Turns out that bat-winged stealth aircraft are not nearly as innovative as we might have presumed: National Geographic has another must-TiVo opportunity for aviation history nuts – the Horten Ho 229 flying wing.
And a mock-up of the design will soon be coming to an aviation museum near you. If, you know, you happen to live near Sandy Eggo:
Toward the end of World War II, a mysterious, futuristic-looking aircraft was discovered by American troops in a top-secret German facility. The prototype jet, which resembled a massive bat wing, and other advanced German aircraft were brought to the United States in the military project “Operation Seahorse.”
In the early 1960s, the prototype jet was transferred to a Smithsonian facility in Maryland that is off-limits to the public. It remains there today…
The completed model, which has a 55-foot wingspan, was quietly trucked to San Diego last week to join the San Diego Air & Space Museum’s permanent collection. It will be unveiled there tomorrow.
Groovy.
Take a look at http://www.luft46.com/ for all kinds of weird and wonderful things the Germans thought up in the latter years of WW2 (most of which never made if off the drawing board).
Not just flying wings but VTOL aircraft, flying saucers, you name it.
JTW/
I discovered that site myself in 2004 and have advocated it several times here–but no one ever seemed interested in it or ever commented–not even once, to the best of my knowledge. Maybe now they will….
That is about the time I found it as well, fascinating place. But I can’t help but think that there must be a USAAF 1947 site out there, waiting to be developed, for surely we, too, must have been working on some interesting things, as well. The USN had interesting things in development, too. The invasion of Japan would have found some of our ships armed with Little Joe wire guided SAMs,with the Fleet having airborne early warning, from CADILLAC equiped TBMs, and a continuation of the U Boat war would have seen the further development, and deployment of the Grebe, a primitive version of ASROC. A Good Time to be a research scientist.
That was an unexpected find and no I wasn’t one of those who were paying attention when it was brought up before. Some very wierd wing planforms.
To Scott’s point, there were a number of U.S. experimental aircraft including the Flying Flapjack; AT-9 Jeep; P-75 and Spruce Goose- product of the 40’s I beleive. I don’t know if there was one “skunkworks” type location that had responsibility for leading edge machines aside from Kelly Johnson’s creation.
The ‘off-limits to the public’ facility they refer to, I believe, is the Garber Restoration Facility in Suitland MD. Last I knew it was open to the public but only by prior arrangement.
Someone once called the Smithsonian the nation’s attic. And that’s never more true than at Garber.
Back in the ’80s I went through it and a gent in the small group was almost overcome when he saw a Spad (WWI biplane, not the Skyraider) hanging from the ceiling. Seems he’d flown that very aircraft and proceeded to regale us with tales of how each of the still visible patches in the fabric were acquired. True to their calling, one of the museum employees heard him and grabbed a recorder and caught most of it.
The Horton brothers were very well along in their flying wing technology. They had successfully flown gliders based upon these designs, as well as powered airframes.
Had the allied landings been postponed or otherwise delayed, ot the war dragged on, things might well have been different.
quotes:
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I have seen enough of their designs and production plans to realize that if they had managed to prolong the war some months longer, we would have been confronted with a set of entirely new and deadly developments in air warface.
~Sir Roy Feddon, chief of the technical mission to Germany for the Ministry for Aircraft Production in 1945 from “The Daily Telegraph”, October 1, 1945
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The Germans were preparing rocket surprises for the whole world in general and England in particular which would have, it is believed, changed the course of the war if the invasion had been postponed for so short a time as half a year.
~Lt. Col. Donald Leander Putt, Dep. Cmmd. Gen., AAF Intelligence, Air Technical Services Command
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With the fall of the Iron Curtain, especially these past 10 years or so, more information has been available for researchers and historians that show how fortunate we were to have not only ended the war as soon as we did, but that Hitler was such a technological idiot. I shudder when I think of what might have happened had he actually listened to what his scientists were saying, and acted upon their advice.
respects,
Don’t forget that about the same time that the Horten brothers were building and flying their wings, Jack Northrop was doing the same with his.
Hard to find much better examples of parallel, independent development. Must have been the time for flying wings. (Well, there were others with similar ideas, such as Westland in Britain, from roughly WW1 on to the present. They’re not easy to get right.)
AW1Tim/
Following that train of thought, the “Luft46″ site JTW links to has a cy of a Nazi map of NYC with various blast radii imposed for differing yield atomic wpns planning to be dropped by one of the various larger versions of the HO 229.
Makes one think about the old saying: “God protects fools, drunks and the United States of America.” Polls showed that even after Pearl Harbor 70% of Americans opposed going to war with Germany, and most historians believe that if Hitler hadn’t been so foolish as to declcare war on America unilaterally, FDR might not have been able to get us involved–at least until too late. And military historians are equally adamant that w.o. US involvement in Europe, Hitler probably would have defeated Russia and isolated/starved England into neutrality if not surrender even if he declined the risk of invasion. Then Hitler would have plenty of time to devote to the many designs on view at Luft 46–with God only knows what end result.
I think it might have been at LUFT ‘46 where I read a fictional report af a German nuclear strike on NYC by Arado E555s. Only one of the flight made it to NY, ( which was enough), the rest of them having been brought down by FG-2 Corsairs, off of a CVE guarding a convoy the bombers flew over. I liked the name of the gunner of the surviving E555, Feldwebel Hans Schultz.
Schultz, eh? Must have been the 1st cousin of Sgt. “I know NOTHINGGG!” Shultz of “Hogan’s Heroes.” It WAS a Luftwaffe-run camp for Allied Airmen, after-all….those guys sure do get around….
Would be interesting to see what radar signature the HO-229 had. As well as fuel load, endurance and weapons capabilities. And too bad it didn’t have folding wings or it might have really had a career. I’m sure we could build another one for, oh, say about $250 million per copy. In about 18 years.
“Would be interesting to see what radar signature the HO-229 had.”
The following Aviation Week story has more information about the program
http://tinyurl.com/lqddr2
this Wikipedia article reports “RCS testing showed that an Ho-229 approaching the English Coast from France flying at 550 mph at 50 to 100 feet above the water would not have been visible to Chain Home radar, while an Me 109 or Fw 190 was visible up to 80 miles away.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_229
I am very carefully NOT rolling my eyes in exasperation here.
For one thing, the first “stealth” aircraft in general use was the DH.98 Mosquito. For another, Germany was in no way, shape, or form capable of turning out the Go229/Ho229 in any significant number. The first X model flew in March 1944 as an unpowered glider. Later (from Wiki):
That’s Feb/March 1945 guys. The Soviet Union had stomped thru Poland and the West was rolling thru eastern Germany at this point. And people are willing to posit that Germany could still -at this point- debug & manufacture a bleeding-edge fighter design!?
Let’s look at a far more mature platform: the Me-262 Swallow. State of the art jet fighter; first jet-only version flew in July 1942. Top speed of 559 mph; armament four 30mm MK 108 automatic cannon. Note that this flight was a full two years before D-Day. The first jet fighter group was Jagdgeschwader 7, created in late 1944. Even after funneling in the best pilots available, at one point the group lost ten jets in six weeks of training.
After all that, the Allies still defeated the Swallow thru the use of competitive strategies. Quite simply, the RAF and USAAF patrolled German airfields and attacked the 262’s during takeoff and landing. Chuck Yeager’s victory list included a Swallow even though he was flying the “inferior” P-51.
So even with the far more mature development of the Swallow, Germany had no hope of influencing the war. Even if the Ho229 were as stealthy as advertised, virtually all known air-to-air kills at the time were via the Mk I eyeball.
This also ignores the Gloster Meteor and P-80, with the latter showing a top speed (600 mph) higher than the Me-262 and equal to the Ho229.
So -sadly- no, the Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (very cool companion game to LucasFilm’s Battle of Britain) would not have been influential, must less decisive.
Casey/
You miss the point. You’re right about the ability of these designs to influence the war as history actually played out. But just because history happened as it did doesn’t mean that’s the ONLY way history could have played out–which was the point of my post up-thread@1:13pm 23 June and AW1Tim @12:25. If we had NOT entered the war against Germany–a very distinct possibility as I and many historians/pol-scientists point out–things could have turned out VERY differently and the Nazis might have had all the time in the world–or at least enough to perfect their designs and get them into mass production.
You’re attacking a straw man–no one here pretends they are anything more than an interesting footnote as history actually unfolded. But the point is, history didn’t HAVE to unfold that way; and seen in such a light these designs provide a cautionary tale besides being great fun to look at and speculate about.
virgil; fair enough. I guess I got a bit hot’n'bothered over some of the National Geographic what-ifs…
That might make an interesting thread. A severely delayed US intervention vs. Luftwaffe Skunk Works.
On the other hand, the Nazis ignored nukes (and most other advanced projects) because they thought they would win the war with the weapons in hand in 1940. The Allies, on the other hand -while not funding the bleeding edge stuff immediately- ended up funding the Meteor, the Shooting Star, the B-36, and the FJ-1 Fury.
Even ignoring the B-36, let’s envision mid-1940s attacks on Europe via Essex-class carriers featuring Hellcats and Corsairs; perhaps Tigercats and Bearcats. The USAAF ferries B-29s into Great Britain, from which they are escorted to Reich targets by Meteors, Shooting Stars, Mustangs, and day-fighter Black Widows. If D-Day is sufficiently delayed, we might even see FJ-2 Furys from the sea, to supplement the Lockheed P-80. Maybe even F7U Cutlasses.
Even without the atomic bomb, the B-29 (which was designed with ETO experience in mind, and originally expected to fly from Iceland) would have proved a formidable opponent for the Fw-190 and Me-262. Based in nearby Great Britain, the Superfortress would have been a tremendous challenge for the Luftwaffe, considering that it carried nearly four times the bombload of the B-17.
Aside from all that, the Superfort could carry the original Allied atomic bomb, which meant that the Allies could (in theory) vaporize an entire city each month, starting with Berlin.
Also note that I’m not even mentioning the B-32 Dominator.
I will say this: one of the most under-rated advantages the Allies enjoyed were superior power-plant designs. In other words, the Brits and the Amis made better aircraft engines than anyone else in the world; a record which more or less stands today. Germany and Japan developed many state-of-the-art, bleeding-edge designs, but most of them failed because the Axis powers could not produce power engines suitable for said designs. In the same vein, Allied tank designs were arguable inferior to German (and Soviet) designs, but enjoyed success by way of superior engines, transmissions, and suspension.
To put is another way: the Axis came up with more advanced designs, while the Allies put forth more effective designs.
Going full-circle: advanced high-tech is not always the optimum solution, and sometimes effective use of contemporary tech gives far better results than bleeding-edge high-tech.
Like the LCS… {/snerk}
Casey/
Picking up on your last para., one bit of ironic history is that the F-111 (TFX) was awarded to General Dynamics mainly because it used more proven, existing off-the-shelf technology than did it’s competitor Boeing’s offering which was far more “unproven” hi-tech–and it STILL was a developmental nightmare.
My only nitpick with your scenario is that, while true as it goes, it is not the ONLY alternative possible. Would the US have raced the development of the A-bomb so quickly if we were not at war with Germany? And if we hadn’t, we might have been forced to invade Japan with all the hideous casualties that would have entailed. People forget how war-weary America was towards the end. The sort of cas. the invasion would have produced very well might have shocked the nation to such an extent that it would have had no stomach to wage war aginst Hitler and we might have been forced to seek a modus vivendi with Hitler. And it is almost certain that absent our entry into the war in Europe Hitler would have starved England into surrender with it’s U-boats or at the very least forced them to sue for peace. Thus there would be no England from which to springboard into Europe come later.
Also not to be forgotten is that Japan had fully ONE-HALF (50%) of it’s Army sitting over in China in Manchuria (Manchuko). We would have been tied up a long time subduing that element–especially if the SU fell to Germany as it undoubtedly would have. We would have been tied up in the Far East for quite some time–even more especially if Germany invaded India like Alexander once it had conquered the Mid-East and seized it’s oil and that of the Russian Black Sea fields around Baku, etc, This would have meant a) except for Indonesian fields, we would have been short of oil, and b) we would have been tied up defending China from a German-controlled–if only partially–India for quite some time unless we allowed Germany India uncontested.
The upshot is that while it would have probably been unlikely that Hitler would ever have attacked America directly if absent a declared war, (unless he had the atomic bomb and long-range jet bombers to carry it.) under the scenario described above it might have impossible to even contemplate “freeing” Europe until around 1950–if ever considering the combined inertia of public opinion and the dominance and consolidated military power of Nazi Germany over most of the globe–especially if Hitler mass produced many of the designs seen in Luft 46. in the interim years.
There are several important things to realize with the what if scenarios. The ME 262 was operational, the Ho 229 was nearing operational status, the Heinkel He 162 was operational, the V2 rocket was nearing completion, and about a hundred other highly advanced war technologies were in the works at war’s end. Germany was light years ahead of the Allies in terms of aircraft design. Six more months under the right conditions would have made all the difference in the world. The 229 was a 600+ MPH airplane. The Allies had nothing even close to that in 1945. How do you shoot down an enemy that is over 150 MPH faster than you?
Second, the key to all of the preceding is “under the right conditions”. Germany had not one of the right conditions at war’s end. They didn’t have enough cobalt or nickle to make jet engines that had a reasonable service life. They were getting 10 hours out of the 004Bs in the ME 262, a problem verified by US testing after the war.
Germany was about out of experienced pilots at war’s end. There’s no way that the Hitler Youth was going to stand up to the experienced Allied pilots even with a decided advantage in aircraft. The finicky nature of the early jet engines could mean the life even of experienced pilots. A hot shot kid would have been fitted for a toe tag before he even got in the cockpit.
Germany had no oil to produce fuel to properly train new pilots, fly enough missions, or even properly test a lot of their aircraft. Their failure to win the war in the middle east and secure a source of oil crippled their war effort.
In the end it’s amazing that the Germans accomplished as much as they did given the horrendous mistakes that they made. A two front war. Getting mired in Russia in winter (apparently they learned nothing from Napoleon). Failure to implement new cutting edge technology until it was to late (sturmguver, etc.) Hitler’s insistence that he maintain complete military control despite knowing much less than his generals, and often waffling when it came to time sensitive decisions. In the end the rise of the reich and its fall happened for exactly the same reasons, and on the back of the same man.