Forgotten aircraft - Armstrong-Whitworth AW-52 flying wing

[deltamike33]

Bf 1942: The secret weapons of WWII!!

[slumdogkarlie]

This is cool cause I typed in my last name, which is Whitworth and this came up..may be my ancestor. Maybe not cause I didn't watch The video...

[spyderz1303]

I used to chat to an old fellow who had been a test pilot and he told me that the guy who bailed out of the flying wing, landed in a blackthorn bush and spent the next couple of weeks removing thorns from his backside. The flying wing, recovered itself and proceeded to land itself almost undamaged!. The test pilot used to fly over Dad's farm in an old Rapide to the field where the flying wing operated from and shortly afterwards he would fly the newfangled thing back.

[kinmanyuen]

future bomber!

[binaway]

@TheMe110 Not every aircraft made after the war requires German technology. The British developed their own jet engines during the war and the Gloucester Meteor entered service two weeks before the Luftwaffe had a jet into service. The fist jet engine was built in Britain but the Government wasn't interested at the time. Flying wings go back to to the very beginning of aviation. See the Westland-Hill Pterodactyl by Bomberguy and also his wingless Wonders video.

[GrigoriZhukov]

@TheMe110 No, you would be 100% wrong aamof Jack Northrup had started developing flying wings before those nice Horton boys got into the game and not to quibble but HIS flying was better than theirs in every aspect. Better structure, better controls and better layout. But I'm biased because I spent my youth reading up on them and hanging out with IP's and ground crew.

[JimMorrow1927]

The AW52 was investigating boundary layer with the laminar flow wing and was one of the many wing deisgns developed in the country and was never meant as a production aircraft. Stealth was not in the notes until the late eighties of nineties.

[JimMorrow1927]

Excellent video. I was the ATCO in the Bitteswell Control Tower when this took place asnd I have Chas E Brown's autograpgh on the day. I was also on duty when JO Lancaster(now91) had to leave the aircraft with the first Martin Baker Ejection to save a pilot's life. Juliettmike.

[faron27]

The Horten Brother's had them beat but this is still a beauty and with a little more work would have had plenty of applications.

[Hoerkelis]

just an ugly fake of the horten 229

[datzfast]

stealth is becoming less and less important because it can easily be defeated by missile that use visible imaging, infrared imaging, sound detection, and sniffing the air.

[DonMeaker]

@datzfast Don't know much about Stealh, do you?

[Alembic25]

Hang on. Aren't Boeing and Airbus working on individual designs like this today? We brits haven't got a clue how to market anything these days have we.

[Fromanttodugong]

This airframe configuation is unstable and until the advent of fly by wire and computer control was no more than a novelty. Spend more time educating yourself and less time whinging.

[Alembic25]

Ah. The traditional Youtube tosser has answered my comment. Watch! He'll do it again in a bit.

[Fromanttodugong]

Just watering the dry scorched earth of ignorance. You may consider educating yourself if this happens to you a lot.

[brendonnz1964]

The Uk works on advanced military technology.Keeps quiet about it, I would say the centre of western military science.

[ShoeiBoy]

That must have looked (and sounded) like something from another world at airshows in the early 50s...

Not sure about the design goals of "an airliner with passengers located in the wings" mind you... :o\

[pudd750]

@1:30 in the wings-- like tuna!

[Ltdeacon]

this was done in little as 42 years from the wright brothers flight, and people say say space exploration is impossible. we just need a little gung ho , can do , spirit . who knows what 42 of space flight would like, ( our life time).

[Xhiaoshi]

wow i cant believe thats an old prototype, it looks so cool :O

[Buemmo]

Yeah! It really looks a bit like a Horten 229, but this design has tail finns, thanks for making this video, looks like it was a lot of work.

[georgitushev]

Awesome ! This very similar to the Horten Ho IX concept.

Cheers!

[RFXCrunner]

What a beast of a machine.

[SAHBfan]

There is a lot of nonesense in this thread ^_^

As for who 'invented' the flying wing, there were tailess designs before the first succesful flight, right back to the 1870s and perhaps earlier.

Guys who got them to fly include Rene Arnoux (France), J.W. Dunne (Britain), Lippisch and the Hortens (Germany), Geoffry Hill (Britain) Soldenhoff (Germany)and Northrop (USA) - there are lots of others.

Arnoux was racing tailess aircraft in the early 20s - way before any German secret projects...

[tomregit]

SAHBfan got it right. Name calling, bullying, and profanity do not make a good argument. Aerodynamics, as understood at the time, and engine technology can mean two or more very similar aircraft (or race cars, speedboats, etc.) can be built quite independently.

[wandawong]

Thank you. You are 100% correct! I've been bitching about that in these threads forever. There are so many no-nothings on You Tube and elsewhere who look at a grainy film reel of a Horten glider and claim it provided every design parameter of a B2 (of course, implying the B2 was somehow "stolen" German technology). Those who know aviation history realize the complex history of tailless aircraft.

[SAHBfan]

Agreed wandawond,

Another important point is that the B2 & Horten weren't even aiming for the same goal. The Germans desperately needed a very long range bomber. Trans Atlantic, if possible. The minimal, tailless design appealed because of the very low drag.

By the time the B2 was designed very efficient jet engines had solved the long range problem. The reason for adopting tailless on the B2 was to reduce radar signature. So... convergent design, but totally different starting points!

[weigibabe]

the Horten 9 (or gotha229) wasnt designed as a long-range Bomber, it was designed as stealth fighter with the capability to work as an fighter Bomber too... and the B2 got a Problem the Ho9 never had.. the Ho9 doesn't need any Computers to fly ;)

[lifefortruth]

Wandawong what do you know about history of tailless aircraft to condemn other people as no- nothings.

Besides where do you think the inspiration for B2 came from? from your mind? there are historians and posers on you tube

[wandawong]

I usually don't reply to someone who offers no new information and has no idea of my 30+ years of grabbing every scrap of tailless aircraft lore I could get my hands on, but here goes.

The B2's engineers, like all engineers before them, drew on many decades of problem solving to meet a tough design spec. They also reviewed plenty of Northrop-supplied NACA airfoil data from the YB-49 program and others. Even Dr. Horten would be embarrassed to hear you inflate his contributions in this case.

[lifefortruth]

It's easy to pose as historians as long as we got internet and wikipedia

and insult others as no-nothings

[wandawong]

You're right.... but obvious factual errors and goofy, hyperbolic statements are usually the best way to identify the know-nothings. ;)

[chaghar]

the pilot had a very weird voice.

[shawry1970]

Great footage! The father of a friend worked at Armstrong Whitworth at the time and actually flew the AW-52G Glider. He was an apprentice and acted as an Observer during the flight which crashed.

[georgefall5]

Bullshit utter bullshit!

Im english thankyou.

yes einstein was kicked out bur Robert oppenheimer... was german!! CO-INCIDENCE?

U americans are fucking assholes!

I got's me a new shoatgun Maaaa!

[me2ontube]

take it easy lady - i'm not germen and i'm just a bit curious - besides, i'm sure some kid could have thought of it a million years ago while playing and is old man could have got the idea from a 5 year old

[georgefall5]

Haha You must be realy annoyed with yourself.

Who are you to call people Nazis?

Its a typical american opinion.

"because it is americans we rule the right to everything we want"

Nazi technology was way in front of all the allies.

The GERMANS made the 1st A-Bomb.

American claimed they did.

GERMAN scientists Created the 1st manned Rocket craft.

They were just stupid in the way they used them, thats why we won the 2nd world war.

[Bullettube]

What an idiot you are! What stupid neo-nazi crap! Germany was not even close to having a nuclear bomb, nor did they ever launch any kind of manned rocket. War tends to make innovators out of the worst and the best people, no matter who they are. Germany lost because they were wrong from day one, period.

[georgefall5]

haha

yeah if thats what you think, you think that.

because your american you have knowledge of all

period.

[Bullettube]

Well, you got that right, but not because I'm an American. You need to read a lot more history, and I mean books, not just articles or opinions. Nothing is invented out of thin air,all technology follows a path previously explored, and once a theory is found to be possible, new inventions follow. Science is not one thing, but many different things all folded into one.

[georgefall5]

you need to question your own opinions.

rather than being a immature self opinionated wanker.

German WW2 was way in front of neerly all of the allies, and yes the allies had there own technological breakthroughs.

at the end of the war the allies found alot of amazing material and classed it as there own.

as form evidence search Hanneabu II, its blatently american.

PERIOD.

[Bullettube]

Germany was ahead in technology but they had a primitive social system. They were ahead because they were looking for new and terrible ways to wage war and kill people. Any bully can pick up a big rock and throw it, only superior cultures decide not to pick up the rock in the first place.

[georgefall5]

yes thats true.

the allies had a more humane way around the problem.

[pup2097]

The Bachem Ba 349 was the first manned rocket even though the 'pilot' was killed in it. Also a German V2 was the first man made object in space. Also research Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann. Oppenheimer gained most of his theoretical physics knowledge at Georg-August University. Research the whole of Nazi history and you'll realise they were uncomfortably close to developing a nuclear bomb! Check out Rainer Karlsch book aswell.

[georgefall5]

Im not a Nazi you stupid cunt,

Im English!

I dont gas jews and worship and asshole.

in 1931 the horton brothers made a delta wing style glider and found its handling superior to other gliders.

what year was this made?

i think your just looking for a argument that you know nothing of to start with, you just hope wikipedia has the answer,

Go die.

[artstudent07]

lol its an UFO lol!!

[georgefall5]

not copying the horton 229 design :)

this is what i meen buy how the allies copyed germans.

[BerlinBunker1]

It suffered from the same aerodynamic faults as the Hortens, and later American models, and that was flight stability. A lot of pilots came to a tragic end in these early flying wings.

[me2ontube]

it looks a lot like the stealth planes we have now - do they borrow technology from this 1945! plane?

[evilintel]

One wonders why they didn't stick more powerful engines in it. A great design ruined by lack of power.

[evilintel]

One wonders why they didn't stick more powerful engines in it. A great design ruined by lack of power.

[TheRealNeill]

Thanks Bomberguy! Always good to see flying-wing style action and this is a rare bird.

[LkOutMtnMan]

The Mitchell wing ultralight airplane was a great plane except! The solid aluminum wings without ribs caused the plane to slide off to the side if banked too steeply,loss of lift at wing tips which is why this plane has winglets! There's a video of one with jet engine on YouTube!

[BatsBensa]

Everything runns good until you don't do three other mistakes: do not low the stiffnes of the frame too much (weight), do not make the winglets too large (drag induces oscillations) an do not fly too fast :-)

Well, in my eyes the pilot was right and he still is: "A good concept for future civil air traffic.".

[BatsBensa]

Sorry! Here ist the actual part one of my comment:

Yes, what we have here is indeed a flying wing. It only has two large winglets attached out of two reasons: first, to let the lift momentum not be zero at the ends and second, to induce a lift momentum curve similar to a v-like shaped plane!

[Humbertusmarius]

It it has any kind of vertical control surface it is not a true flying wing, but a "tail-less" aircraft. Pretty aircraft though. The Horten Brothers were the true Fathers of the Flying Wing.

[nakedleader]

Well Jack Northrop might argue that point. It is probably true to say they were operating on parallel lines of thought. Although Northrop was experimenting with powered vehicles long before the Hortens. Certainly Northrop's effort with the XB-35/YB-49 dwarfed anything that the Hortens attempted.

[SnowAlpineBunny]

The AW52 sucks in Battlefield 1942 Secret Weapons of WWII

[N9155E]

There seems to be quite a similarity to the Ho IX aircraft made by the Horten borthers.

[fordroad]

The flying wing concept well advanced designs a pity it was taken further and the world had to wait for the stealth bomber. We will never know if the concept had remained with the English.