german stealth fighter

[gallipoli]

was there development and deployment of a german stealth fighter designed by the Nuhr brothers?
and if yes at what stage in the war did it happen?

[Alanmccoubrey]

They designed a long range BOMBER which as it turned out was resistant to radar detecton,it was not a stealth fighter, nor was it intended to be such. Surviving parts/airframe of this was taken to the US where , years later, it was used to help in the design of their stealth bomber.

[LWD]

Was it anymore "resistant" than say the Mosquitio?

[Michael Kenny]

Horten Ho 229?
This resurfaces every few months. The 'stealth' characteristics were a fairly recent claim and the articles I saw a while back said the aircraft had no designed or built in anti-radar properties or coatings.
It seems the designer was trying to rewrite history and take credit for being 'the first'!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_Ho_229

Still I suppose it keeps the wunder-waffen devotees salivating................

[gallipoli]

thank you for all the information

[Cantankerous]

They designed a long range BOMBER which as it turned out was resistant to radar detecton,it was not a stealth fighter, nor was it intended to be such. Surviving parts/airframe of this was taken to the US where , years later, it was used to help in the design of their stealth bomber.

The Horten Ho 229 was a fighter-bomber, and the third Ho 229 prototype which was nearly complete when it was taken to the US after the factory in Friedrichroda used to manufacture the Ho 229 prototypes was captured by US forces in April 1945 actually wasn't used by American aerodynamicists to help with design of the B-2 Spirit. The long-range stealth bomber you refer to was the Ho XVIII, which remained at the design stage when the Third Reich collapsed. The B-2's flying wing design had nothing to do with the Ho 229 when first conceived because it intended to conceal the turbofans below engine shrouds to protect the B-2's stealth features (Lockheed's losing competitor to the Northrop Tacit Blue and the company'sSenior Peg design that lost the Advanced Technology Bomber competition to Northrop had their flying wing design philosophy envisaged independently without input by Lockheed engineers into analyzing the Ho 229 V3 at the NASM storage facility).

[ewest89]

More inaccurate statements. Nothing from contemporary sources.

The Horten XVIII was an intercontinental, flying wing bomber. It was undergoing assembly at an underground factory in Kahla, in Thuringia. Source: Nurflügel by Reimar Horten and Peter F. Selinger.

Regarding the Horten Ho IX, also referred to as the Go 229, it was taken over in Germany and marked with the abbreviation for Intelligence at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. It received the marking, T2-490. Some German aircraft that got the T2 marking saw it changed to FE (Foreign Equipment) while retaining the original number. Source: War Prizes by Phil Butler, page 213.

During the war, captured German aircraft arrived at Wright Field for evaluation. If that was not the case for the Horten Ho IX then it should have been scrapped in Germany, being of no use to the Americans.

The book Jack Northrop and the Flying Wing by Ted Coleman and Robert Wenkam recounts how the shape of the flying wing made it difficult to detect on radar.

Were the Germans doing research in making their aircraft less visible to radar? Yes.

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov. ... r/C2382499

[ThatZenoGuy]

The Horten XVIII was an intercontinental, flying wing bomber. It was undergoing assembly at an underground factory in Kahla, in Thuringia. Source: Nurflügel by Reimar Horten and Peter F. Selinger.

I can't imagine it was particularly far into assembly, if at all. The thing was gigantic and no facilities were built to mass produce it yet.
By the end of the war, almost all bomber-related industry was moved to produce fighters, as everyone knew the handful of bombers they could build would never be enough to make a dent on the war effort.

[ewest89]

What is all that based on? Reimar Horten, who was there, stated assembly had begun. I have the book written by him and a co-author. You make the unsupported claim that this bomber was designed for mass production. It was not. The Reich Air Ministry had issued a requirement for a bomber with a certain range and a certain payload. By that time, all advanced projects had to also get approval from the SS, specifically, SS General Hans Kammler who was given authority over all advanced projects, Further to that, several stories of his suicide circulated right after the war. Recently declassified documents show that he actually ended up in American custody. (See: The Hidden Nazi by Dean Reuter, Colm Lowery and Keith Chester.) Later, he was declared legally dead by a German court so that his wife could receive a pension, even though no body had been recovered.

There was a concerted effort to build a number of aircraft specifically designed to attack the United States. (See: Luftwaffe over America by Manfred Griehl.)

[T. A. Gardner]

Were the Germans doing research in making their aircraft less visible to radar? Yes.

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov. ... r/C2382499

The actual answer is no. The Germans, and everybody else at the time had no means of really making an aircraft less visible to radar. The math involved in that hadn't been invented yet. There were no computers capable of doing the analysis necessary to make it happen. Testing of materials with regard to their opacity to radar, or other qualities to electronic signals, hadn't been done.

If an aircraft was less visible to radar it was from luck and happenstance, not by design. I know the Horten's and some others have claimed the Horten flying wings were supposedly designed to be less visible on radar but both actual testing recently, and analysis of the surviving Ho IX by the Smithsonian show that to be false.



https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-o ... 9600324000

Is it Stealthy?
https://airandspace.si.edu/research/pro ... 3/stealthy

Basically, the Go 229 / Ho IX wasn't "stealthy" and any subsequent designs of that era by the Hortons wouldn't have been either.

[ewest89]

Mister Gardner,

You have a strange capacity for getting only the answer you want. That is not doing research. I have done research for a number of years for the publishing company I work for. My employer wants factual answers from credible sources. Personal bias is not allowed.

I have seen a copy of the report created for the Horten Ho IX held by the Defense Technical Information Center. It was produced by the U.S. Naval Technical Mission in Europe. It is stamped SECRET. The names M.A. Biot, Lieut. Comdr., USNR, and H.A. Jayne, Lieut., USNR, appear on the document. Specifications for the aircraft are included. The maximum speed with full load is quoted as 720 mph. It could carry two 2,2000 lb. bombs and had four 37mm cannons. The sketches, drawings and photos included were useless in terms of reproduction quality. The book primarily written by Reimar Horten has much better drawings and photographs.

I suggest you go back to the book about Jack Northrop which you mentioned. In it, you will read that the flying wing, by its shape alone, made it more difficult to detect on radar.

[T. A. Gardner]

Mister Gardner,

You have a strange capacity for getting only the answer you want. That is not doing research. I have done research for a number of years for the publishing company I work for. My employer wants factual answers from credible sources. Personal bias is not allowed.

Then stop using it.

I have seen a copy of the report created for the Horten Ho IX held by the Defense Technical Information Center. It was produced by the U.S. Naval Technical Mission in Europe. It is stamped SECRET. The names M.A. Biot, Lieut. Comdr., USNR, and H.A. Jayne, Lieut., USNR, appear on the document. Specifications for the aircraft are included. The maximum speed with full load is quoted as 720 mph. It could carry two 2,2000 lb. bombs and had four 37mm cannons. The sketches, drawings and photos included were useless in terms of reproduction quality. The book primarily written by Reimar Horten has much better drawings and photographs.

So? How did they come to those numbers? The Horton IX flew like three or four times before the end of the war. It was never fully flight tested, and in one case crashed because of loss of an engine. "37mm cannon?" The Germans didn't have a 37mm aircraft cannon besides the tank busting BK 3.7.



"720 mph?" I seriously doubt that. The Horten IX couldn't carry bombs, at least in the configuration it was actually flying in. Maybe down the road, modified to accept some ETC racks it might, but there is no evidence it actually was configured for that. So, those sound more like speculation or repetition of claims by the designers or others based on nothing but wishful thinking.

I suggest you go back to the book about Jack Northrop which you mentioned. In it, you will read that the flying wing, by its shape alone, made it more difficult to detect on radar.

As I stated, any low detectability aspects to radar of those planes were by chance, not design and were certainly unknown at the time. That is neither the Hortens nor Northrop deliberately designed in low detectability to radar in their flying wings, it just came out that way.

[ewest89]

No one -- including you -- is allowed to change history. I don't care what you doubt.

[LWD]

When was the design of the plane formalized? What wavelengths of radar were known to be in use by the allies to the Germans at that point in time?

This source does note that some radar absorbing materials were developed by the Germans during the war but only direct use mentioned was on submarines:
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA436262.pdf

And from:
https://secure.afa.org/Mitchell/reports ... e_0910.pdf

...It was not until the early 1970s that the physical principles of controlling radar return were understood well enough to apply them to aircraft design....

Which seems to validate Mr. Gardener's position.
Also note:
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/heres-w ... d-service/

... Some of the claims made by German designers were pure myth while other techniques inadvertently did contain stealth characteristics. ...

Which again seems to support his position.

[ewest89]

In the publication, Luftwaffe im Focus, a photo of a radar detector that was mounted on the tail section of a German aircraft was published. The Germans were aware of the types of radars used by the Allies by studying aircraft that had crashed. I have read the DTIC report. Is it your position that the German developed certain radar absorbing materials for submarines but ignored aircraft? The afa.org report is less well written. The aviationgeekclub is far less credible. They simply dismiss Reimar Horten's statements.