception at the old Sip and Bite restaurant, later the Hacienda, and now the 31 Discount Liquor store south of town.
One of my own fondest memories of life in wartime TC is of a fellow named Ray Darrow. Pre-war, he operated a marina dock on West Bay at the foot of Monroe St. The Navy commandeered his marina for rescue boats in case any pilots ditched in the lake. If I remember correctly, Darrow signed on as a warrant officer to look after them. As his dock was within easy bike range of our home on Sixth Street, I spent considerable time there. However, it wasn’t crash boats that captured my attention. It was Darrow, who spent a lot of the Navy’s time showing me how best to catch perch off his dock.
I imagine the Navy paid him well for the use of his dock, too, because after the war he built a new marina farther up the bay in Greilickville, and we know what that became.
Ray’s name is still remembered in Darrow Park at the corner of Bay and Monroe Streets. Whenever I drive by, I have a brief reminiscence attack about wartime life in TC.
About the author: Cincinnati native Graydon DeCamp has written and edited for many newspapers and magazines, including the afternoon Cincinnati Post, the morning Cincinnati Enquirer, and the weekly Enquirer Magazine.
He moved to Traverse City in 1988, where he had lived as a child during WWII. He was part-time senior editor of Traverse magazine from 1989 to 1994. He also authored Blue and Gold, the Annapolis Story and a history of the Enquirer. He has written/edited histories about Cincinnati Milacron Corp., Mackinac Island State Parks, and the Northport Point resort community.
Graydon and his wife, Sherrill, moved to Elk Rapids in 1990. Together they have written a best-selling restaurant guide-cookbook, The Connoisseur Up North, and a 2004 sequel, Dining In Dining Out.
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