Suicide Machines – First-Generation Drones

Death can’t be avoided forever. But sometimes the inevitable can be delayed. Grumman’s F6F Hellcat fighter had once been the workhorse of World War II. But now, more than a decade after Japan’s surrender, these once-vaunted predators of the Pacific were nothing more than ducks in a shooting gallery. Stripped of its guns and embarrassingly coated with bright red paint, one of these old planes was coaxed onto the runway at Naval Air Station Point...