6We’ve previously talked about bizarre things that happened during the Cold War, and there are many more such stories. Four decades truly is more than enough time for all sorts of wackiness.
On August 20, 1956, the US Navy was testing an automated drone designed for use in tests of air-to-air missiles. The drone was supposed to crash in the Pacific Ocean but instead malfunctioned and started heading for Los Angeles. The Navy, understandably panicked about the drone heading toward a major city, sent two fighter aircraft to shoot it down. That should have been a simple mission, right?As it turned out, the fighters were ill-equipped to shoot down the drone. Even after firing 208 unguided air-to-air rockets at the drone, the fighters failed to do anything but set fire to Los Angeles County below them, with rockets landing in people’s backyards and blazes burning very close to a munitions factory. The fires burned 1,000 acres. The drone finally crashed when it ran out of fuel, thankfully coming down in an empty stretch of desert.