Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 418 - Operation Aphrodite

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON. USE CODE DONK50 TO GET 50% OFF YOUR FIRST MONTH patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys LISTEN TO BLOOD WORK: https://open.spotify.com/show/5jt9RZSCVMJ1KS84QHB9jJ BUY JOE'S BOOK 'THE HIGHLANDS BURN' https://www.amazon.com/Highlands-Burn-Foundling-Brigade-Saga-ebook/dp/B0GSG5CNXX/ref=sr_1_1?crid=AVUPB28MBUYO&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.NNgKYnCYiqAJJS_eOQD2UYzjUqrfsCV8e6mhEpEOu8dyC1MKfbuv5t1cX6Cv-Kw5Hm3lFM_2vWG3Dc3EnyW4xSOR0eGi5GLaqW0TcrcO5Vf6VMd4F2keDTuQ1DlRS-GBNr24jKul0TozZWTct2sAiq3zX-82f5yk8oWl8KkPE2vH_sELnUhQbW_R3A330VM65hxbAUa56Ppyxfo9tMa38b_Qv1L4w4yYCj7rktOrxlw.KjrRckJzI25gb9P-yCrRS0hCQGw1qvYFlzBrcOT0wIs&dib_tag=se&keywords=THE+HIGHLANDS+BURN&qid=1780860988&sprefix=the+highlands+burn%2Caps%2C307&sr=8-1 Don't want to use Amazon? Buy it the ebook from our store: https://www.llbdpodcast.com/products/the-highlands-burn-epub Get the audiobook: https://www.llbdpodcast.com/products/the-highlands-burn-audiobook Joe and Tom are once again joined by Gregk Foley of Blood Work to talk about the US Army's Operation Aphrodite during WWII. When a bunch of engineers attempted to create the world's first suicide attack drone. It resulted in a series of dead pilots, nearly blowing up several British villages, and one dead Kennedy. SOURCES: Freeman, Roger. The Mighty Eighth. Spark, Nick. Television Goes to War. https://web.archive.org/web/20080417214556/http://www.mugualumni.org/secretarsenal/page9.html Gary, Edwin. Operation Aphrodite's B-17 "Smart Bomb." Olsen, Jack. Aphrodite: Desperate Mission. https://archive.org/details/aphroditedespera00olse Webb, Mason. Operation Aphrodite. WWII Quarterly. Fall 2014. Vol. 6 No. 1

Hey everyone, Joe here. For the entire month of June, new patrons can get 50% off the first month of the Legion of the Old Crow tier on our Patreon. So if you're a new listener, an old friend, or maybe someone who's just been curious about what kind of fun we're having over on Patreon, you can check out our entire bat catalog from the past eight years, all for the price of a crisp white monster. So for the whole month of June, use code Donk 50 on Patreon to get 50% off your first month. To the crack of rifles and the acrid stench of sorcery. A sun invasion sweeps through the highlands of the Confederation, and Syatt's peaceful village life breaks with the dawn. A sole survivor amidst the smoking ruins of all that he held dear.

Siyat must make a choice. His pursuing revenge against the mercenaries that took everything from him, worth becoming one himself. As his escape pushes him into the gruff and brace of the foundlings brigade, he must learn to tread a path between his need to understand why his people were targeted for destruction and the new responsibility of his soldier's life. Even as each new encounter with the horrors of battle force him to confront the terrible cost of his oath. Before long, the shifting fog of war casts old certainties into a haze of doubt, while the stuff of legend seems clear as day, and Siat finds himself drawn into a much larger conflict that he could possibly imagine. My debut fantasy novel, The Highlands Burn, is now out on e-book, audiobook, and paperback.

Much like our podcast, this book is a totally independent production, and I hope you'll give it a try. As always, you can find the links where you can get it in the show notes below. Hello and welcome to the Lions and Buy Donkeys podcast, the only military history podcast in the entire world. I'm Joe and with me is Tom and special guests, Gregory Foley of Bloodwork. How's everybody doing? So welcome to the afternoon zoo crew. We've got air horns. We've got, I'm not going to do the effects.

Don't, don't do the effects. That's a slippery slope. But number one on the agenda, Greg, what does the K stand for? Oh, God. It's nothing interesting, but just to let people know, I am not. holish. I'm incredibly up. The, uh, the K is silent like the G and lasagna. Yeah, I do it just to keep people on their toes.

It's because he's a real G who moves silent like the G and lasagna. Yeah. I'm not a G. I'm moving incredibly loudly, like the K. Yeah. I also move incredibly loudly. I move like the O and O. You're telling you. That's because you're built like a meaty javelin.

No, but like there was, there was a guy in my secondary school who like I knew as Pablo. And the whole time when I was a teenager, I thought his name was Pablo. And after knowing him for years, I heard someone called him Stephen. And I was like, what the fuck? And someone was like, oh yeah, no, his name is Stephen. I was like, why is your name Pablo? And I was like, could he join the school and he had a really like olive complexion and massive chin? And so he said, like, who's that fucking...

So this named him Pablo? And some kid just went, I don't know, Pablo or something. And I'd known him as Pablo for years. And then I had the exact same thing as a teenage where eventually I was like cornered by some people in my friend group at the time. We thought you were Polish. I thought your name was actually heck. Greak. No, they're like green eyes, freckles, massive fuck.

fucking head guys. Like, how many clues do you need? I've seen my head, of course, I'm Irish. Yeah, exactly. I'm a plastic paddy, but I'm still a paddy. A neck the width of a run-flat tire. Yeah, I'm happy I'm here to continue my London residency for yet another day, another week, another episode. And fellas, I've gathered you here.

Talk about drones. Oh, boy. Kind of. Oh. Are we talking like FPV drones? are we talking like a sun-o live concert? Before someone comments, I know it's sun that the O is meant to be a symbol

the same as on the amp. I don't care. Oh, you really know your audience, don't you, Tom? Yeah. Seeing how I have no idea what that second thing is, we're going to be talking about regular drones. Okay. Boo. Again, kind of. Yay. Drones, once the territory

of science fiction writers like myself, now live in the nightmares of your modern day soldiers and civilians and more often than not these days, your social media feed, because that's the kind of reality we have created for ourselves. But this is a relatively new development in the history of warfare. Well, obviously, drones have been kicking around for quite a long time now.

Hell, I had a small company-based drone back when I was in the army. It sucked. It was unarmed, but we did have it. One of the stories of my book, The Huligans of Kandar talks about how we just kept crashing the fucking thing because it sucked. But what if we told you? The development of the first armed drone probably goes back a lot further than you think. Is it going to be, you know, strapping some sort of Icarian wings on a gun to a Prussian? That would arguably work better. Okay.

We're talking World War II again. Oh, okay. 1943, and what would eventually turn into the American Operation Aphrodite. There's also a secondary one, Operation Anvil, but pretty much everybody knows it by Operation Aphrodite. But first, some unmanned aerial context. That one for you, buddy. You can boo me all you. I've seen what makes you cheer.

I'm in the chat just posting trash can emojis repeatedly. That's fine. That's where I live. I'm Oscar the Grouch of podcasting. It should probably come as no surprise to anybody that the First Nationists lap some kind of rudimentary radio control system on a weapon was the Nazis.

Nazi pilots in their newly rebirth Luf Wafa discovered during their time assisting Franco's fascist during the Spanish Civil War that, you know what? Hitting a moving ship from a plane is actually really goddamn hard. Wouldn't it be cool if bombs could somehow guide themselves? See, this is interesting for me,

because I understand there are kind of like two strands that you can sort of trace the development of technology such as drones. And like, one of them is this kind of like quasi-humanitarian ideal of like making war less lethal to the individuals fighting it to the extent that you like pursue a form of war which negates the presence or need for humans entirely. And then the other one is the very sort of Nazi fascist form

which is like, how can we make sort of like robot death machines? I also will posit a third option, which is an insane theory that I saw, like, maybe about six months ago in a thread about like, oh, you know, weird Nazi weapons and like people were talking about like, oh, did the Nazis get to the moon? And there was one guy who is burned into my brain. He was like, no, the Nazis didn't develop UFOs because UFOs are Jewish technology. Oh, that's a powerful brain right there. I mean, that's deep Nazi thing is like, their Jews on the moon and that's why we need to get there. I love the idea they did not invent UFOs.

Like the U stands for unidentified being you don't know where they're from, you fucking idiot. They drew them with their hands behind their back. Yeah. So they couldn't see their own drawings. There had been a guy that was working on this for quite some time. A guy named Max Kramer. Kramer is one of those guys that's the perfect product of his day. And by that, I mean, he just kind of worked on everything.

From gliders to cars to proposed missile systems, as well as the science of airflow over bodies and movement. And don't forget not saying the N-word at the comedy store. I mean, probably saying the N-word of the comedy. This specific, Kramer, they would have loved it. We're talking about the Nazis. They're like, they're just cheering, say the N-word again. Eventually, he lands at the German aerospace laboratory and begins work in 1938

on a system of radio controls that could send short signals to a free-falling bomb and redirect it using adjustable spoilers as it fell through the air. Using a system of low band radio signals and radio antenna embedded in the tail of the bomb, the bomb could be dropped, and the pilot and controller who dropped it could then adjust it, assuming they kept the bomb with an eyesight below them and controlled it the entire way. Okay. If you're thinking that this seems to have a pretty serious flaw being that the bomber itself is now a sitting duck after dropping it, you would be right.

They wouldn't be able to take any evasive maneuvers whatsoever to try to run away from, you know, fighter interceptors or incoming fire if they wanted to control the bomb. Like the second the plane moved after dropping the bomb, all control over the bomb was lost. Eventually, what would become known as the Fritz X was born as a 700-pound armor-piercing rudimentary guided bomb. And, you know, they could be guided somewhat. Adjustments could be made, but it's not like a smart bomb. I feel like that's an extra jump in terms. And unlike a lot of seemingly stupid wonder weapons designed by the Nazis, this one was actually quite effective. For a little while, anyway. Slightly over 1,000 of the Fritz X's were built, and they were first deployed in July of 1943. The first deployment was

completely fucked up and the pilot hit nothing, but within a few months of fine-tuning, the Fritz X turned into a real motherfucker. When the Nazis turned on their Italian allies, after, of course, the Italians saw the writing on the wall and did what they did best during any World War, changed sides, the Nazis went after them. A flight of Fritz X armed bombers hit the Italian Navy and fucked it up. Like, this thing worked. Soon it was turned on the Allied Navy and much like the meds that some of us are on, it was super effective. The Italians also tried to make a sort of like proto drone, but out of like pasta, but it didn't work because the soldiers kept eating it. It was the guided yoke. Frizz also wasn't the only radio guided weapon that

the Nazis had rolled out. There was also the HS-293, the first guided anti-ship missile. But the guidance system was somewhat different and the 293 was an armor piercing. It soon began to drop ships off the coast of Italy. And it doesn't take long for the allies to figure out that the bombs were being radio controlled. They in turn worked out countermeasures to them. Jamming systems like we all know and love today. This didn't work great at first, but then the allies kind of got a great gift in that they're able to capture several of the bombs intact at Anzio. Wait, like were they capturing the bombs like mid-air or? The big old net.

No, they invaded Onzio. They're able to construct jamming systems based on the captured designs, which then worked. One of the reasons why the Allies were pretty quick on the uptake when it came to radio-guided bombs was they were working on their own at the same time. This isn't like a technology that the Allies captured from the Nazis and then they're like, oh, this is a really good idea. We should do this. Like they were a parallel invention. There's what's called the Azon bomb and was in development since 1942. Rather than using it target ships, though,

their idea was to use it as a form of precision bombing to hit narrow bridges along the Burma Railway. And largely, these bombs worked on these targets selected for them. I should say, I'm using the word worked the same way like the Nazis bombs worked. They hit targets at a higher percentage than their dumb, unguided cousins. But it's not like they were great.

But the bomb had obvious limitations, mostly the same ones that the Nazis had. Guiding it required planes to hang out overhead, making them sitting ducks for incoming fire, which is also why they chose specifically to use it on targets that probably weren't going to be well guarded. Also, because of that same system, it meant that each plane could only drop one of the bombs

because by the time they were done guiding the first one in, they'd be way out of the target area. So at the same time the Azon is being constructed, the commander of the U.S. Army Air Corps, Henry Harley Arnold, better known as HAP, pitched a new idea. What if we had a radio, controlled bomber, not a bomb, stuffed it full of explosives, thousands of pounds of explosives,

and just crash that motherfucker directly into the target. Ah, American kamikaze. Exactly. See, this is a highly evolved version of my previous idea of strapping a bomb to a dog. Yeah. The Soviet Union would have hired you. They'd get there eventually. I'm still available, guys.

No, the Soviet Union just would have strapped a bomb to a guy. I've been sitting by that phone for years now, waiting for the ring. Like Goodwill hunting. You like Borscht? How do you like that Borsh? They had plenty of old planes sitting around that could be used for this one-way trip and they wouldn't have to worry about

killing any pilots in the process, you know, hypothetically. Okay, interesting. foreshadowing is a literary device used by writers who give hints or clues about events to happen later in the story. Joe's new book is out now. If you like stories,

buy my book, The Highlands Burn. Buy the book. Arnold's idea, despite being admittedly pretty nuts for today was accepted almost universally as soon as he pitched it. I understand that the U.S. military was doing a lot of that kind of thing around that time. Crazy ideas and going, fuck it, go with it. Yeah.

Flea and Cat Island. We ball. Yeah. And the reason for this is pure practicality. The U.S. Army Air Corps at the time, because there was no Air Force yet, was losing a staggering amount of pilots. But they did have a ton of planes. So the goal was we need to kill fewer pilots.

We got stocks of old planes that we don't need anymore. and possibly this will kill less pilots. Great. Wait, so they're going to try and use full-sized planes. Yes, full bombers. Sorry, Tom, did you have a better idea? Maybe a smaller, more nimble,

less costly version? Sorry, you're in the United States and you're suggesting a smaller plane. What are you, a communist? Some gay and communist. You know what, in fact, why don't we build a bigger plane? Yeah.

Yeah, that's using your noodle. And it will say, this is like one of the few times in history that I will say, like the cost of a bomber is like nothing that the US needs to worry about. Yeah. Because this is the era of like hitting the big factory button. This is planes go bur.

And then this idea was given to Jimmy Doolittle to take charge. And then he kicks it over engineers to make this system workable. Jimmy Doolittle, fake ass name in the same league as Al Fork. Yeah. I just, I would point out, they should have had Doolittle training the dogs. Actually, yeah. Maybe it was like a personnel mix up. but they sent the Swiss guy who was probably better at aeronautics to work on the drone

and Jimmy Doolittle was meant to talk to the dogs. Maybe William Prestry could speak to the bombers. Yeah, I do. I hope this episode is coming out after the other one. Otherwise, this could be a very confusing. Okay, that's good. If you could speak to a military vehicle, it'd be like the worst power on earth because it's just full of soldiers jerking off all the time.

Mm-hmm. You're doing J-O-I for the plane? When you first mentioned building a bigger plane for this, drone project, I just immediately pictured a Humvee with wings. Not far from it, honestly. Tiny, tiny wings. Like a really fat horse. So the planes used for the program were the ones concerned no longer usable for normal

combat operations. The term they used for these were, quote, war-weary, or planes that had outlived its service life. That meant they could use the B-17. It was a choice that made a lot of sense, given the fact that the U.S. is cranking out B-17s, like crazy. The U.S. built 12,000. B-17s, and the service life of a B-17 was thought to be 25 missions. Yeah, you know, the U.S. military, much like the men that are in its employer, both very concerned about body count. One third of the planes that were built would survive this estimated combat service life.

So that left the U.S. with a lot of planes to either part out or try to figure out what to do with. Owing to the fact that these are meant to be robot kamikazis, the planes were stripped of thousands of pounds of unneeded gear for the new role. Armor was gone. Turrets were gone. Bomberacks are gone. You don't need those anymore.

The planes are stripped down to the most bare bones possible while technically being able to fly. The only addition, other than the explosives, of course, would be the equipment needed to turn it into a drone, transmitters for control,

and old TV cameras. So crews flying behind the drone in another plane called a mother ship would be able to control it from. They didn't use the term drone because it hadn't been quite developed yet. Rather, they use the term baby. You get a mother ship and you get a baby ship. I thought it was so, you know, before the plane, you know, commits mechanical suicide. It can walk whatever the 1940s version of the Ed Sullivan show.

Flip, flip it on, give it one last show. Yeah. The operators on the mothership would then guide the baby onto the target. Like any responsible mother would. Yeah, exactly. Let's take a moment to talk about the explosives because holy shit was this thing powerful 12,000 pounds of Torpex. Torpex is an explosive normally used in torpedoes hence its name.

What a name. And due to its chemical properties, it had 50% more explosive mass than T&T. I suppose it's meant to detonate under war or so. But what is a drone but a torpedo of the sky? That's right. You don't expect to get a torpedo back, do you?

It's better than my name of the sky pito. Unfortunately, back in World War II, American submarines oftentimes actually got there were torpedoes back, which led to several problems. The torpedoes of the sky is just bringing me back to my idea that Armenians are just landlocked Irish people. It's true. It's true. I can see it. They're not allowed in the air or in the sea. They have to be as close to the ground as possible, hence the average height of an Armenian man. Yeah, that's why I had to be expelled from the country. You were shot like a meaty javelin out into the sky over the border. And all the best ones are Catholic. Sorry. I don't mean that.

That was a joke. Yes, you do. Greg means exactly what he says. You should take him very seriously whatever he says. I defer to the most superior Irishman in this conversation. I would say you're the world's first apostolic, like, hater, but then the entire nation of Turkey exists. So, sorry. So these things were going to be powerful as hell.

However, engineers rapidly ran into a pretty serious problem. The plan, as pitched by Hep Arnold, was quite. honestly impossible. Owing to technological limits at the time, there was no radio control systems available, nor did they have any idea of how to make one that was accurate enough, powerful enough, and stable enough to control the baby while it taxied on the runway and took off. Well, that's it then. It means that we can't do the project. And I guess we have to call it to an end. There's nothing to discuss any further. So this has been lines led by donkeys. Thanks for exactly. Greg, I'll see you guys. I'll see you later. That's when half Arnold was like,

yeah, you guys make a really good point. Sorry about that. No, hop Arnold was like, no, no, No, no, no, we're going to do this because one day, this technology will metamorphosize into, you know, being the foundation for three dickheads in a room talking about my project. Exactly. Slathing his fist on the table and saying, gentlemen, I will have my sky petos. Give me my flying babies. I refuse to have my grandchildren live in a world without riffs beamed right into their phone. What a riff? Your grandkids are going to love him.

Has it been invented yet. No matter what they did, the plane just kept losing connection. not to mention, even if they had a decent one, imagine how hard it would be to control and conduct a takeoff operation using 1940s video cameras that had just been kind of tilted down so you could look at all the controls and out the window and see where you're going from a different plane flying behind it. Like there's so many points of failure here. This is, you know, proof that the American military did not, in their like technical development, you know, department did not hire enough perverts because if you had enough perverts, they were.

would have totally figured out how to make a wireless camera work. That's true. Now, this is normally kind of like Greg joke. Where a plan dies, but not this one. Arnold Doolittle and the engineers once again got together and they tried to figure out how to fix this little problem.

You guys can probably already pick up where this is going, right? If I could walk with the animals, talk to the animals. They put people inside the plane. Oh, good. Yeah, it's just like, you know,

all these like AI assistance or whatever. It's like, yeah, a guy in Guatemala. Yeah, exactly. I'm picturing one guy on the plane sat at the radio desk being like, this is great. And then be like, wait, hold on a minute.

Where are all the other guys shot up in the door slats? To their credit, when they came up with the idea of like, we're going to have to have at least two people in each flight, they wouldn't force anybody to do it. And they would have to be volunteers, a pilot and an engineer. Now the plan changed to account for the fact they're now living folks packed inside of the flying bomb as well. sat next to 12,000 pounds of torpecks.

Yeah, America... Like right behind them. America just inadvertently invented, you know, the Warhammer Dreadnought. It's like, what if we strap one unlucky soldier who is like technically willing because they're committing burger jihad against the East into a death machine? We have to graft a pilot's soul. Yes. To the B-17.

I think it's actually larger than that. I think that the United States military just invented 9-11. Actually, hold that thought. Cool. Because we almost accidentally did that to several British villages, but we'll get there. Oh, great. I hope we do. The crew would control the plane on the ground, take off, get to an altitude of 2,000 feet, go back, arm the bomb and the remote controls, and then jump out of the plane.

Something made easier by a safety feature they decided to include, which was just removing the canopy so you could jump straight out. The get the fuck out button. Well, there was no button. There was just no canopy now. Yeah, it's like, listen, you got it. That'll shave 900 grams. or I suppose we don't use metric because we're in land of the free

is like this will shave like whatever many ounces you know get it out you can jump out the back because like before a pilot would have to walk back to a door that's in the middle of the plane to jump out

the idea was now like oh now you can just get up from your seat and whoop right out the top I don't think it works that way though surely sometimes notice how I said sometimes

good thing about having 12,000 of these planes is there's lots of opportunity for trial and error that's right they're more volunteers they put the door in the wrong place

and the pilot jumps out and goes straight into the engine. It's like, they'll never know this was a failure. All the pilots are dead. And as we've kind of established, there's never any shortage for volunteers for any weird-ass military project. Yes, yes. Then after this process is done,

the pilots jump out. Then the mother ship falling behind would take over flying and conduct the operation. Even with this new setup, the project was, let's say, not exactly putting up dubs. The radio transmission system they were using was a modified version of the same one

used in the Azon bombs. Now this plane is moving faster, it has more moving parts, and significantly more points of failure than the bomb ever did. Pretty soon after the system was implemented, they began running into a few problems. During the first test run, base of the Royal Air Force base at Fursfield, I'm sure I pronounced that wrong, because England town names and all, the pilots took the plane up to where they needed to go, passed controls over to the mothership, and then safely jumped out. However, as the mothership was piloting the drone, they lost connection. it just dropped. Like, you know, you're using T-Mobile or something.

The drone plummeted to the ground and exploded outside the town of Orford. By drone, just to be clear, at this point, you mean plane? Yes. Okay, cool. And it was packing 12,000 pounds of Torpex. Oh, yeah, I mean, you've got to find out what happens. Exactly. Cool.

Listen, you know, something could have gone wrong and we could have gotten the good result of Wigan being completely exploded. Like, this thing is so big, it's creating like a fucking mushroom cloud when it goes off. And since the mission was top secret and the plane is packed full of explosives, British authorities simply claimed that it was a German rocket attack, so nobody would ask any questions about it. And those were quite commonplace in the UK at the time. Yeah. So, you know, from what I'm understanding, at least some small part of the sort of rural blitz campaign was just the poor inhabitants of these small bumfuck towns in England having to endure just endure.

Explosive planes falling out around the side of going, what was that? And then it was a German. Shut up. Yeah. And the government's just like sometimes Barnes just do that. That wasn't an explosion. It was a weather event. Barnes only do that when they're extremely stressed.

Are you sure you're shearing the sheep correctly? Yeah, if you don't shear the sheep regularly, they do just explode with the force of 12,000 pounds of doorbacks. Why is this really fine red rain falling on me in this one particular spot? Whose is that parachute that's been shredded to pieces that's also covered in red rain? With one plane down, it was time to get testing again. Right. So the next baby takes off with its crew aboard.

As soon as they do, something goes terribly, terribly wrong. The pilot doesn't even have time to get to altitude before he loses control. Like this was even a failure of the radio controls or anything. It was just the plane failed. That was the 26th flight. 26 mission. The engineer manages to bail out, but the plane plummets to earth and explodes killing the pilot. I hope that the mothership just has like one of those little tags on the back that just has baby on board.

Yeah, you get a slap a bumper sticker at each one. Since this is the 1940s and they're flying a bomb with the shittiest radio controls in the world. And at the top secret program, absolutely nobody is sure what caused the baby to lose control. the army just shrugged and loaded up another one. Yeah, I can't get over like the idea of like a baby on board tag, but also like in the milieu of American bumper stickers is like in this plane, we kneel for the cross and stand for the flag. And then it's just like a giant decal of a Thompson submachine called on the side. I like the idea of it's like it's one of those very American bumper stickers I've never seen

anywhere else. But it's like one big plane to show like the parent and like several tiny planes to show the babies. Yes. The third flight also. crashed and killed the pilot. This time... We're gonna get it. Don't worry. This time it was after the engineer had bailed out and the pilot turned the remote control system on. Virtually as soon as the plane

switched systems, it just dived directly towards the ground like a fucking meteor trapping him inside because he's supposed to jump out of the now open canopy. But it's diving so fast that he cannot get out.

World is a fork. One dead pilot, a million dead planes. That's a hell way to go. The army looking at his second smoking crater with a corpse inside, waved over another pilot. It was just like poking the corpse of the pilot with a stick. He's like, yeah, he didn't get through it. So this was in the UK as well.

These are all crashing in the UK. So I love the idea to get a British major coming over to going, the damned shame, I'll tell you that. Anyway, load up another yank. Go on. Get him on. We'll get this to work. No better how many yanks die in the process. I don't care how many yanks we have to spend. Send in another one those fly boys. There's a real

methodological failure in that, like, these planes keep crashing and stuff keeps going wrong, but they cannot learn from the mistakes because they keep killing the pilots as well. And also because they're crashing into the ground with so much speed and force. There's no way to like autopsy the flight. Like, oh, yep, it crashed.

What made it crash? Oh, pilot maybe. Mission assessment. Shitful. I'm neither a technician nor an engineer or anyone with that, those kind of skills, but I just can't help but feel as though there must have been some way that you could troubleshoot

before the plane was in the sky. with two human lives on board. I don't think so. That's where I disagree with you. Mostly just because I hate the concept of flight. Yeah, fair enough. If we get rid of more pilots, we'll get rid of the idea of flight. Soon we'll be a ship-based people.

Blown up the yanks. Once again, Armenians meant to be on the ground. Yeah. The next few tests actually went well enough, and by that, I mean, nobody died, and they didn't almost blow up a British village. So the system was tabbed for an active operation. In the beginning of August, 1944,

flights of babies and motherships were dispatched to attack a Nazi U-boat base in France, loaded up with hundreds of fire bombs and nearly a thousand gallons of napolem. The first baby took off, the crew switched over to remote control, safely bailed out, and then the baby lost connection

and crashed into the sea. The next took off, immediately ran to control problems, which left the crew on board. The pilots fought for control of the dying aircraft and circled in the air above Ipswich. People were terrified

that they were about to wipe the fucking town off of the map, because just to be clear here, it absolutely would have been. we're creating a crater in a Midlands, England. But the pilot managed to get enough control back to aim it towards the sea and get the fuck out of there, saving quite possibly hundreds of lives. The next flight sent towards Germany either crashed on their own or were shot down

before their motherships could guide them onto their targets, with one pilot killed because when he bailed out, his shoot didn't open, and he went splat into the British countryside. So not only redropping planes on British villages, we're also just dropping dudes. I'm sure this would have been fantastic for morale for the entire unit of soldiers who are tasked with being part of this operation. Because so far there's an attrition rate of 100%. Not everybody has died. Okay.

Just some severely maim. I would say it's like, you know, 30%, which is still very high. Yeah, you know, you'll die or you can end up like the guy from the one video for Metallica. I do like the idea if you've ever seen the film Dogma. He's like, dudes like me, just don't fall in the sky, you know. But it's happening in a British village and a pilot just goes cratering through your barn. James Hatfield's just like, airplanes, I've taken my legs, taking my arms. I'm picturing, um, just at some port.

Now the plane is done with this one. Oh, Patton, please help me. We're getting a Morse code message through from the plane. What's it saying? It just says kill me. over and over and over again. I'm just picturing some poor couple just mind of their business walking through the street

and having a pilot just go smack into the ground directly in front of them and then some British military propaganda is still trying to keep the secret. It was a German missile. I told you they're getting tired. Jerry started dressing his men up in American uniforms and throwing them from the sky

to signal their surrender. This is what they don't really tell you about the foundation for the Keep Calm and Carry On campaign. Yeah, right. Keep calm, carry on, please step over the flying corpse. That's an albatross. Keep an eye out The Germans falling from the sky

With all the failures and dead bodies beginning to pile up The US Army Air Corps Finally put a pause on the program To try to work out the kinks But that did not mean The project was dead It seems like their kink was killing pilots

Don't stop Believe in Keep on killing all those flyers That's because they're actually Two different programs Trying to do the same thing One for the Army Operation Aphrodite

and the other one for the Navy, Operation Anvil. The operational name would go on to be reused again into what would be called Operation Dragoon, but Operation Anvil in this context means the drone program. Anvil, like a thing famously known for flying. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Maybe it should have been Operation Hammer

because they're going to crash repeatedly into the Anvil. I mean, to be fair, it's pretty accurate with depictions of like anvils from, you know, Acme cartoons of like, you know, between them being dropped on Wiley Coyote. and all these pilots being like smashed to death by like a hulking plane, but it kind of works.

Our head engineer, fucking the roadrunner. It's Hitler's just the roadrunner, he just, the plane crashes and he just pops up over hill and she goes, meep, this is basic project management and just managing expectations. You name it Project Anvil, as long as that plane behaves in the sky to the floor in any way

that is remotely an improvement upon dropping an anvil from the sky, it's a success. Sometimes the plane just does that. The only way is up or down. Yeah, sometimes the only way is down, because there's no landing this fucking thing. The only way is up and then down. Functionally, these programs were the same, though the Navy had a slightly different remote control scheme, and it's not really important for our story here.

And since it was being run by the Navy, they used planes that they had lying around, which happened to be mostly the B-24 Liberator. The Navy was absolutely certain that their program was different and better and decided to aim it towards an important target in order to prove their point. That target was the V3 program. Now, most people are aware of the vengeance rockets. It's what the V stands for, the Nazi rocket program. But the V didn't actually mean rocket.

It just meant vengeance weapon. And the V3 wasn't a rocket at all. Rather, it was a massive multi-stage, multi-chamber, smoothbore cannon that fired a fin-stabilized projectile with the goal of shelling London from northern France. Yeah, I read a really famous book, but written by a New York recluse about this. The cannon was massive and needed to be built at a grade,

into the ground in a series of tunnels. And the idea was that eventually this whole facility would have a whole battery of these cannons pointed towards London and be able to drop hundreds of shells per hour into the city. Obviously, this never happens. So the Navy selected their volunteers from their program, and one of them might be someone that some people may have heard of. Engineer Wilford J. Willie.

No, actually, not that one. Pilot Joseph Kennedy Jr. Yes, a man famous for being very good at flying planes. sound that claxon the Kennedy Claxton Well, weirdly enough the Kennedy Claxton does sound like a gunshot

Well The Kennedy Claxton has two sounds Gunshot and Plink Crash So what happened in the book depository Someone turned to Lee Harvey Oswald And went, oh my God, it's JFK Sound the claxon

You got it, boss Oh shit Oh shit, fuck Fuck, fuck bail out Joseph Kennedy was the oldest of the Kennedy boys Like JFK is his next

youngest brother Joseph had been the one being groomed for a political future. When he was born, his grandfather, who was mayor of Boston at the time, declared a journalist that his grandson was going to be the future president of the United States. To be fair, he was right,

just not in the way that he thought he would be. But it's great, you know, with the naming convention of the family, is like JFK is going to be president. One of them, you know, dies, then, you know, you got another one. Joseph Kennedy Jr. was also a huge fan of one, Adolf Hitler.

Yes. was his father. Joseph's father was a huge fan of Father Charles Coughlin, a virulent anti-Semite, far-right, Catholic-American nationalists. At least at first, Kennedy eventually turned against Coughlin when Coughlin

accused FDR of being a communist, but not for any of the other stuff that Coughlin stood for, which is kind of ironic because Joseph Sr. would eventually turn against FDR for standing with the UK in the war against the Nazis. Joseph's father then became ambassador to the UK and held countless unawful

authorized meetings with his Nazi counterparts, where he expressed support for what they were doing prior to the war and said that America would support the Nazis too, but unfortunately, FDR had simply fallen under the spell of Jewish influence. I all believe the people of the UK should side with the Nazis. He hung out with an intensely pro-Nazi circle of the British aristocracy, which admittedly is just almost the whole thing. It's like him, rolled out. It's just redundant. to say the royal family. The king. When the war started, Joseph was vocally against it

and kept trying to organize unauthorized meetings personally with Adolf Hitler to try to bring the US and Germany closer together. Imagine getting left on red by Hitler. His meetings eventually leaked back into the US media and he again, of course, blamed the Jews for this. Can't get a text back because of the Jews. There's definitely dudes who are posting shit like that's like,

oh, I'm getting left on red. by some Freud because of the juice. I mean, that's effectively the whole male loneliness epidemic excuse, right? He eventually resigned but publicly remained a supporter of FDR due to previous agreements the two had in exchange for Kennedy using his influence to get FDR elected. FDR would then in turn support Joseph Jr. in his assumed future political career. Joseph Jr. had a lot of the same beliefs as his father. He had traveled to Germany in 1934 and absolutely loved it.

Or as he put it, quote, need of a common enemy, someone of whom to make the goat, someone by whose riddance the Germans would feel they have cast out their cause of their predicament. It was excellent psychology, and it was too bad that they had done it to the Jews. The dislike the Jews, however, was well-founded. They were at the heads of all the big businesses and law, etc. It is to their credit for them to get so far, but their methods have been quite unscrupulous. The lawyers and the prominent judges were all Jews, and if you had a case against a Jew, you were almost certain to lose it. As far as the brutality is concerned, it must have been necessary to use some.

The Irish should have never become white. Yeah, this is like just one of those situations where, you know, oh, you have to understand that not everybody knew what was going on in the Third Reich and not everyone knew what they were really up to. And then you just get a quote like that in which an individual very highly placed in the American establishment is, sort of to the letter, sort of perfectly like analyzing and diagnosing both like the political program and the prognosis for this solution. Yeah, we need to make the greater Massachusetts area all Judenfry.

he loved the Nazi sterilization program too. He wrote about it saying, quote, it's a great thing. It'll do with many of the disgusting specimens of men. So quite literally what you were saying, Greg, is like, well, they didn't know everything the Nazis were doing.

Meanwhile, Joseph Kennedy Jr.'s like, no, I've seen what they're doing. It rocks. No, he read Jonathan Swift, and he was like, oh,

this is actually a really good idea. Yeah, one of the, one of the kind of like pithy remarks that I often make lately with regards to sort of institutional, both Islamophobia and increasingly trans, transphobia in the United States and the UK is that like the primary lesson that a lot of these sort of liberal intelligentsia and ruling class learned from the 20th century with regards to

fascism and a third Reich was good system wrong target yeah and you know that always feels a bit glib but when I say that and then you hear a comment from Joseph Kennedy Jr. saying everything they're doing is absolutely bang on it's just unfortunate they're doing to the Jews but I do kind of agree with that also Joseph Kennedy Jr. is it in the background just going lads, lads, lads, lads, lads, lads. Chuck, Chuck, Chuck. After the night of the broken glass, Joseph wrote to another American Nazi supporter, Charles Lindbergh. Okay. Saying that he was concerned.

Not about the street violence, but how bad the violence looked, which is quite ironic because that's what a lot of people within the Nazi government thought as well, which is, you know, why it evolved into what it was. Like a lot of people, both in the U.S. and the UK, who definitely agreed with a lot of what the Nazis were doing. When the war started, he dropped out of university at Harvard. and was commissioned into the Navy as a pilot to fight in the war. It's one of those, like, strange things that happened during pretty much every World War,

every large-scale war in general. Even really anything that gives, like, a little veneer of, like, adventurism and daring do is, like, no, like, I actually quite like the people who are going to go fight, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to go do it because it seems fun. I'm choosing to believe that it was actually an alternative thing where what happened was people were going, you know what, this guy's such an insufferable prick. Can we please put him in one of those babies? No, let's...

Let's take a third way, revanchus position and that, like, we need to bring this back this sort of rhetoric because, you know, oh, woke university students now would not get on the death plane to fight the Nazis. Well, that's the thing is he didn't start off

on the death plane. Like, he completed his regulation 25 combat flights over the next couple years. The way it worked back then is that pilot casualty rates were so high that they had a combat mission number that when they reached it, Sometimes that number moved up, sometimes it moved down, they could just get out of the military or take another assignment.

Hey, listen, look, all you can say is that Joseph Jr. had a more successful flight record than JFK Jr. I mean, the Kennedy's a low bar, but you are correct. Yeah, you need to stay away from guns and planes. And also the Department of Health. Yeah, I'm now constructing an alternative theory of the Kennedy curse, which is that they basically saw this first guy that was a massive Nazi in such bad violence. 0.0. There's only one solution with this. We need to eradicate your entire bloodline. Maybe RFK Jr. is kind of like the emperor of man and that like all the other Kennedys need to be sacrificed in order to funnel like power into him like psychers being sacrificed to the emperor. I mean, thankfully he'll take human sacrifice but also just any random road kill that they find. Yeah. Like he'll do cocaine off the toilet seat.

Yep. He sure will. He'll also share your steroid dealer. Mm-hmm. So yeah, like I said, he finishes his regulation 25 combat flights and then volunteers to join operas. Anvil in the Navy. So with that, let's go back to the U.S. Navy's first active operational baby flight, which sounds like it could be a lot of different things, to be completely honest. Kennedy and Willie took off in their plane, which had the wonderful name, Zoot Suit Black. Oh, my God. I hate America so much for a myriad of reasons, but shit like this constantly. Just imagine the whole plane wearing a Zoot Suit. suit on a plane. That's why they kept crashing

because they're fucking shirt sleeves. They just got a... Getting caught in the turbine. Bad for O'Donem. Instead of a pinup being painted on the nose, they just have like a really, really good portrait of Dizzy Gillespie on the front. He's playing Scar three decades too soon. What the fuck is that?

It might not be for you, but your kids will hate it too. I will defend Scott. Fuck you. You would. Now, obviously their flight like I said, was targeting the V3 program. Behind them were three other planes, a recon plane whose job is a recon plane whose job is record the entire operation, a navigator plane, and the mothership. At first, everything went according to plan. Kennedy brought the plane to the altitude it required and engaged the remote

control system. As was procedure, they remained on board as the system took over. This also worked, seemingly flawlessly. Kennedy and Willie then went to go back and arm the bomb so they could then bailout out of their designated bailout point over Kent. Kennedy radioed the code word for the bomb being armed, which was spade flush, and then the plane immediately exploded in the air. But the alternative is like the plane could have crashed into like Tombridge Wells. And it was like, you fuck, what you're doing? Crash in your plane in your more front garden. He went to the back of the plane. What's this really weird? What's this book depository doing at the back of the plane? I mean, to be fair, what are you aiming for? If it did crash it, Ken, you know all the metal

will be stripped from that record within about three seconds. Listen, I'll have it. It all goes back to nature. Obviously, this explosion kills them both instantly. A Kennedy? And don't forget Engineer Willie. So let listen. Nobody ever remembers Engineer Willie. All the headlines just like, Willie dead. Like tiny, tiny, tiny tiny dead. Willie, won't he?

Kennedy also killed. Don't worry. You're getting used to it. Yeah, I mean, like, much like JFK's head, sometimes planes just do that. Exactly. Burring debris rains down the village of Blyberg, damaging 50 buildings, inserting several fires. You can't say the people of Blyberg don't hate you, Mr. Kennedy. They certainly didn't blame Willie.

Yeah. Nobody ever blames Willie. Nine. Nine. Not Willie. Nine, they have killed Willie. The explosion was so powerful and nearly blew the recon plane that was following it out of the air and injured one of the men on board and forced them to make an emergency landing in a nearby field. If this was a much more covered story, we could have had an alternative version of the song from Inside Lewin Davis.

I was like, please, Mr. Kennedy, oh, oh, I don't want to please. Don't shoot me into outer Kent. I said, please. That's what to be clear. Was this plane, do you know what explosives were laden on this plane? Was this one napalm? No, this one was pure Torpex. Okay, fantastic.

Either way, it would be horrific. But the idea of like watching it, like, seeing just two of your colleagues just like exploded a fireball that had raised down on the floor. Maybe the planes keep exploding because the Torpex's reached sentience. It's like, I'm not in water. Fuck this. I hate these. air. I'm taking you down with me, Mr. Kennedy.

They didn't check the Torpex's full label and see that its surname was Oswald. But this is where I get to tell you, wait, it gets worse. Oh, good. The mission they were going on to attack the V3 program was actually completely pointless from the very beginning. Not like the U.S. military.

That's because in July 6th, 1944, acting on Intel passed to them by the French resistance, the Royal Air Force bombed the V3 site with their infamous Hallboy earthquake bombs. Using regular planes. Yeah, regular as planes. Special bombs, but, you know.

America just like heard that. I meant, go. What if we threw a Kennedy at it? Yeah, so you completed the mission. Like, using, what's not impressive, is it? And no one died. We've killed dozens of Kennedys, and we're going to do more. We have vats of Kennedys growing in the lab.

Go back to the Boston Laboratories. Pull a few more out of the goo. They're just like, I remember a guy I used to know who trained to be a doctor in the, like, I think late 60s. And he explained to me, like, the cadaver. pool where like you learn about cadavers and just like, yeah, it was just like a pool of cadavers and you just got like a hook and like pulled one out. Yeah, you gotta go fishing.

The Royal Air Force bombing mission rendered the cannon site, which was already under construction, totally worthless. It was abandoned and never restarted again. Good for them. That meant there's absolutely no reason for the Kennedy mission to go ahead, but the Royal Air Force never told the Navy or the Army Air Corps, so they had no idea. So therefore, dead Kennedy, no good reason for it. No, I think there's a good reason. I think Joseph Sr. knew this was going to fail, and he was like, put my boy on the plane because he knew it would sharpen John.

Steel, sharpened steel. He will be steeled in his reserve by the death of his brother, and he will become the top shagger president. Sort of Biden, Hunter Biden situation. JFK got pretty grievously wounded in World War II. Yeah. I don't know if the theory pans out.

Or maybe Joseph was like, we'll send them both to war, one of them will at least survive. Yeah. Odds are we'll get one back. But it did wonders for Hunter Biden, but also you have to remember that, you know, JFK himself also, you know,

sharp as attack. Yeah, it's like, listen. No issues with drug abuse or anything like that. No. The Navy launched an investigation into the incident and then, you know, like all the other one just kind of shrugged. Yeah, it's just a Kennedy.

Don't worry. You gotta get used to it. Here, listen, they're Irish, but they have lots more. The whole program is full of so many problems. All the only thing they could come up with was, well, the crew probably didn't fuck up and cause the explosion, the bomb was rigged wrong or the electrics were wrong. Something was wrong,

but the crew didn't do it. Blame the Irishman. We know this one. Blame Willie. Yeah. And then there are some stories about how the Navy covered up Kennedy's death, which isn't entirely true. They did cover up how he died for at least a year. But the real reason for that isn't because he was a Kennedy. It's because he was involved in a secret program. They didn't tell anybody else how the other pilots died either. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of this like prequel to the Subruder. No, I do. When we were in the sky, I looked out the window and I swear, dog. They'll tell you it wasn't there, but I saw a grassy knoll, dog.

Right out there. I mean, to be fair. There is technically a Ziprooter film of this Kennedy dying too. Oh, for goodness sake. Not a lot of people do about Zepruder. Air Leafs work. Sick of these Kennedys and there's Zepruder films. It's like the people who's like, oh, you've seen like a serious man.

It's like, oh, you don't know the real shit. You haven't watched Barton Fink. As far as we know, like, all it happened was that like the entire Kennedy family had a congenital allergy to cameras. Yes. That's the theory I'm going with from now on. This is like kind of obscured the real details of what happened to the point that there is some sort of confusion

on what mission he actually died on. With some sources saying he died while targeting a U-boat pen on a mission that actually took place about a week before he really died. However, official documents dispatches from Doolittle and the book, Kennedy's at war, points out that he, He died on August 12th, 1944, which is the day of the V3 mission. Like, maybe, and this is like a wild swing, is maybe the Kennedys are the first, like, proper example of spontaneous human combustion. And it's because Joseph Sr. made a deal with Satan that one of his sons would be president.

Yeah. Why not? He really likes Hitler. That's a good enough reason for me for him to explode. A truly faustian bargain is like one of my offspring will be president. and Satan just goes, yes, but not for a long. I mean, I just... All the other children will die in increasingly comedic ways. I just think it has to be absolutely humiliating posthumously to have a thing where sort of anybody who talks about,

he's like, no, he was really great. He was a war hero who fought and died for our country. And he go, what was he doing? I don't know. We don't know. This is where things get kind of weird. There's another strange wrinkle to this whole story, which brings us to a different American family.

The Roosevelt's. I thought it was going to be like big, Edy and little edie. We're going to get into Grey Gardens next. Elliot Roosevelt, FDR's son, was a colonel in the army, and he claimed have been in the recon plane filming the Kennedy mission. Take that, you bitch. This camera's going to take you down.

But that's the thing. I've got to beat on him. He said this for years, but there's no evidence he was ever there at all. Like, he was not involved in this whatsoever. So we got an exploded Kennedy and a Roosevelt stolen valor. situation and the same mission. To the Delta Force guys that claim they killed bin Laden.

Exactly. It's a bunch of Roosevelt's being like, no, I killed Kennedy with my camera. Put some respect on that psycho. If he was a seal. It's like, you know, when rappers film them and their crew jumping other rappers. Yeah. This is called evidence. Stomp on his head.

Stomp on his head. But like, Elliot Roosevelt was not there. This lie went on four years. Such a strange thing to lie about. Yeah. Why lie about it? He was a colonel. Like he was doing actual work.

Like weirdly Roosevelt's kids were actually like pretty competent at their job. But then he had to just like, by the way, I was there when Kennedy died. Yeah, but also again, you're just way, way ahead of the mark. Give it two decades and be like, I was there when Kennedy died.

Fucking bomber. No one gives a shit about this one. That is absolutely like a drunken lie. You would tell a woman that you're trying to sleep with out of bars. I know, Kenny, I was there when he died and she just goes with him exploding. She's like, which one?

Don't worry about it. I was like, no, no, no. I was there at the like lesser known one. I was at the Velvet Underground of Kennedy Jimbs. The oysters and a noibouten of Kennedy deaths. You've probably never heard of him, Joseph Kennedy Jr. Like, everybody's so popular with the

I was there when JFK got killed. But y'all motherfuckers haven't heard of Joseph Kennedy exploding. Or even like those people who are like, oh, you know, when Robert died and was like, oh, I was so upset. I was like, no, I was there with the real shit. A real hero for this country. Civil rights. Who cares about that? This man

was going to bomb the Nazis. And he bombed himself. So technically, He did bomb the Nazis. And to be, to be fair, if you are like... Actually, that's unfair. I don't know if Willie was a Nazi. He bombed precisely one Nazi. But if you were, like, in the milieu that, like, the Kennedys and the Roosevelt's were, like,

moving in, most of those people probably did not like the civil rights movement either. No. I mean, FDR is about as good as it got, but... The other thing as well is that this is, like, classic lying guy behavior where, like, you're lying, but the thing with lying guys is that they always overcook it. And the thing with, like, the JFK assassinations, you know, like, unless you were there in Dallas at the time, but... Like the only way you would have heard about it is on the radio.

You wouldn't have seen it and, you know, people heard it being announced on the radio. And this is a guy, like, that's nothing. Two decades ago, I was there and I saw the other Kennedy getting killed. Not only that. I was there and I filmed it with my camera. And it's like, you're full of shit, man. And like, he lied in a way that's so easily disprovable. Because like the military keeps paperwork on who's on every flight.

Like, bro, you're not on this one. It's like, the pure Sims is like, can I see it? No. There were several other attempts to make this stupid program work too. but every single mission ended in failure. It killed several more pilots, including a guy who tried to bail out but got strangled by his own

static line parachute when he jumped. So, you know, they added a wind chime to the plane. Another wonderful fuck-up happened in October, same year when a flight of babies targeted some Nazi U-boat pens in Germany. Their weather was terrible, but the mission went ahead anyway.

And when it became clear that the weather was so bad they couldn't even find their target, they tried to guide the babies towards Berlin just to hit something, right? But they lost control of them. One of the babies crashed into the sea, which seems like they loved doing,

after running out of fuel, but another one just kept going, independent of any control, flying all the way over Germany, crossing into Sweden, and crashed and exploded outside this town of Trolhattan. Sorry, just to be clear, Joe, which plane models were being used for these missions?

It was a B-17 and a B-17, and a B-24, mostly. Just for an individual like me who's not as well-versed in sort of military technology, give me a sort of comparative of the size of these planes. For World War II, they're quite big. This sounds hellish.

Like the B-17 is like, when you close your eyes and think of a World War II bomber, you're probably thinking of the B-17. This sounds like an absolutely hellish situation for anybody not directly involved to see like planes, just like Kamakazi, like crashing into the sky,

intentionally or not. This doesn't happen to be in Sweden, of all places. Yeah, this sounds like an absolutely hellish way to both like wage warfare and experience it as like an innocent non-combatant on the ground. Thankfully it was very successful. Oh, that's good. There was another mission with the delightfully named plane, the stump jumper. Yes.

Which just sounds like something someone on the internet would call my mom. This flight also failed. The stump jumper jumped to no stumps. Oh, boo. Rather than being officially canceled, Aphrodite and Anvil just kind of petered out. Army and Navy teams went back to the drawing board trying to fix the mass while planners, and commanders kept trying to figure out just the right target for their big dumb babies.

But as the war began to shift undeniably in the favor of the Allies and just normal-ass bombing did more and more damage and because of air superiority, fewer pilots died. The further use of the babies got kicked down the road is just being largely unnecessary. I do love the idea of like the whole time

they're doing this, like the British Air Force are just doing regular bombing campaigns just sort of like racking up winds and then everyone... I mean, so is the United States. Yeah, fair enough. I might be like flying, be like, fuck are you guys doing? That's like the weird thing of,

like the US bombing campaigns were like fucking catastrophicly successful by the definition of success of the day. Yeah. But at the same time, they were losing so many pilots. So it's like, what if we could do this without killing?

Because the pilots are kind of hard to train. But then after a while, you stop losing so many pilots. Like, okay, we don't need to use a giant radio control flying monstrosity. Yeah, but like we got so many more Kennedys we have to kill. They stopped all there ahead.

And also JFK wasn't a pilot, so they couldn't use him. I mean, that's why JFK got shot is because they couldn't get him in this program. So eventually they had to get Lee Harvey Oswald to Russia to be programmed to come back and then kill him and then get Jack Ruby who isn't a gemstone. Thank you. I think that by this method of madness, JFK would technically have to be killed by a boat because he was on a PT boat. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The problem they're coming up to basically is that as you said, like pilots are very hard to train. and what they need is the kind of caliber of pilot who's valuable enough to put it in a plane but not so valuable that you're going to be sad if you lose them but unfortunately they hadn't perfected the McCain yet. That's one of the problems with this program is like the pilots volunteering for

had largely finished all their missions anyway. Just imagine some really dog shit pilot and they're like, oh yeah, you're perfect. So on McCain, I don't know if I said it on the show is when I was in Hanoi weeks ago, I was crossing over a bridge to go to a temple and I was walking back and I spotted this statue.

I was like, what the fuck is this? and all of the writing in it is in Vietnamese but there's like a little sign next to it and I read it and it's like there's a monument on this bridge to John McCain getting downed and it's like so cool I was like imagine you fucked up so bad

that an entire nation decides to build a monument to your fuck up I mean it's a bit of a retroactive flex because he became famous after he was shot down which is why that that memorial becomes important just like if he never gets elected or does anything just like he's just another pilot picket. I think I seem to remember

hearing that there was even a thing where John McCain visited that memorial or something like it, believing that it was a statue that had been erected as a tribute to him. Yeah, I don't know. Have to check, have a Google, I could be wrong, you know, I'm an idiot. But I'm pretty sure there was a whole story where he went and it was like, no, we're making fun of you, dude.

There may even be photos of him with the statue. So the project was eventually approved for further use in April of 1945, but then, you know, the war eventually ended shortly thereafter and stopped even more pilots from dying an Ackman ass ways and stripped down, busted up planes over England and Germany.

One Kennedy down. The end. One Kennedy down. We're coming for the rest of you fuckers done you were. How well. I've got a plane with your name on it. Everybody just trying to coax Kennedys into the drone plane. Don't ask why. I have a thing with RFK where every single time I try and do an impression

of him, I just end up going I'm not an impressions guy, but I feel like if I did that my throat would just hurt. But yeah, that is Operation Aphrodite and the fate of one very fascist friendly Kennedy in a ball of fire. But fellas, we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion.

If you'd like to ask us a question, you can support the show on Patreon to get access to the Discord, which has a channel for this kind of thing. You can ask us on Patreon. You can put it in a radio-controlled plane and blow it up somewhere over the UK. And we will answer it on the air. That was a joke for anybody that's listening.

Yeah, don't do that. Don't do that. That's frowned upon. It doesn't just get covered up as a state secret anymore. So today's question from the Legion is, if you can nuke one fast food franchise out of existence, what would it be? Huh. Would be Leon, which is a very UK. It's like...

Never had it. So it's fast food, but it's meant to be like healthy so you can get like a chicken breast burger that has barely any flavor on it and some waffle fries. It's like Protestant McDonald's pretty much. Okay. I kind of assume McDonald's was Protestant McDonald's. No, that's, you know, that's multi-faiths, you know, unless you are Palestinian. Greg, what's your answer?

I'm going to have to say subway, primarily because... No, no. I'll defend Subway. Subway is trash. I'm 100% with Greg on this one. First of all, like, subway is trash. Second of all, like, I feel like... And I should point out here, we need to pick out what we're nuking based on the flavor and the restaurant itself. Yes. Okay. I'm still picking Subway. Okay, so, no, I have reasons for that with Subway. Like, yeah, the food is trash. But then also, like, I feel like particularly in, like, cities like London.

and other big cities where you used to have like a sort of thriving sort of independent deli sandwich chains. I feel like Subway is one of the companies in the early 2000s along with other like cafe chains that like basically killed that off and replaced us with like just sort of dead chain cafes everywhere. And thirdly, I mean this absolutely fucking seriously. Like Subway have not paid for the crimes that they are responsible with relation to Subway Jared. I'm not even fucking kidding. It's absolutely outrageous. Yeah, I'm actually, I completely forgot about that. I was picking Subway based on the fact that their sandwiches suck, but there's also that too. Also, the thing with Subway is that they got brought to court because their bread didn't

had so much sugar in it that it didn't technically count as bread. I mean, I assume this is not a lawsuit that happened in the United States. No, it happened to the UK. I remember when, like, Subway used to be impassable. And then they, like, everything's getting, you know, progressively worse. But Subway, like, was ahead of the curve on that one. I really fucking hate Subway. So I'm a toss up between Subway and mostly Subway.

And I can't think of another one that I hate. Like, I don't really eat fast food. I like Arby's. and it's a regional, it's a regional delight. But yeah, like, honestly, anybody, if you've actually looked into this whole subway Jared story, like, I know everyone knows like, the truth is out there.

I know everyone knows the basic story that, oh, they had this mascot and it was a pedophile, but it is, it was a scandal, like, as sort of evil as, like, the BBC Jimmy Saville scandal where, like, they all knew what was going on. They assisted him, and they're like, no, we have to protect Jared. Look at him. He's so valid.

Protected Jared at all cause. Yeah, no, like absolutely disgusting. He needs to stand out there holding a big pair of pants. Oh, a London one I will, but actually kind of UK in general, like Pratt, New Pratt from space, I hate their coffee. When I moved to this country, they had the subscription

where you pay 20 quid a month and you get like five coffees a day. And this is a pretty sweet deal. But this was the summer when like, it was like 40 degrees one day. And every single preet did not carry ice. And they were like, oh, sorry, no ice drinks today. Do you want like a room

temperature ice latte with no ice? That's just shitty coffee. That's homophobic. Yeah, you're right, Tom. worse than the subway story. Yeah. I've never gotten coffee at a Pret and I've only gone to a Pret at airports. Do you want a sandwich that is 90% spinach?

I like spinach though. I don't know what that's supposed to mean. I've seen you run on a treadmill. You're like a horse. That's why I hate them so much there can be only one. But I believe that's a podcast. Fellas, you host other podcasts. Plug those other podcasts.

Beneath skin, show about the history of everything told you to the history of tattooing and I am the producer of a show called Bloodwork with this wonderful man sitting beside me. Hello, listen to Bloodwork, a podcast about the economy of violence. Once again, my name is Gregory Foley. I'm the host. Yeah, nah, I've been doing it with Tom for about six months

now. We've had a really good fun. We've got a lot of really quite interesting, exciting episodes that are lined up to come out in sort of June and into July. If you would like to hear a story about a load of flat-nosed geysers who recruited a neo-Nazi wizard, check out our Patreon.

Yeah, the history of Combat 18 with Gareth Watkins. We've just come back with part three. And yeah, it's heating up, which is to say it's getting even dumber and they're about to pull the screwdrivers out. So tune in. Or alternatively, you can listen to our four-powered series on the history of the AK-47. This is no longer the only show that I host.

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Leave us a review and wherever it is you listen to podcasts. Buy my book. The Highlands Burn out now on paperback, ebook and audiobook. Read by me in case you're not sick of my voice. Until next time, crawl into a plane and then jump out of it and die. Yeah, go Kennedy yourself. Yeah.