DeKalb's "Secret Airplane"-- Part 1: For the U.S. Navy, the Interstate TDR-1 Drone

Continued from my December 21, 2018, post.

From the May 24, 2011, DeKalb County Life "DeKalb had role in first guided missile" by Barry Schrader.

Roger Keys bought a model U.S. WW II plane at a garage sale in Waterman, Illinois, back about thirty years ago for $5.  But, he did not recognize what kind of plane it was, not could anyone else he asked.

Finally, someone who had worked at the Wurlitzer plant in DeKalb during the war, told him what he had bought and that they had built it for the U.S. Navy.   He spent the next decade gathering all he could on this strange plane.

In 1942, Wurlitzer signed a contract with the Navy to convert its peacetime piano factory in DeKalb, Illinois, into an aircraft production center.  They were to work with Interstate Aircraft based in Segundo, California, in the project.  It took just seven months for Wurlitzer to retool its plant and it went into the airplane business.

They were to build the Interstate TDR-1 drone plane.

Drones This far Back?  I Thought They Were of More Recent Vintage.  --GreGen