Most do not know that during WW2 captured German V-1 missile components taken from Sweden and Poland by Britain were transferred from Britain to the US in 1944. Over 2500 components went to Wright Field for evaluation and duplication. Ford would copy the engine as the PJ-31 and Republic Aviation (later Willys-Overland) would produce the airframe. For the USAAF this became the JB-2 Thunderbug and for the US Navy the KUW-1 Loon. Both were to be mass-produced for the invasion of Japan. USAAF Thunderbugs would be air-dropped, Navy JB-2s would be ship-launched, and Army JB-2s would be mobile ramp launched! By the summer of 1945 1385 US buzzbombs airframes were manufactured with 2401 pulsejet engines. But they never saw action b/c Japan surrendered on Aug 15, 1945. Postwar, the US continued testing and developed more modern versions of the world's first TRUE cruise missile (the WW1 Liberty Eagle/Kettering Bug and Siemens Gleiterbombe as well as British WW2 Miles Hoopla too crude and unreliable).

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4007/5152253763_a0a344cb52.jpg http://www.mace-b.com/38tmw/missiles/images/JB2_12-2.jpg