Horten Ho 229 -- The World's First All Wing Jet Fighter

Tony Chong presents the history of the Ho 229 fighter / bomber that was developed by Nazi Germany late in WWII. Produced by Jarel & Betty Wheaton for Peninsula Seniors www.pvseniors.org

[@wa9kzy326]

That guy is really good speaker. He knows his stuff. Thanks.

[@plane_simple]

To answer the question how the H IX V-1 was launched, I quote from the translation included in Reimar Horten's book : " The H IX V-1 took off right on schedule on March 1st, 1944 in Göttingen. The small He 45 towplane barely got off the ground, so testpilot Scheidhauer released and landed straight ahead, after only a short hop. Five days later, he was off again on a snow covered runway behind a infinitely more powerful He 111. He released at 12000 ft, made an uneventful glide back to the airport, then faced problems during the landing when the drag chute did not function. As the end of the runway approached, he retracted the nose wheel and skidded to a stop with only minor damages." (Translation by Jan Scott, Lovettsville, VA. There are condensed translations of almost each chapter already included in the book, all by J. Scott. Some of the photos depicted in the book are from him too.) The drag chute malfunction may have been caused by snowdust from the runway. I had a quite similar issue with the airbrakes on my glider after taking off in the snowblast of the towplane. When I came in for the landing, I wasn't able to get the airbrakes out, they were frozen in position because the snow penetrated into the small gaps between airbrakes and wing surface on takeoff. So that'll be my guess on this episode.

[@darkryde1]

An excellent presentation on the Ho229 Flying Wing.

[@martentrudeau6948]

It's stunning what Germans can do when their busy in their workshops. The Ho-229 is a beauty.

[@redluckog7008]

Marten Trudeau It’s fantastic. I live near udvar hazy museum, they have it cut into 3 pieces.

[@FiveCentsPlease]

+RedLuckOG It is not "cut" but the wings are not attached while they work on it. It's a mess of rotten wood eaten by fungus. I am starting to think it would be better to just duplicate the wooden structure and skins in new wood and conserve the original wood separately. Then the prototype could displayed as it would have appeared in the factory without the terrible blue paint that had been applied by the Allies after capture.

[@DuffusMonkey]

I always wondered why I had never heard of any other Horten planes before they made the 229. It was fascinating to me that they were basically embezzling money from the Nazi party to develop it. I would love to hear more about the how they did it.

[@calimdonmorgul7206]

Ivo Zell got the Gorden E. Moore award for working on flying wing stability issues. He used a concept of the Horten brothers in his work. That was 2017.

[@ianmorgan889]

Very informative and extremely enjoyable presentation-thanks very much!

[@Lensman864]

Excellent presentation.

[@lukewarmwater6412]

the people in the village my stepdad was from had no idea these were being built in the furniture shop, they all though it had been closed as it was not needed for the war. abe was fascinated when he saw the wing moved out. even more fascinated when he saw the wing again in ohio years later.

[@donaldbadtram8022]

Tony, Thanks for your extensive research and detailed presentation !

[@GuabanaFilmworks]

Thanks this is great stuff.

[@JavierChiappa]

Excellent talk and beautiful plane. Lesson learned... NO VERTICALS, NEVER!

[@plane_simple]

Well done! But it was Reimar, who went to Argentina. Walter stayed in Germany and later joined the new german Luftwaffe. See: "Nurflügel" (Flying wing) by Dr. Reimar Horten/ Peter F. Selinger, Weishaupt Verlag Austria, ISBN 3-900310-09-2, released 1982 or 1983, 5th edition released 1993

[@neildahlgaard-sigsworth3819]

Nice to see the father of the flying wing, the Irishman John William Dunne mentioned on the slide of flying wings, with his D.4 and D.5 aircraft. Orville Wright say it fly on 20th December 1910, I've no informationon what he thought of it

[@PorscheGTRSWeissach]

good evening, this is one of my favourite aircrafts! i know this aircraft since i was a kid! i was allways fascinated by it's futuristic design! as a kid, i was in kahla/eastern germany for summerholidays. my grandfather told me, there was a secret factory... it was a mountain with a secret aircraftfactory in it! they had lifts to the top. there was a "hidden" runway. they really build me-262 there and planned to build the ho-229 there too! but war ended, us-soldiers took everything away which was not destroyed... is there nobody, who tried to rebuild the original aircraft stored in washington? i can't believe this... this aircraft deserves it to be rebuild or better... a flyable replica whould be amazing! we already have flying me262 replicas, so...? brgds, a flying wing fan!

[@PorscheGTRSWeissach]

edit: as stated now in a german aircraft classics magazin, the V3 (V6), that was found, was only a mock-up! just a 1:1 model!!! now, it becomes sense that this aircraft was only stored and never received some restauration... until now!

[@sultros]

The 229 is currently being restored at the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. Unfortunately it was among a number of extremely rare aircraft that were stored outdoors and much of it is laminated, carbon impregnated, plywood became damaged. The aircraft that was found was not a mockup. It was not complete but it was going to be functional. The Museum didn't have a funding or space for storage, especially after they were kicked out of the building they were previously using. This is all in the past though and these important aircraft get the care and attention they deserve. There was a german group that was trying to recreate a 229 and fly it. Not sure what happened with the project but theres a vid somewhere on youtube of it.

[@halloschmitty]

Horten Ho 229 , oh god, it was only 80 years ago

[@EricIrl]

Great talk. I'm glad Tony scotched any suggestion that "stealth" was behind the Horten designs. There is a Discovery documentary which make a big play on the stealth characteristics of the Horten 229 and tries to imply that this is why the aircraft was built. I think that the programme is very misleading.

[@colderwar]

Well that's the Discovery Channel for you. All hyperbole and no substance. I'm just surprised they didn't claim it was alien technology :-))))

[@predattak]

Well the younger of the horten brothers wrote a book and in it he claimed that they tried to make it to make it stealthier than other fighters but you never know.

[@EricIrl]

And the name of the book is.......?

[@michaelbooth90]

Not really. There is some reasonable reasoning with stealth. Such stealth tech was already in wide use in Germany submarines. So it's a fair leap

[@calimdonmorgul7206]

@Mactrip100 One certainly was detected and destroyed, because one of the 'stealth mats' got ripped off.

[@nickburman5850]

You couldn't make this stuff up. What a movie this could make. A comedy of course.

[@neildahlgaard-sigsworth3819]

The Germans had a factory making the right kind of glue until it was bombed. It wasn't the target but it was close by and got clobbered. I can't remember if it was the Americans or British did the deed and destroyed all of Germany's best glue and its recipe. German glue manufacturing never recovered until after the war.

[@taketimeout2share]

They should make this comment a sticky.

[@mrrolandlawrence]

the ta154 did delaminate I heard (German version of the mosquito)

[@DmdShiva]

@@mrrolandlawrence If I remember what I read about the Ta154 correctly, it wasn't that the replacement glue came apart, but that it damaged the wood layers that it glued together, causing it to come apart under stress.

[@huey-fan8335]

Well, I don't think that the Horten Brothers used a bad glue! The HO IX (229) was constructed for a load of 7G, with a safety rating with the factor of 1.8 (which is about 12.6 G)! That's not bad, even for a 80 Year old, wooden and glued plane from two guys that were no aircraft engineers (they never professionally learned how to build an airplane, the all learned it by themselves)!!

[@martyhorten3743]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="140">2:20</a> *_Stealth_* aircraft, "They were in the Luftwaffe, and they created this whole range of aircraft, basically *_under the radar_* of their own bosses" - remaining stealthy from their Axis boss & Allied foes.

[@therichyalf]

Excellent presentation. I would like to know how the Horton brothers managed to incorporate the BMW engines, and all the electronic intricacies of which they lacked experience.

[@Angelum_Band]

In Argentina they did have a wind tunnel. The videos are there... evidently in Spanish so the searches have to be done in Spanish for them to appear and the youtube algorithm to let it happen.

[@High9231]

Any links or keywords in Spanish?

[@vinkonevistic9893]

High9231 you tube....el trabajo de horten para la argentina....in spanish

[@jgolen220]

The US government actually recreated several 229's just after WW2 from scratch and I have it on good authority that they did in fact bring a few intact original versions or very similar aircraft back when the war ended that were airworthy.

[@FiveCentsPlease]

+J Golen No they didn't. There were only three different prototypes and the Allies obtained the third incomplete example. The V1 glider was severely damaged. The V2 flew with jet power for two hours and crashed. The frames for the V4, V5, and V6 were in the Gotha shop and were probably destroyed in place. US Intelligence gave the V3 229 to the British to study and possibly refit with reliable engines, but they gave up and gave it back to the US by August 1945. The British attempted to locate the remains of the V1 and V2 but they were missing or destroyed. The V3 was never flown and by 1947 it was in storage with other aircraft at Orchard Field, Chicago. Then it was donated to the Smithsonian who let it rot in a wooden crate for 20 years. Northop had their own flying wing prototypes and these were in the YB-35 program until the wing projects were abruptly terminated in 1949.

[@bleedinggumsroberts3579]

it is vary not bazaar for a design firm or team to develope a product and not manufacture it. it was to be produced as the Gotha iv.

[@EricIrl]

"Bizarre" is the word. In Germany at that time various designs were manufactured by companies different to the design team. The Me163 rocket plane was built by Messerschmitt but designed by Alexander Lippisch - who's designs were usually built by the DFS - which was a research institute.

[@bleedinggumsroberts3579]

no one mentions Cheranovsky

[@neildahlgaard-sigsworth3819]

bleedinggums roberts like J W Dunne, Cheranovsky is not as well known as he should be.

[@alancollard8939]

unfortunatly the brits were the first to fly a fly wing , in 1912/13 a mr dunne flew a biplane tailess aircraft , then 1926 a mr hill flew his pterdactyl powered flying wing , which later became the westland /hill

[@Larry-ct5mg]

Have you done any research on the 3 fly offs between the 262 and the 229. Apparently the 229 climbs faster, faster in level flight, turns sharper so much sharper it's a joke, dives faster and generally handles much better. The 262 was piloted by a combat experienced Luftwaffe multiple ace and the 229 was piloted by a low time test pilot and still the 229 completely dominated the 262. Two of the flights were documented by tower personal and the third was observed by Luftwaffe staff. Maybe there is finally enough interest in the 229 to look into those 3 flights.

[@peterson7082]

What?

[@FiveCentsPlease]

+Larry 21603 The Horten brothers were interviewed and interrogated multiple times by the British over the entire Summer of 1945. There are notes on these interviews and there was plenty of time for them to detail the test flights, which amounted to around two hours of flying before the fatal accident with the V2. And the V2 was a smaller prototype than the new V3 example that was captured under construction and survives today. Different aircraft, the V3 never flown at all.

[@barrierodliffe4155]

Larry. The 229 never existed, the small experimental plane made by Gotha only flew for a short time and was unstable, it crashed killing the test pilot and the Me 262 was not much of a fighter, it could not survive against piston engine fighters except by running away if lucky. turning was not something the Me 262 did much of.

[@1ProfessorXavier]

Get real; the 262's design was pure interceptor, made for speed and firepower, not dogfighting. That late in the war, most of their experienced pilots had been killed; and being unable to obtain high heat resistant metals accounted for their engine problems. kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y57ZqX6npciCmZI

[@barrierodliffe4155]

The Me 262 was only flown by the most experienced of the remaining Luftwaffe pilots. The engines were unreliable, that was not just materials but poor design.

[@mariannepompa4152]

Walter Horten was convinced that the engine damage did not result in uncontrollable greed and argued that Ziller could have switched off the functioning engine and slipped on a survivable crash landing, maybe even reached the runway and landed without damage. Walter also believed that someone might have sabotaged the plane, but whatever the cause, Walter recalled, "It was a terrible event. All of our work was over at that moment. ”Ziller test flights seemed to show the potential for high speed, maybe a maximum of 977 km / h (606 mph). In 1983, Reimar Horten in Nurflügel wrote: that he had sandwiched a mix of sawdust, charcoal, and glue between the layers of wood that formed large areas of the outside surface shielding the Ho 229 jet wing, he said, "the whole plane" from radar because "" the charcoal should absorb the electrical waves. Under this umbrella, then the steel tube [cell] and the motors [would] be "invisible" [radar] "." (P. 136, author translation). Reimar describes a method for reducing the radar energy from the reflected wing, its radar cross section Lowering or RCS so that the beam wing would be more difficult to detect by an enemy radar, and therefore able to perform its task with greater stealth. When interviewed in the mid-1980s, Reimar further claimed that he had specially used wood to build a substantial portion of the Ho 229 because the material did not reflect radar energy. Asked to explain the background to these measures, the designer said that "we made it from our own inspiration," without direction from the RLM, to mask the wing from detection when attacking Allied ships equipped with air search radar. Reimar had first written about RCS in the article...

[@gasdorficmuncher9943]

was thier anything left of the america bomber frame or something? underconstuction

[@FiveCentsPlease]

The tube frames for the V4, V5, and V6 were in the factory and were less complete than the V3 that was taken. I believe that they were destroyed in place at the factory. British Intelligence went back to look for the other prototypes in the Summer of 1945, including the preceding examples, but they had been destroyed by then. i73.photobucket.com/albums/i201/HenkG/Horton229V5.jpg

[@keptinkaos6384]

too many wonder weapons makes for a lost war due to S**t logistics

[@michaeldunne338]

Or the wonder technology wasn't so wonderful?

[@ronaldderooij1774]

The title is misleading. There was one very small proof of concept, that crashed on its second flight, killing the pilot. The second was the first (unarmed) prototype and was unfinished when it fell into the hands of the US Army. It was assembled and painted in the USA and never flew. Let alone that ever one Horten ever fought. So it was NOT (yet) a fighter. And it was NOT made for stealth. At best it had a 15% smaller crossection. Not spectacular and ONLY when it was dry (e.g. not in the rain or clouds).

[@FiveCentsPlease]

+Ronald de Rooij No, the captured example is the V3 third prototype of the program and it was captured incomplete. The V1 was an unpowered glider, damaged in a landing accident with the remains given to Gotha engineers to study. The V2 was the first powered prototype with jet engines and only flew for two hours of testing before being destroyed in a fatal crash. The V3 was a larger Gotha design and was found incomplete in the Gotha workshop along with the beginnings of the V4, V5, and V6. The V4-V6 were probably destroyed in place by the Allies. The British attempted to find the V1 and the V2 in summer of 1945 but they did not find them. The 229 effort was a bomber program not a fighter. At best it could have been a fighter-bomber like a Ju-88 in production form.

[@FiveCentsPlease]

+Pictsidhe No the V2 did not fly a lot. In the interviews conducted with the Horten brothers in the summer of 1945 it was determined that the V2 accumulated approximately two test flight hours before a fatal accident with an engine failure. There was a flight with an Me-262 although it was more likely a comparison flight and not any mock combat exercise. The Hortens only said that their V2 had a better rate of climb. The V2 crashed before full performance figures could be recorded. In any case, the V1, V2, and V3 were all different aircraft designs and they were experimental. There was no production-ready Ho-229.

[@nerome619]

@@FiveCentsPlease An unarmoured, unarmed, test plane would naturally climb better. Sadly the fanciful legend has become the 'truth' for so many.

[@johnk4437]

Horton brothers were interesting aircraft designers....and they were party members as well. Not clear how Nazi they were never the less this aircraft design was quite ahead of its time.

[@barrierodliffe4155]

The Horten brothers never got past gliders, Gotha did finish and fly one experimental aircraft but it crashed and Gotha started work on 3 or 4 others but none were finished.

[@peterson7082]

Not really ahead.