Ho229. Hitler's Stealth Fighter (merged)

There is a Horten Ho 11 in the Berlin Technical Museum but the way it has been hung from the roof and the various pillars in the way its impossible to get a good photo photo.

I have Professor Karl Nickel’s excellent book on flying wings, that includes lots and lots of mathematical formulae applied to flying wings by the Horton brothers. Before the days of auto-pilot stability software, they tried to build-in stability into these wings by strict control of the CG + Centre of lift position in all flight regimes, which is very difficult to achieve in practice.

I personally don’t believe making the Ho229 invisible to radar was the prime choice of using wood in its construction. Their entire series of flying wing gliders were made of wood, and by the time this was under development resources of aluminium were harder to come by. There are enough examples of other aluminium parts on standard aircraft being reproduced in wood to justify this too.

For a prototype aircraft such as the Ho229, making it in wood was the perfect choice, as specialist tooling required would have been minimal compared with a large aluminium airframe works.

Because of their inherent stability problems, they are subject to SPPO (short period pitching oscillations) and phugoid oscillations too. A composits wooden structure, may well have been more forgiving than a metal one?

It would have been easier to modify, or alter a wooden wing too. Imagine you have wool tufted an area of wing that you suspect the airflow to be turbulent, or breaking away from. On wood, it could be simpler to quickly bond on more wood, or sand away accordingly.

As with all these late war types, there will always be a lot of “what if” questions, but just remember that the US and UK too had a myriad of very advanced types at similar stages of development, that actually had flight durable jet engines!

There used to be a fragment of footage of the 229 in flight on Youtube, but it was removed about a year ago. The only film on there now is some nonsensical computer animation, claiming to show the thing being test flown in the US, post war. Oh dear. Tin foil hat?:rolleyes:

I too thought the programme was a bit strange, seemingly fixated, as it was, on the stealth aspect. It would have been harder to intercept, but as the programme stated, more due to being fast, than because it was slightly harder to spot on radar.

I saw the full scale model in the San Diego Aerospace museum last year.

Dave

I have to say that to me the most surprising material used on the mock-up was that damned expensive silver paint!! Why not just glue a layer of tin foil on there instead? They used tin-foil to simulate the engines afterall…

As others have said, a somewhat crazy programme which made all sorts of claims it probably shouldn’t have. Oh and the CGI was shocking- couldn’t they just have used footage from the Il2 Sturmovik game??

Atleast the finished article looks impressive and pretty much accurate as FSM’s go. Does anyone know what’s become of it since, or where it will end up?

Wonder what their true motivation was?

I think some times we look too far into things, their motivation would’ve been something along the lines of- it seems a good idea at the time & also a spot of PR never hurt anyone.

Distraction from other projects more costly?:eek:

I suppose the only real mystery is why Northrop would spend money and waste so much time on building a model for no reason. Surely they don’t need the money (whatever the TV folks paid them), nor do they need the publicity. Wonder what their true motivation was?

Thought I’d share the following with you, which was posted on the LEMB by member & Ho229 expert Huib Ottens:

In our book “Horten 229, Spirit of Thuringia” by Classic Publications 2006 we (Andrei Shepelev and Huib Ottens) have given our conclusions regarding the “stealthyness” of the Ho229 in the last chapter “Invisible Legacy”.

As part of our research I have spent 3 days with Professor Karl Nickel (sadly passed away this year) and his wife (the sister of Walter and Reimar Horten). Both were directly involved in the development of the H IX / Ho229 and other Horten flying wings.

During our conversations the stealth subject was discussed. Karl Nickel clearly stated that stealth was not a design-parameter for the H IX/Ho229. The use of wood as the main construction material and the flying wing shape of the aircraft just followed the design and construction philosophy of the Horten brothers, as displayed in their line of flying wing designs that started in 1933 with the Horten H I. The carbon or charcoal-glue mixture was only used as porous filler to lighten the composite formed parts.

So our conclusion is and remains that all the stealth-characteristics of the Ho229 are purely accidental, despite all post-war statements made by Reimar Horten and all the attempts to rewrite the Ho229 history. I just wonder: Is the concept, design, development, construction and testing of an all-wing, jet-engined fighter-aircraft in the WW II era not revolutionary and astonishing enough?

Nurflügel Forever!

Huib

Quite nicely puts the stealth aspect of the Ho229 into context I think, despite what other authors may try to tell us 🙂

Cheers
Peter D Evans
LEMB Administrator

My thoughts were that it was entertaining in an Americans DIY in shed (read unlimited resources in hangar) way, but also that it is a classic case of trying to make our modern view point and knowledge of stealth and flying-wings fit a quirky one-off German fighter design.
There were many old chestnuts rolled out, especially regarding radar.

And the German WW2/Luftwaffe myth just rolls on into yet another decade 😀 :rolleyes:

Its the first time I’ve watched this program last night. Yes, fairly entertaining spin around a real aircraft, but what really came to mind was how much money must have been spent on getting Northrop Grumman to manufacture this Full Size Model!!!

I know well the costs of CNC, man hours, etc, but time on a radar emissions measuring machine too!

That’s gotta be LOTS of money for a 1hr tv program!

HortEn, just as there is no Short Sterling.

Horton, isn’t that an elefant?

Sjeeezzz:p

Cees

Been discussed on here a couple of times before…

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=96896&highlight=horten+229.

Maybe a case of Discovery and others rewriting history.

According to Von Reimar Horton in his official autobiography “Nurflugel” ISBN 3-900310-09-2, page 134, the only flying powered HO IX (V2) crashed on its forth test flight as a result of a fundamental design flaw i.e. became uncontrollable during single engine flight. This flaw, not mentioned in the TV program, puts the Horton IX claims in a very different perspective.

David Myhra who appears in the program and has published another book “The Horton Brothers and their all flying wings” ISBN 0-7643-0441-01. This account, with respect to the Ho IX flight testing contains a few inconsistencies with Reimer Hortons account i.e. first flight date, and test pilot E Ziller previous jet experience. Furthermore the TV program then makes additional claims not in either book with respect to the Me262 trials.

I tend to trust Reimar Horton account as he was there at the time and saw it as it happened. Ultimately the complete V3 prototype was taken to the US and never flown………If it was so really good ask yourself why?

Entertaining claptrap were words that came to my mind after I’d finished watching it 😀

Lol will wee see a contraversial book written by you in the coming months denouncing the whole thing and actually telling us that the HO229 was in fact based on a VW beetle?

Regards

Ben:cool:

Entertaining claptrap were words that came to my mind after I’d finished watching it 😀

Horton 229

Not sure if this belongs here , but here goes.

just watched on E4 ,About Hitlers Steath Aircraft.

Very interesting program , Northrop Grumman made a mock up of this aircraft and they said It would of changed the way the Second World War.
It looked decades in front of its time , it also mention that Hitler wanted a long range bomber and that the Horton Bros drew up plans for the Horton 18.

Just think it these aircraft became operational and that Hitler did get his atom bomb.
Very sobering thought

Hi
I thought they did the model ages back …:rolleyes:
wasn’t it called a B2 😉
cheers
Jerry

good program, worth a watch for sure.