Hitler's Stealth Fighter

The quotes are TV hype - one weapon wasn't going to win the war for Germany - but the engineering on Ho229 (and many other German military items) and others was peerless. The designer, Reiman Horton, even went so far as to mix carbon (charcoal dust) in with the wood glue (the center section was tubular steel,the wings a plywood laminate) in order to reduce radar signature. Apparently it worked - Northrop Grumman tried much the same thing and saw a reduction in radar cross section.

The National Air and Space Museum has one that is in its restoration facility - hopefully it'll get moved to the collection in the not-too-distant future

 

never forget a lot of dedication and "paperclip" took you to the moon...

There were indeed some great engineering done during WWII in Germany, however the human cost was absurd.

 

While this airplane is brilliant, it would not have been able to change the industrial and human might bearing down from east and west.

Now, had their nuclear program been given more time, who knows? It was still behind ours and was thoroughly bombed late in the war. While we had the convienience of an ocean the transatlantic V weapon would have been awful if developed sooner.

Perhaps a better way to phrase this is, "If Hitler had waited one more year to start the war..."

 

There are so many should, coulda and woulda's involved in WWII, it is amazing that it ended the way it did....

Had the Japanese not attacked when they did, might our entry have been delayed for a year or two and without our army, there never would have been a D-Day, a two front war for Germany........

Had Germany not recognized we had broken their codes in North Africa and retained the oil fields.....

Had they finished the job in wiping out the RAF instead of turning their bombing towards London...

Had the 262 been developed earlier as a fighter to gain air superiority and stop our bombing campaign and allowed their nuke progam to progress...

Lots of things that might not changed the outcome sure would have made it a lot longer or very different......

I remember when I was a kid, there was a Look magazine or Life (don't remember which) that ran as series to the effect of "If Hitler had won WWII"? Despite the popular view that the USA was the good guys and good guys always win, that outcome was certainly not pre-ordained...

 

If you're interested in the German bomb effort, check out the book Operation Epsilon: The Farm Hall Transcripts. They are (literally) transcripts made by the OSS during the internment of Germany's top physicists in Farm Hall, Cambridge. The long and short of it was that the Germans weren't anywhere near a bomb in 1944 -- the link below offers a bit of insight.

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Hiroshima/Farmhall.shtml

 

Even more interesting, is what would have happened, if Germany won WW I ?

If the German hi command had followed the Schliefen plan to the letter, it may have won the war, with the initial battles. Instead, they weakened the flank coming down from Belgium, in an effort to let the Crown Prince advance in the center.

If Germany won WW I in 1914, it would have been a different world.

The Japanese got very little from the Pearl Harbor attacks. In fact, I believe it was a complete Japanese strategic defeat. What did the Japanese obtain from Pearl Harbor ? Tactically, they knocked out a few obsolete battleships (only to have almost all of them rebuilt) and destroyed a few obsolete P-40's. Some people have mentioned, it would have been a disaster for the battleship oriented U.S. Navy, to sail from Pearl, and engage the Japanese fleet in deep water. It might have been much worse than Savo Island. After Pearl, the battleship Navy, was finally sold on the aircraft carrier.

What did the U.S. gain from Pearl Harbor ? It woke up an isolationist nation and turned everyone behind the war effort. That is a strategic victory.

With or without a U.S. invasion on D-Day, the Russians would eventually drive into Berlin.

True.

Strategic bombing was ineffective at stopping German war production. The vast majority of the bombs missed the targets by a wide margin.

The 262, would never have changed the war - even if it was available in 1943.

German war production was increasing, into the late stages of the war.

The Germans had no petroleum.

It was never given a hi priority. It was nothing but a side show.


The German hi command were a strange bunch.

Each service, wanted it's own pet projects - in the extreme.

The wasted a lot of resources, on worthless pet projects that had little chance of success.

 

Nobody had the control technology in 1944/45 to make an aircraft like that work. It would have ended up with all kinds of appendages added to make it flyable. Look at the history of our own B-49.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

I believe that von Stauffenberg and his group passed up a chance to assassinate Hitler at Berchtesgaden way back in 1938 because they wanted to get the trio of Hitler, Goering and Himmler all together, and one of them happened to be absent, so they called off the plan. Just think how world history would have be changed if Adolf had died in '38!

 

For all the talk about Hitler's wonder weapons, people forget that the US was actually ahead of them on many respects. Here's the Northrop XP-49 which FLEW in 1945. It was jet powered and had swept wings. We also had a sweep wing rocket plane. When was the last time you ever heard about that? How about... never.

So, all this bull that we "stole" nazi technology to create our first US jet fighters of the 1950's is just that... bull. I wish the people who push these "sexy" theories would do their research first.

The Horton story is interesting. It's just not true that the Germans were way ahead of us in experimental aircraft or creativity.
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Couple of points: 1) Doesn't this plane look very similar to the Northrop 'Flying Wing' back in 1946? Could it be that they took the plans and came up with the concept which then re-made into the B-2 40 years later? 2) I hate to break your bubble but the ME-163 and the ME-262 most definetely would have changed the war if Hitler had nor tried to make the plane a bomber instead of a fighter. The plane was operational in something like 1942. Our B-24 and B-17 crews could not track their guns on the plane because it was so fast we did not have the technology to do so. They were sitting ducks for the 262 as the straffed the bombers and there was nothing to do but pray their cannons did not hit the marks. We did not have anything that could stay with the plane and the only way to take them down was for the P-51's to wait for them to land, low on fuel, then attack. In sufficient production numbers you and I my friend, would be speaking German today.

 

Northrop was obsessed with the flying long before the war and designed several small examples that were working their way up to a full blown tailless design. The Horton brothers were contemporary engineers to Northrop and in my opinion were ahead of Northrop in the progress of it.
The Northrop flying wing bomber design after the war was not a good bombing platform due to the pitch instability. It constantly was in a pitch oscillation as are most flying wings that lack a flight computer to kill the constant up and down oscillations. The Horton had more sweep back that helped in stabilizing the airplane...increased tail moment arm. Early flying wings had a great deal of twist near the tip that gave a constant " up elevator". As the wing's angle of attack increased the airfoil was designed to make it stall to bring it down again. Then it was elevated again and so it went. The oscillations were minute but noticeable to a bomb sight. The B2 benefits from a computer that flies the airplane instead of relying on wash out and it was based on Jack Northrop's genius. Few people realize what a genius this man was in so many things aviation. His Gamma can be traced forward to the Douglas SBD, he configured the DC-1, the Lockheed Vega, the Boeing Monomail, and his stress analysis formulas are still used today.
Switches

 

The strategic airwar was ineffective, at halting German war production. The vast majority of the bombs, missed the targets by a wide margin. Hitler had no intention of surrendering, on account of burned out German cities. I agree that the bombers would have had a lot of problems, if the 262 was available sometime in 1943. The American and British bombing offensive, would never have knocked Germany out of the war, with conventional bombing raids. Daylight and nightime bombing missions were indecisive. German war production in 1945, outpaced the production from the early stages of the war.


It was hopeless for Germany, after the annihilation of the VI Army at Stalingrad.


Bombing or no bombing, the Russians would have rolled into Berlin.

 

The bombing DID have a large hand in defeating Germany and as you said, it wasn't the bombing of the cities that stopped them , it was destroying the oil refineries and transportation network. Germany couldn't train new aircrews because of the shortage of oil and fuel, therefore the Luftwaffe could not fly the airplanes that they had with crews they couldn't train. Allied fighters were then shooting up the trains, trucks, barges, and anything that moved thus paralyzing the flow of war machinery and supply.

 

In many ways, most of the "wonder-weapons" could be thought of as actually accelerating German defeat. The magnificent Tiger tank is said to have cost as much as 5 or 10 Me-109 fighters, and although it could probably bring down 5 or more allied tanks, they only had a few hundred. The allies had thousands of T34s and Shermans.

The V2 rocket expended the workforce (and many of the lives of the slaves) without practically any strategic effect. It is still considered one the the very few major weapons systems to have killed more of it's makers than it's targets. The Komet rocket fighter probably also killed more of its own pilots than allied flyers.

The super-advanced Type 21 Submarine actually never was used in any shooting situation - just tested for a few days prior to the end. So again, both U.S. and the U.S.S.R. got far more out of it than the original inventors - they used it for many years as their standard diesel electric attack boat, and we copied much of the hull and configurations for our original Nautilus nuclear.

Their A-bomb program was pretty much non-existant as proven by the ALSOS-2 investigations after the war. Seems they thought that you had to make a WHOLE NUCLEAR REACTOR and send it into runaway...this would of course have been impossibly big and heavy. Heisenberg was reported to be stunned when he realized how small our fissionable component was. His later claims that he slowed down their nuclear progress out of humanitarian reasons was IMHO, self serving BS.

So, in many ways - they just ended up providing a treasure-trove of military technology for their victors to work over for many years during the cold war. Good thing, too, how this worked out as many have commented.

 

Well said.

You have to look at the German MG-34 machine gun and compare it to the American M1919A4. If you compare the two, you will have a hard time understanding how the MG-34, could ever have been approved for widespread production ? The MG-34 is a tempermental weapon, that is over-engineered (very expensive to build) and is all milled by hand tools. The American M1919A4 (a reliable weapon), is put together with the majority of the components being stamped parts (very inexpensive to build).

I can give more examples.

Tactical interdiction (as you already know), has little effect on the strategic outlook of the war. In addition, U.S. tactical fighters did not have much of that capability (long legs), until the introduction of the P-51, in the later stages of the war.

My point, is the bombs from the B-17's, B-24's, and Lancasters simply missed the targets. A lot of the effort, was wasted due to the poor accuracy of hi-level bombing - given the technology of the times. Even in Vietnam, a really good Phantom pilot, could only put the bombs within 200' of the target.

The German supply lines were over-extended. The German army in Stalingrad, never obtained the minimum weight of supplies needed to sustain the forces in the field. The Luftwaffe never met one (1x) single day's minimum supply requirements, for the soldiers in the field. The Germans never had enough petroleum, to sustain combat operations in Russia.

Of course the bombing effort had an effect on domestic oil refineries. However, after the Russians took Romania, the oil was unavailable for the army. No oil and the Panzers could not move.

The Germans lost the war on the ground.

 

Gunners seldom were able to actually " track" fighters that were making proper passes at a bomber. A head-on pass or one that came in from the side and ahead were nothing but a blur when they went by and extremely difficult to get a bead on. You swung to where you thought the fighter was going to be and filled the space with fire. More times than not you missed but there were some that didn't. The tail passes and some overhead shots were easier. ME109's and FW190's were just as hard to hit as a jet because they had cannon that out-ranged the cal.50's and the Germans were very good at shooting strategies.

 

allow me to help with pics, my MG42 ( replaced the MG34, and still complicated ) and my Browning 1919 .

all NFA laws apply .
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Take a look at the photos of the destroyed marshaling yards, rail heads, bridges, wrecked motorized convoys, destroyed ball bearing plants, and destroyed oil refineries. Yes a lot of bombs missed the targets but enough of them hit their intended targets to cause serious delays and disruption in the German war plans. The Germans lost the war on the ground because they didn't have the fuel to run things. Read Speers " Inside The Third Reich ". They did lose the war on the ground because they eventually were over extended and under supplied and the allies simply overwhelmed them. The last year of the war the air power of the allies denied the Germans their air force and their eyes to see what their enemy was doing. Again, Speer got the production of aircraft up as you said, but they didn't have the trained crews OR THE OIL TO OPERATE THEM.

 

Yes, gentleman, you are quite correct.
Ultimately, wars are not won and lost by weapons. Wars are fought, won and lost by LOGISTICS, SUPPLY AND INDUSTRIAL BASE.

The classic example of this is North Africa: Rommel would go like gangbusters and then dead stop as he out ran his logistical support though poor planning. Logistics and support may not be sexy, but it is the most important aspect to ANY campaign.

The most important weapons in WW2? IMHO the deuce and half truck and C-47 (although you can also make a pretty good case for the aircraft carrier)

 

he magnificent Tiger tank is said to have cost as much as 5 or 10 Me-109 fighters, and although it could probably bring down 5 or more allied tanks, they only had a few hundred. The allies had thousands of T34s and Shermans.

What was the response to the Tiger: "How many Shermans do you need to destroy one Tiger? 5; 4 to be destroyed and one to get the shot."

 

jfyi, I am a mentor and active enthusiast of U.S. Airpower. I am a lifetime member of the AFA and served in both the Air and Army N.G.

I am also a licensed pilot + aerobatics and taildragger time - kewl !

I posted this info, to not offend any of the airpower advocates (me included) in this section.




I do believe the strategic airwar over Germany was ineffective.

 

I am glad you posted!!! This is a great discussion about a cool plane and the expectations around it.