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Marconi Beach, located in Wellfleet, a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, was the scene of a great discovery. In early April, a group of residents found a suspicious object in the sand. After contacting a specialist, they determined that it was an artifact related to a top-secret United States military program, dating back to the Cold War era.
As reported by the official account of the Cape Cod National Seashore, the peninsula where Marconi Beach is located, “a man-made object appeared in the sand” and “appeared to have been in the ocean for quite some time.” “Our staff worked to get him out of there before the predicted storm arrived,” the announcement concluded.
The locals were baffled. The contraption looked like a missile, but that was not exactly what it was. Therefore, they decided to leave the matter in the hands of an expert and took it to the park’s historian, Bill Burke. That specialist “examined the object and determined that it was actually the fuselage of a RCAT (Remote Controlled Aerial Target),” as park officials described on April 10.
The remains found on Marconi Beach were part of an unmanned vehicle that was used during the Cold War. In this sense, park officials clarified: “The RCATs were drones used for target practice for anti-aircraft training off Marconi Beach at a former United States military training camp, Camp Wellfleet, during the 1940s and 1940s. 1950?
The planes were equipped with these RCATs, which “were launched at 100 kilometers per hour” and then controlled remotely from a nearby cliff. At first, they were launched in a kind of catapult to boost their takeoff, on a runway approximately ten meters long.
The program was considered “top secret” and each of the devices cost $2,500, which is equivalent to about $32,000 today when adjusted for inflation, according to a website dedicated to preserving the legacy of Camp Wellfleet.
On that page, they say that “the planes were all metal, with a wingspan of three meters and a skid on the bottom for emergency landings when the parachute didn’t work.” According to estimates, they would travel at 360 kilometers per hour and some would make up to 20 flights before being shot down.
