1st Experimental Guided Missiles Group

1st Experimental Guided Missiles Group
Postwar testing of the Republic-Ford JB-2 at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico
Active	1946–1949
Country	United States
Branch	United States Air Force

The 1st Experimental Guided Missiles Group is an inactive United States Air Force unit. It was last assigned to the Air Proving Ground Command and stationed at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. It was inactivated on 22 July 1949.

The 1st EGMG was the initial United States Army Air Forces (later United States Air Force) dedicated missile unit.

Formed a result of the Air Materiel Command's Engineering Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base looking for a location to allow its contractors to launch missiles.

Initial mission of unit was to determine Air Force missile requirements and review missile propulsion, guidance, and launching technologies. Also matrixed contractors to technologies:

The contractor would be responsible for the requirements, and ultimately responsible for seeing that the project planning and development came together. It should also be noted that in the late 1940s, the available funding that was provided to the Air Force was directed towards jet aircraft development. Missiles, at the time, were a piecemeal effort which reflected much competition among the three military branches and development often took a backseat to Strategic Air Command bomber and tanker force improvements.

In March 1947, when the group received its first series of test projects. Though most of the group's efforts were devoted to "on-the-job" training and providing assistance to contractors who launched those weapons, the 1st began implementing its mission, which included

During the war, experiments were made with approximately twenty-five war-weary B-17s (mostly F models) that were packed with high explosives to be used against heavily fortified Nazi weapons sites in France. These aircraft, designated "BQ-7" experiments (Project Aphrodite and Project Castor) were not successful due to the inability of the aircraft to be launched and controlled remotely, and the need for the aircraft to have a flight crew that would bail out and control of the plane be transferred to a director aircraft which would direct it to the target. Control difficulties in the wartime conditions led to the cancellation of the program.

Development in the United States of the wartime technology was accelerated by the 1946 Operation Crossroads atomic tests. The testing program called for drone aircraft to be flown through the atomic clouds after the explosion with monitoring and air sampling equipment. The requirement was for the drone aircraft to be taken off, flown and landed by radio control. The Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Field, Ohio, developed a refined remote control system in about six weeks, advancing the World War II technology to meet the requirements. Initial testing was performed at Clovis Army Air Field, New Mexico. On 16 February 1946, the technology was successfully demonstrated using a war-weary B-17 that was flown in all phases of the flight remotely by radio control from a "mother" aircraft.