Hitlers stealth fighter (2/4)

Hitlers stealth fighter
Top stealth-plane experts have re-created a radical, nearly forgotten Nazi aircraft: the Horten 2-29, a retro-futuristic fighter that arrived too late in World War II to make it into mass production.

The engineers' goal was to determine whether the so-called stealth fighter was truly radar resistant. In the process, they've uncovered new clues to just how close Nazi engineers were to unleashing a jet that some say could have changed the course of the war.

To replicate the Ho 2-29 late last year for a documentary premiering Sunday, a team from the Northrop Grumman defence-contracting corporation used original Nazi blueprints and the only surviving Ho 2-29, which has been stored in a U.S. government facility for more than 50 years.

The all-wing Ho 2-29 looked more like today's U.S. B-2 bomber - or something from a Star Wars prequel - than like any other World War II aircraft. Made primarily of wood and powered by jet engines, the plane was designed for speeds of up to 970 kilometres an hour (600 miles an hour).

Armed with four 30mm cannons and two 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) bombs, the planned production model was also meant to pack a punch.

A Ho 2-29 prototype made a successful test flight just before Christmas 1944. But by then time was running out for the Nazis, and they were never able to perfect the design or produce more than a handful of prototype planes.

Determining the Horten's stealth capabilities could help reveal what might have happened if the Ho 2-29 had been unleashed in force.

Lead designer Reimar Horten was a glider designer "obsessed with the all-wing [design] because of the possibilities it created for low drag and exceptional performance," said Florida-based aviation historian David Myhra, who interviewed the Horten pair numerous times from the early 1980s until their deaths in the late 1990s.

To determine once and for all whether the Ho 2-29 had stealth capabilities, experts first examined the surviving 2-29 and probed it with a portable radar unit based on World War II radar tech.

Then, in the fall and winter of 2008, they set about building the full-scale re-creation at a restricted-access Northrop Grumman testing facility in California's Mojave Desert.

The construction team embraced historic materials and techniques, and the Horten 2-29 replica, like the original, is made largely of wood and bonded with glue and nails.

Playlist for whole episode: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB37C01A063EF11D9
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk5TJo2z4l8
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uARMO0TlnY
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpYm-nG6Kh8
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7HmPaFFrGA

Visit my YouTube-channel for more documentaries about the Second World War, First World War and more or visit my website at http://sites.google.com/site/thegermanwarfiles/ for a better organized and easier access to all my YouTube documentaries and their descriptions.

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Science & Technology

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• Hitler
• Hitlers
• Jet
• fighter
• Horten
• 2-29
• 19
• Stealth
• Revolution
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• Northrop
• Grumman
• Replica
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• bomber
• Luftwaffe
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[balsaboy55]

wonder what the heat profile would of been with this design jet engines are hot......probaly melt the glue that held it together

[GermanWarFiles]

@balsaboy55

The aircraft performed several test-flights and outperformed a ME-262 in a dogfight. The glue didn't melt.

[KageStodder]

It seems like they want to test the plane with radar from a zero degree angle. Should they not test it from beneath since the plane was supposed to be flying at 10km +??

[Danny77uk]

@balsaboy55 They were more likely to melt the crap metals that they were made of. Germans lacked a strategic material reserve so they had to use any metal they could find. These engines had a very short life.