Horten Ho 2-29

With its smooth and elegant lines this could be a prototype for some future succesor to the stealth bomber.But this flying wing was actually designed by the Germans 30 years before the Americans succesfully developed radar-invisible technology.Now an engineering team has reconstructed the Horten Ho 2-29 from blueprints,with startling results.Blast from the past;the fullscale replica was made with materials available in the 1940's.It would have been faster and more efficient than any other plane of the period and its stealth powers worked against radar.Experts now are convinced that given a little bit more time,the mass deployment of this aircraft could have changed the course of the war.First built and tested in the air in march 44, it was designed with a greater range and speed than any plane previously built and was the first aircraft to use the stealth technology now deployed by the US in its B-2 bombers;Thankfully Hitler's engineers only made three prototypes,tested by being dragged behind a plane,and were not able to built them on an industrial scale before the Allied forces invaded.From Pz tanks to the V2 rocket,it has been long recognised that Germany's technological expertise during the war was years ahead of the Allies.But by 1943, the German High Command feared that the war was beginning to turn against them,and were desperate to develop new weapons to help turn the tide.German bombers were suffering badly when faced with the speed and maneuvrability of the Spitfire and other Allied fighters.Hitler was also desperate to develop a bomber with the range and capacity to reach the US.In 1943 luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering demanded the designers come up with a bomber that would meet his requirements,one that could carry 1000kg over 1000km flying at 1000km/hour.Two pilot brothers in their 30-ies,Reimar and Walter Horten,suggested a flying wing design they had been working on for years.They were convinced that with its drag and lack of wind resistance such a plane could meet H.Goerings requirements.Construction on a prototype was begun in Goettingen,Germany in 1944.The centre pod was made from a welded steel tube,and was designed to be powered by a BMW003 engine.The most important innovation was Reimar 's idea to coat it in a mix of charcoal dust and wood glue.A  142-foot wingspan bomber was submitted for approval in 1944 and it would have been able to fly from Berlin to NYC and back without refuelling(on paper),thanks to the same blended wing design and six BMW003 or eight Junker Jumo 004B turbojets.Reimar thought that the electromagnetic waves of radar would be absorbed,and in conjunction with the aircrafts sculpted surfaces the craft would be rendered almost invisible to radar dedectors.This was the same method eventually used by the US in its first stealth aircraft in the early 1980's,the F-117A Nighthawk.That plane was covered in radar absorbent paint with a high graphite content,which has a similar chemical make-up to charcoal.After the war the Americans captured the prototype Ho 2-29 along with its blueprints and used some of their technological advances to aid their own designs.But experts always doubted claims that the horten could actually function as a stealth aircraft.Now using the blueprints and the only remaining prototype craft,Nortdrop-Grumann(the defense firm behind the B-2) built a fullscale replica of a Horten.
Thanks to the use of wood and carbon,jet engines integrated in the fuselage,and its blended surfaces,the plane could have been in london in 8 minutes after the radar system dedected it.It took them 2500 man-hours and 250000 dollars to construct and although their replica cannot fly,it was radar-tested by placing it on a 50ft articulating pole and exposing it to electromagnetic waves.The team demonstrated that although the aircraft was not completely invisible to the type of radar used in WW2,it would have been stealthy enough and fast enough to ensure that it could reach London before Spitfires could be scrambled to intercept it.If the Germans had had time to develop these aircraft,they could well have had an impact,says Peter Murton,aviation expert from the Imperial War Museum at Duxford,in Cambridgeshire.In theory the flying wing was a very efficient design which minimised drag.It is one of the reasons that it could reach very high speeds in dive and glide and had such incredible long range.The research was filmed for a forthcoming documentary on the Nat Geo Channel.Greetz,Brummbar