The Battle of Palmdale
On the morning of 16 August 1956, Navy personnel at Point Mugu prepared an F6F-5K for its final mission. The
aircraft had been painted overall high-visibility red. Red and yellow camera pods were mounted on the wingtips. Radio
remote control systems were checked, and the Hellcat took off at 11:34 a.m., climbing out over the Pacific Ocean. As
ground controllers attempted to maneuver the drone toward the target area, it became apparent that it was not
responding to radio commands. They had a runaway. Ahead of the unguided drone lay thousands of square
miles of ocean into which it could crash. Instead, the old Hellcat made a graceful climbing turn to the southeast,
toward the city of Los Angeles. With the threat of a runaway aircraft approaching a major metropolitan area, the Navy
called for help. Five miles north of NAS Point Mugu, two F-89D Scorpion twin-jet interceptors of the 437th Fighter
Interceptor Squadron were scrambled from Oxnard Air Force Base. The crews were ordered to shoot down the rogue
drone before it could cause any harm. Armed with wingtip-mounted rocket pods and no cannon, the Scorpion was typical
of the Cold War approach to countering the "Red Menace." Each pod contained 52 Mighty Mouse 2.75-inch rockets. Salvo-
launched, the Mighty Mouse did not have to have precision guidance. Large numbers of rockets would be fired into
approaching Soviet bomber formations to overwhelm them with sheer numbers. Today, they would be used against a
different kind of red menace. At Oxnard AFB, 1Lt. Hans Einstein and his radar observer, 1Lt. C. D. Murray, leapt into their
sleek F-89D. Simultaneously, 1Lt. Richard Hurliman and 1Lt. Walter Hale climbed into a second aircraft. The interceptors
roared south after their target. The hunt was on. Einstein and Hurliman caught up with the Hellcat at 30,000 feet,
northeast of Los Angeles. It turned southwest, crossing over the city, then headed northwest. As the Hellcat circled lazily
over Santa Paula, the interceptor crews waited impatiently. As soon as it passed over an unpopulated area, they would
fire their rockets. The interceptor crews discussed their options. There were two methods of attack using the fire control
system, from a wings level attitude or while in a turn. Since the drone was almost continuously turning, they selected the
second mode of attack. In repeated attempts, the rockets failed to fire during these maneuvers. This was later traced to a
design fault. The drone turned northeast, passing Fillmore and Frazier Park. It appeared to be heading toward the
sparsely populated western end of the Antelope Valley. Suddenly, it turned southeast toward Los Angeles again. Time
seemed to be running out. Einstein and Hurliman decided to abandon the automatic modes, and fire manually. Although
the aircraft had been delivered with gun sights, they had been removed a month earlier. After all, why would a pilot need
a gun sight to fire unguided rockets with an automatic fire control system? The interceptors made their first attack run as
the Hellcat crossed the mountains near Castaic. Murray and Hale set their intervalometers to "ripple fire"the rockets in
three salvos. The first crew lined up their target and fired, missing their target completely. The second interceptor unleashed a salvo that
passed just below the drone. Rockets blazed through the sky and then plunged earthward to spark brush fires
seven miles north of Castaic. They decimated 150 acres above the old Ridge Route near Bouquet Canyon. A
second salvo from the two jets also missed the drone, raining rockets near the town of Newhall. One bounced
across the ground, leaving a string of fires in its wake between the Oak of the Golden Dream Park and the
Placerita Canyon oilfield. The fires ignited several oil sumps and burned 100 acres of brush. For a while the
blazes raged out of control, threatening the nearby Bermite Powder Company explosives plant. The rockets also ignited a fire in the vicinity of Soledad Canyon, west of Mt. Gleason, burning over 350 acres of heavy brush. Meanwhile, the errant drone meandered north toward Palmdale. The Scorpion crews readjusted
their intervalometers and each fired a final salvo, expending their remaining rockets. Again, the obsolete, unpiloted, unguided,
unarmed, propeller-driven drone evaded the state-of-the-art jet interceptors. In all, the jet crews fired 208 rockets without scoring
a single hit.The afternoon calm was shattered as Mighty Mouse rockets fell on downtown Palmdale. Edna Carlson was at home
with her six-year-old son William when a chunk of shrapnel burst through her front window, bounced off the ceiling, pierced a
wall, and finally came to rest in a pantry cupboard. Another fragment passed through J. R. Hingle's garage and home, nearly
hitting Mrs. Lilly Willingham as she sat on the couch. A Leona Valley teenager, Larry Kempton, was driving west on Palmdale Boulevard with
his mother in the passenger seat when a rocket exploded on the street in front of him. Fragments blew out his left front tire, and put numerous
holes in the radiator, hood, windshield, and even the firewall. Miraculously, no one was injured by any of the falling rockets. Explosive
Ordnance Disposal teams later recovered 13 duds in the vicinity of Palmdale. It took 500 firefighters two days to bring the brushfires under
control. Oblivious to the destruction in its wake, the drone passed over the town. Its engine sputtered and died as the fuel supply dwindled. The
red Hellcat descended in a loose spiral toward an unpopulated patch of desert eight miles east of Palmdale Airport. Just before impact, the drone
sliced through a set of three Southern California Edison power lines along an unpaved section of Avenue P. The camera pod on the airplane's right
wingtip dug into the sand and the Hellcat cartwheeled and disintegrated. There was no fire.
