Horten 229

The first Stealth aircraft was made in Germany in 1944! It was made by two brothers named Walter and Reimar Horten, designed in 1942 and secretly built in a garage they produced an extraordinary piece of work. Its supposed top flight speed was 1000KM an hour- and it had radar absorbant coating made of charcoal, and radar relfectant profile. The plane could go 1000km/hr for 1000km and could carry 1000km of bombs. I think that this was probably the most amazing German or any aircraft that ever flew in world war 2.

whoa....it could cary 1,000 kilometers of bombs, thats a very long string of bombs. And at 1,000 kmh? That's just ludacris. Work on your facts/information before posting.

my facts are straight, i have the book on the technical history of this aircraft and i can find numerous sites to back up my claim. Goring asked for a 1000, 1000, 1000 plane and the Hortens made it, plain and simple.

Having taken a peek, Some of the stats as proposed (not actually met included do jive with you post but not all.

Speed: 977 kph
Range 3170 at 393 kph
Payload 2 1000 kg bombs.
www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org...
I doubt the plane carried enought internal fuel to go max throttle over 1000 kph. The jets were thirsty buggers and fuel efficent they were not. Even scaling down the payload, I doubt you could sustain 1000 kph over 1000 km.

I cannot coment on the charcoal skin. However, unless smooth, that would be draggy as all heck and cut into range further.

Now none of this takes away anything from the brilliance of the Horten brothers at all.



[edit on 2/28/05 by FredT]

Originally posted by FredT
I doubt the plane carried enought internal fuel to go max throttle over 1000 kph. The jets were thirsty buggers and fuel efficent they were not.

- Too true Fred and lets not forget that German jets (lacking the necessary raw materials) could barely stand 10hrs use without catastrophic failure.

I cannot coment on the charcoal skin. However, unless smooth, that would be draggy as all heck and cut into range further.

- Well it was held in a smoothing resin from what I've read.

Now none of this takes away anything from the brilliance of the Horten brothers at all.

- No, it doesn't.
But what this kind of talk does do is demean and belittle the whole science, talent and art of designing, building and taking aircraft through to regular certified mass squadron usage.

I don't deny Germany invented many interesting concepts, nor would I disagree that necessitity meant many interesting and innovative things happened far quicker than would otherwise have been the case.

But let's get real here, this is about enormously complex machines, the first military jets, and a few barely flown and almost entirely untested handful of prototypes do not constitute a 'woulda been succcessful' aircraft design cut short in it's 'career'.

[edit on 28-2-2005 by sminkeypinkey]

Yes but extensive research was done on the Horten All-wing aircraft so as to support thier theories on the capabilities of the aircraft. There of course was problems with these aircraft but there was not enough time to work out the details. the problems are discussed in this article -

www.luft46.com...

But to belittle ingenious brothers and numerous other German aircraft engineers, saying that thier work was a "short-lived" type of thrown together effort, is a shame. It is becuase of Operation Paperclip that America is the leading world power today. Those people that got us there were Germans and if they were too incompetent to produce decent aircraft then what do you have to say of the USAF or NASA?

It is becuase of Operation Paperclip that America is the leading world power today.

I'm probably wrong, but I thought Operation Paperclip was just the gathering of Nazi officers to send to the USSR as spies. I'm not trying to call anybody stupid, that's just what I thought I saw on the History Channel, and I have seen other people refer to it as you have so if somebody could clear this up for me...

Aurora,

Paperclip was a U.S. operation authorized by Harry Truman to get Nazi era scientists to the U.S. to help with science and technology. The added benifit was that it denied the Soviets thier skills and abilities. Werner Von Braun who developed the rockes that were used to put the man on the moon was a key take from this operation.

Actually, with all this deification of German wartime projects going on, it is worth pointing out that many were followed through by the allies after 1945 and were dismal flops.

The Martin XB-51 (Messerschmitt P.1102) and Douglas XB-42 & DC-8 (Focke Wulf 'Schlechwelterjager') are two examples of projects that were ambitious but unsuccessful even given the luxury of time and resources in the USA after the war. Also there is the very limited 'success' of the futuristic looking Chance Vought Cutlass (Arado E.583) naval fighter.

I could of course spell out many many more including ones tried out by the UK and USSR if I wanted to make a boring list.

So while these projects are fascintaing the temptation must be resisted to build them up into something they weren't.

SOME, not MANY were flops. Also sometimes you had American Aeronautics engineers working on these airplanes and NOt the origional German engineer. I must point out too that SOME of these projects were flops because they were not a good idea, but some were excellent aircraft and some probably influenced the aircraft we have been seeing for the lest 50 years.

The Martin XB-51 (Messerschmitt P.1102) and Douglas XB-42 & DC-8 (Focke Wulf 'Schlechwelterjager') are two examples of projects that were ambitious but unsuccessful even given the luxury of time and resources in the USA after the war. Also there is the very limited 'success' of the futuristic looking Chance Vought Cutlass (Arado E.583) naval fighter.

What's the Fockewulf you mention? The XB-42 Mixmaster was developed during the war, so couldn't have been a result of Paperclip, no? (incidentally the NASM still have the fuselage of one of the Mixmasters, but they lost the wings after they were cut off!). I agree, though that the XB-51's engine positions could well have been influenced by the Messerschmitt design.


[edit on 6/3/05 by Dew]

This is very very funny; in a tragically sad way.

The Horten IX / Gotha Go 229 did approx 30hrs flying as a glider, the V1 unpowered prototype and about 2hrs as the powered V2 prototype and yet for some despite it being completely undeveloped (never mind utterly unready and unsuited to deployment) it's hailed as the most amazing thing ever to fly and the root of the B2!

www.twitt.org...

Jack Northrop was developing flying wings completely independantly of anyone else (in fact it's known the Hortens had read of his work).

You'll find some similarities with the late Messerchmitt wing and Focke-Wulf wing ideas and some post war jets but the really big and important aerodynamic stuff (like all-flying tails and genuinely trans/supersonic wing designs) all had absolutely no 'mirror' or trailblazer in the German designs/sketches.

......and as far as jet design goes everybody quickly dumped the German Junkers Jumo designs after the war (including the Russians and especially the Americans) and went on to base their work on the British designs, except for the French who developed the Atar jet from the BMW designs.

By the same token the most advanced centimetric German radar was entirely a copy of captured British sets.

Even swept wings were originally adopted because of C of G reasons and had nothing to do with transonic flight performance........which is how come the Germans never did do any proper work on the thin wings necessary for true supersonic speeds.

They had their impressive stuff (like everyone else did in WW2) but they weren't quite as 'advanced' as the myths would have us believe and their 'scatter-gun' approach to new projects meant a lot of wasted effort on a lot of ridiculous nonsense too.
Wind cannon anyone?

Dew, I was unclear with that definition, of the projects I mentioned the Douglas XB-42 Mixmaster (and its DC-8 airliner derivative (see pic below), were developed independantly of the paralle german Focke wulf design (which vaguely resembled a swept wing Do 335 without the nose engine but with two jets under the wings). The point merely being that it was a flawed concept, which Douglas proved and which Focke Wulf never got the chance to find out.

original DC-8 concept

The Germans still, overall, even in other areas like Tanks and firearms- they EXCELLED way past what the Allies had and hope to achieve. The Germans were far better advanced technologically and would have probably won if the war had proceeded a year longer.

Change the record mate, that is cobblers and you must know it.

If the war had lasted another year what were these planes engines going to be made of? German jets had a life of 10 hrs not because of a design fault that could be rectified but because the Germans couldn't get hold of the metals needed to build jet engines with any sort of useful life, supplies of which was firmly in the hands of the allies co basically one year on Germany would have efficively built a lot of pretty gliders

Thats without going into the rest of it, don't forget that the programmes that did look promising and were pursued by the allies afterwards took about 5 more years of development after the war to be built and flown, the so called advanced projects were noth8ing more than schematics in many cases with the drawings dated as late as April 1945! How on earth were these aircraft supposed to be produced and delivered to squadrons by 1946? The notion is ridiculous!

Also, if Germany was so far in advance of the allies how come the Americans were building a supersonic test vehicle by the wars end (X-1) and the British were even developing a 1,000mph (note; NOT kmh!) experimental fighter with an undercarriage and an afterburning jet engine by 1943! Where was Germany's supersonic programme? They barely had one and the one they did have was completed in Russia in 1949 and failed.

Like I said before, don't build up interesting concepts into something they weren't.

Originally posted by PtballDan
The Germans still, overall, even in other areas like Tanks and firearms- they EXCELLED way past what the Allies had and hope to achieve. The Germans were far better advanced technologically and would have probably won if the war had proceeded a year longer.

Dude Dude Dude,

It is doubtfull that even one more year would have saved the 1000 year Reich. Yes the Germans had neat toys, however, in another year, you would have seen B-29's over Germany droping atomic weapons. Also the British and american jets would have made it to the combat zone as well.

DO rember tha tthe Allies had neat toys of thier own. Like the British Ice carrier so big that B-17 could take off from it and it would never melt and had the consistency of concrete. etc etc etc I could go on forever. Not to mention the 2 front war etc etc. One more year would have done nothing except ensure more cities were burned to the ground.

Originally posted by FredT

Originally posted by PtballDan
The Germans still, overall, even in other areas like Tanks and firearms- they EXCELLED way past what the Allies had and hope to achieve. The Germans were far better advanced technologically and would have probably won if the war had proceeded a year longer.

Dude Dude Dude,

It is doubtfull that even one more year would have saved the 1000 year Reich. Yes the Germans had neat toys, however, in another year, you would have seen B-29's over Germany droping atomic weapons. Also the British and american jets would have made it to the combat zone as well.

Fred's right! The USA had a lot of secrets of it's own. The Germans spread their efforts out, while the US concentrated most of it's efforts on nuclear weapons technology. Also, the Reich made one critical error, they placed more importants on Tactical warfare, then Strategic Warfare, simular to the mistake the US made in Viet Nam. Tactics win battles, but you need strategy to win a war.

Tim
ATS Director of Counter-Ignorance

Yes but 2 countries with nuclear bombs= standoff

originally posted by: waynos
Change the record mate, that is cobblers and you must know it.

If the war had lasted another year what were these planes engines going to be made of? German jets had a life of 10 hrs not because of a design fault that could be rectified but because the Germans couldn't get hold of the metals needed to build jet engines with any sort of useful life, supplies of which was firmly in the hands of the allies co basically one year on Germany would have efficively built a lot of pretty gliders

Thats without going into the rest of it, don't forget that the programmes that did look promising and were pursued by the allies afterwards took about 5 more years of development after the war to be built and flown, the so called advanced projects were noth8ing more than schematics in many cases with the drawings dated as late as April 1945! How on earth were these aircraft supposed to be produced and delivered to squadrons by 1946? The notion is ridiculous!

Also, if Germany was so far in advance of the allies how come the Americans were building a supersonic test vehicle by the wars end (X-1) and the British were even developing a 1,000mph (note; NOT kmh!) experimental fighter with an undercarriage and an afterburning jet engine by 1943! Where was Germany's supersonic programme? They barely had one and the one they did have was completed in Russia in 1949 and failed.

Like I said before, don't build up interesting concepts into something they weren't.

In 1944, Alexander Lippisch worked on a ramjet-powered delta wing supersonic fighter, the P.13 (of which an unpowered technology demonstrator, the DM-1, was built but not flown before American GIs captured it). The DFS 346 swept wing supersonic research aircraft was under development when US forces captured the Siebel factory in Halle where the first DFS 346 prototype was under construction. When the Soviets took control of the Siebel facility as well as the Junkers factory in Dessau in July 1945, they had the DFS 346 design team assigned to the OKB-2 group, and the DFS 346 prototype was taken to the USSR for wind tunnel testing in late 1946. Following a round of wind tunnel tests at TsAGI, refinements were made to the upper surface of the wing of the DFS 346, and the aircraft was flown as an unpowered glider in 1948, after which two powered DFS 346 prototypes were built. The DFS 346 did not attain its anticipated top speed of Mach 2 during flight tests and only reached 560 miles per hour while undergoing testing in the USSR.

Although the Convair XF-92 had the delta wing planform of the P.13, its delta wing had a different airfoil than that of the P.13, being thinner than that of the P.13, whose delta wing airfoil was thicker.

Links:
www.testpilot.ru...
www.luftarchiv.de.../flugzeuge/dfs/dfs346.htm
theaviationgeekclub.com... t-of-the-f-102-delta-dagger-and-the-f-106-delta-dart/