On the afternoon of August 16, 1956, 17-year-old Larry Kempton of Leona Valley was driving with his mother, Bernice, along Palmdale Boulevard, just west of 10th Street West, when a rocket suddenly exploded in front of their car. Though both Larry and Bernice escaped unharmed, the blast shredded the car's front tire and severely damaged the radiator, hood, and windshield. Elsewhere in Palmdale, a city in northern Los Angeles, residents were being startled by similar rocket attacks.
Edna Carlson, a resident of Third Street East, recalled how a piece of shrapnel burst through her front window, ricocheted off the ceiling, passed through a wall, and finally came to rest inside her kitchen cupboard. On Fourth Street East, debris from another explosion tore into the home and garage of Mr. Hingle, narrowly missing a guest named Lilly Willingham.
A Grumman F6F Hellcat drone. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Unbeknownst to these unsuspecting citizens, a fierce aerial battle was unfolding nearly 30,000 feet above them between two United States Air Force interceptor jets and a single, bright red drone. Despite being unmanned and unarmed, it was the drone which was winning.
The drone in question was a Grumman F6F Hellcat, once the United States Navy's dominant fighter during the Pacific War in World War II. After the war, as more advanced, nimble, and powerful aircraft replaced them, many Hellcats were converted into target drones for anti-aircraft shooting practice.
On the day of the incident, one of these radio-controlled Hellcats was launched by the Navy from Point Mugu for a missile test. The drone took off at 11:34 a.m., heading toward the Pacific where the test was scheduled to take place. Like other target drones, it was operated remotely via radio control. Shortly after take off, the controllers realized that the drone was not responding to commands.. Worse still, it had started a slow, left-hand climb toward the southeast—heading directly for the Los Angeles area. Fearing the drone could crash into the densely populated metropolitan area, the Navy called the Air Force for assistance.
From Oxnard Air Force Base, just five miles from the Navy's Point Mugu facility, two F-89D Scorpions were dispatched to shoot down the rogue drone. What followed next was an embarrassing display of marksmanship.
An F89-D Scorpion aircraft. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
The pilots of the two F-89 Scorpions were Lieutenant Hans Einstein and Lieutenant Dick Hurliman. Soon after take-off the two jets engaged their afterburners and caught up to the erring aircraft at 30,000 feet in no time. The aircraft was circling northeast of Los Angeles. The jets tailed the Hellcat as it turned southwest and made another pass over Los Angeles before heading northwest toward Santa Paula. The jet crews, which consisted of a pilot and a radar observer, waited for the drone to reach an area that was relatively unpopulated so that they could attack it with their 2.75 inch Mighty Mouse rockets.
Soon the drone turned northeast, passing over Fillmore, then Frazier Park, before heading for the western section of the mostly uninhabited Antelope Valley. The crews of the Scorpions saw their chance and prepared to fire. However, when they pressed the fire button, nothing happened. It was later revealed that a design flaw in the automatic fire-control system for the Mighty Mouse rockets prevented the rockets from launching while the attack planes were turning.
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As the pilots contemplated their options, they saw the drone turn back towards Los Angeles. With time running out, Einstein and Hurliman were forced to switch from the faulty automatic mode to manual fire. However, this presented a significant challenge. The original F-89D Scorpions had been fitted with traditional gun sights, but these had been removed when the newer radar-guided automatic system was installed. Now, with that system rendered useless, the pilots were left to manually aim their unguided rockets without the aid of a gun sight.
Each F-89D Scorpions carried 104 rockets, but they could only be fired in salvos. The attacker could either choose to fire all 104 rockets at once or fire them in two or three batches, known as “ripple fire”. Murray and Hale chose the latter—fire their rockets in three salvos, which gave them essentially six opportunities between themselves to shoot down the pilotless aircraft. In reality, all they needed was a single hit. But in 1956, American dog fighting skills were a little lacking. The two jets fired a total of 208 rockets. Not a single one found its mark. Instead, the rockets rained down on the valley below, striking the ground and igniting brush fires across the region.
An F-89D Scorpion aircraft firing Mighty Mouse Rockets. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
A Los Angeles newspaper later reported that “three good-size fires and numerous smaller blazes” had been ignited in Palmdale by the misfired rockets, in addition to those near Santa Clarita. In Placerita Canyon, a fire burned through 75 to 100 acres before being brought under control by a team of over 200 firefighters. Another fire, located seven miles north of Castaic along the old Ridge Route, consumed 50 to 75 acres before finally being subdued late in the afternoon by around 100 firefighters.
The largest blaze occurred in Soledad Canyon, west of Mt. Gleason. By sundown, it had burned through more than 300 acres of thick brush and continued to spread the day after the drone debacle, despite the efforts of 500 firefighters. By the time the fire was finally brought under control, some 350 acres had been destroyed. The fire in Placerita Canyon, though smaller, burned 100 acres and came alarmingly close — within 100 yards — to the Bermite Powder Co. explosives plant.
At Placerita Canyon, two workers had been sitting in their truck eating lunch but decided to move under the shade of a nearby tree. Moments later, a rocket fragment tore through the bed and windshield of their parked truck, obliterating it.
The situation in Palmdale was especially dire, with rockets raining down from the sky like hail, striking homes and property. Miraculously, no one was injured. The drone finally ran out of fuel and crashed on a desert tract eight miles east of Palmdale Airport. On its way down, it clipped three electrical cables before slamming into the sand, cartwheeling across the desert floor, and disintegrating into pieces.
More than a dozen unexploded rockets were discovered scattered between Santa Clarita and Palmdale. Ideally, none of them should have detonated, as the rockets were equipped with a mechanism designed to disarm them if they missed their target and slowed down. But, just like the Hellcat’s faulty remote controls and the malfunctioning fire-control system in the Scorpions, this safety feature also failed. It was another glaring example of how the Air Force’s heavy reliance on cutting-edge technology had backfired spectacularly.
In the end, while the runaway drone was finally neutralized, the mission had caused far more destruction on the ground than anyone could have anticipated. The incident became a stark reminder of the limitations of over-reliance on unproven technology, particularly when it came to the high-stakes realm of aerial combat and public safety.
References:
# Flightdeck Friday: The Battle of Palmdale, US Naval Institute
# The Battle of Palmdale, Badgehistory
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