I'm visiting my son in Alaska, and came across this strange sight below in a little aviation museum in Wasilla. There was no explanation associated with the beast, so I had to google around when I got home to find out why a V-1 Rocket was rusting in an Alaskan forest. It turns out not to be a V-1 at all, but a reverse engineered (from parts collected in England in 1944) Republic-Ford JB-2. The war ended before these could be put to use, but the initial plan was to build 75,000 of these for launch against Japan and Germany. One of the survivors somehow ended up in Wasilla, Alaska. Wiki lists about 15 surviving JB-2s tucked away in odd places across the world.
I have never heard of the JB-2 before, cool find Kodiak. Wasilla, Alaska.......aka middle of nowhere?
Wasilla isn't the middle of nowhere, but you can see it from there, right next to Russia. Aviation is a big deal in Alaska ebecause there are so few roads, but how this thing ended up there is inexplicable. Somebody probably wanted to weld it to the back of a snow machine. .
Good idea but time was running out for its usage. Of course without the A-bombs they could have been used against Japan but "the production of JB-2s was terminated on 15 September. A total of 1,391 units were manufactured.". Bulding JB-2´s would also mean these factories would not make aeroplanes.
I think you mean Jeeps...Republic was using Willys-Overland to produce the airframe & Ford was producing the engine.
I always knew this as the Loon. It was the precursor of the post war Matador and the USN's Regulus 1 which substituted a disposable turbojet for the Argus. There was a similar project in Britain and the Rolls Royce Soar engine was developed for this.
