Dec 102009
This interview with Bill Sweetman on MSNBC about the RQ-170 Sentinel shows a side-view of an odd version of the Horton 229, crediting it to “Liberation.fr.” I took a look at the French-language website and found the relevant page HERE. There is it claimed that the Sentinel is based on the Horton design of 1945… a rather lame yet common sort of “the Nazis invented friggen’ EVERYTHING” claim. The only thing the RQ-170 and the Ho 229 share is a flying wing configuration, which is basically like saying that the Boeing 787 is a copy of the Messerschmitt 262.
But the really odd thing is the drawing of the Ho 229 that was used. See if’n y’all can find at least one really odd design feature…
19 Responses to “A damned odd illustration”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Arrestor hook?
Yea, did not realize the Nazis had aircraft carriers! And the engine thrust would have been angled out of line with the wing, at least that is how it looks in that drawing.
Could this be a composite of several, newer illustrations?
The more I look at it, the more that engine placement bothers me. In flight the thrust would be pushing the ship down, not forward. Or am I all wet on this?
Looks like a ‘new’ drawing, not only are the engine intakes angled differently than I’ve seen before the outer wing panels have a distinctly defined “sweep” upwards from the Luftwaffe marking. None of which was “original” Horton.
As an FYI though, YES both the B2 and most other “stealth” flying wings ARE based on work done by the Horton brothers! Bill Sweetman commented on such in one book on the Aurora, and several places when writing about stealth and early research. It seems it was well reported that the Horton flying wings were tougher to track on radar but the reports got buried in the mass of post-war technology the Allies grabbed. It wasn’t till the mid-1980s that some of the studies were re-found and this instigated NEW studies where the Horton flying wings at the Smithsonian were uncrated and ‘borrowed’ by DoD and contractors for radar cross section testing.
(In exchange the A&S Museum got the Horton’s restored somewhat and funding to restore some other aircraft as well)
As I recall the engines WERE ‘canted’ down a bit but the intakes make them look worse than they are. Were… Whatever…
Randy
The arrestor hook really has me going, as without aircraft carriers this isn’t going to be of much use.
The Go-229 was going to have a braking parachute housing on the underside of the tail, but I’ve never seen a drawing of one with a arrestor hook before.
This could be a illustration from a computer game, as some of those do include a keyboard command to raise and lower a arrestor hook, but don’t have one for releasing a braking chute.
You have to see this BTW; looking like something out of a Indiana Jones movie, here’s the Draeger pressure suit helmet designed for the G0-229 so that it could operate at high altitude:
http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/picturesr/dr2.jpg
As far as the inclined engine mounting goes, that’s a trick used on a lot of powered flying wing model aircraft; by having the wingtips slightly upswept and the CG slightly forward, the aircraft has a tendency to achieve a stable flying condition without stalling… if speed drops, it goes into a slight dive to correct; if speed increases, it flattens its pitch angle… but if speed gets too high, it starts to climb despite what the elevons are trying to do… so by having the engines press down the nose as thrust and speed increase, that effect can be countered.
If the design has a origin point, it would be the early B-2 design that only had the single point on the trailing edge.
What makes that funny is that Lockheed is now designing UAV’s that look like the Northrop B-2, while Northrop had the X-47A Pegasus UAV that looked like Lockheed’s Hopless Diamond:
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app4/x-47.html
> It seems it was well reported that the Horton flying wings were tougher to track on radar
An urban legend.
> the Horton flying wings at the Smithsonian were uncrated and ‘borrowed’ by DoD and contractors for radar cross section testing.
(In exchange the A&S Museum got the Horton’s restored somewhat and funding to restore some other aircraft as well)
More legendry. The Ho 229 remains entirely unrestored, it’s plywood skin (which was likely added by US troops after capture) turning to mush.
Claims about the 229 being stealthy are surprisingly recent (the 1980’s, IIRC). Additionally, the National Geographic special about the 229 from this summer made claims about it being 20% smaller in radar cross section that other aircraft, but it was a really vague, disappointing comparison. What other aircraft? An Me 109? An Me 110? An Me 262?
Is it me, or is the nosewheel too small as well?
IIRC, it should be quite a bit bigger than the other wheels.
Yup. The nosewheel on the 229 was ginormous, as I gather it was meant to take the bulk of the takeoff and landing stresses.
The Nazis not only had plans for four carriers, but had one in construction that was 80% complete, the KMS Graf Zeppelin. Goering was asked by Hitler to direct the development of carrierborne aircraft, but saw a naval air arm as a direct threat to his Luftwaffe. Its interesting that the German carrier program eneded in 1943 and the Horten 229 began in 1943. This drawing could have been an earlier variant of the 229, made during the design phase with a carrier-based application. Speculating that the engine position and tire size reflected ideas that weren’t continued through to development.
> This drawing could have been an earlier variant of the 229…
My guess is that this is a *modern* (or at least post-war) drawing. It just doesn’t look like an old-school German drawing… and it definitely doesn’t look like one of the Horton drawings.
IF it’s a German drawing from that era, perhaps the idea was the land on the Autobahn. By the spring of 1945 there can’t have been a lot of it that wasn’t damaged, so maybe there was a hope that arresting gear would make landing on what was left a useful idea.
But the image just doesn’t look right. Postwar and French, perhaps? The French had carriers, and they hoped to adapt some German hardware to their requirements.
Got to agree, something about it is just wrong. Can’t put a finger on it, just wrong. I’m no aeronautical engineer, I have spent countless hours pouring over Enzo Angelucci’s work and Janes encyclopedia of aircraft, and I just plain like airplanes,that I have a fairly good eye for this and that and whatnot.
check this on ebay
http://cgi.ebay.com/RARE-16mm-Films-Republic-Aviation-AP-100-VTOL-Fighter_W0QQitemZ110468356182QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Film?hash=item19b86d5856
>Postwar and French, perhaps?
Possibly. An illustration for a book or magazien article, poorly scanned, would be my guess.
> The French had carriers, and they hoped to adapt some German hardware to their requirements.
Just a guess here, but I’d bet they’d scrape the Balkenkreuz off before the plane entered French service…
An update: this illustration is one of only five under the “Ho IX” category here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Horten_Ho_IX
The claim is made here that it comes from the DoD and dates from 1944.
Errrrrmmmm….
I just pulled Williams Green’s Warplanes of the Third Reich off the shelf. On page 250 are side views of the Go229 V1, V2 and V3. The damned odd drawing is a combination of V2 and V3. It has the under-the-wing antenna of V2 (unique to V2), the intakes of V3 (they are angled, but the cutout inboard is larger on the real airplane), and the engine tailpipe of V2. The upswept wingtips are common to all 3 version, but the wing depicted is of V1 (it has fewer panels than the other two). The main gear is mostly that of V3, lacking the central tire boss and the inboard gear doors of the real thing. The nose gear is least unlike V2. There’s a strake-like structure under the fuselage of the drawing; it’s linked to the nose gear, and that same structure is unique to the V2. My gut feeling about the whole thing is that the drawing was made from a couple of bad photo.
Admin said:
“More legendry. The Ho 229 remains entirely unrestored, it’s plywood skin (which was likely added by US troops after capture) turning to mush.”
No, it was skinned when the troops found it, although the wings weren’t attached to it – there’s a photo of what the center section looked like on capture here: http://www.koellner-online.de/Go/stuff_eng_detail_hoix.htm
Swastikas got painted on it after capture though, probably for a display of captured enemy equipment.
This is a interesting photo of it, as the burn marks aft of the engines suggest the builders ran them up at some point:
http://www.luftwaffe39-45.historia.nom.br/aero/go229_6.jpg
I doubt if the only one that flew was ever checked out for radar return, as it crashed so early into the test program when an engine quit during final approach to landing.
It’s a shame that such a interesting aircraft hasn’t been restored yet.
That would definitely explain the oddness of it.
I wonder if the hook was there in place of an approach chute? I mean, land on an airfield the same way you would on a carrier: If you catch the cable great and if not you go around. This would get around the problem of period turbine engines which changed power settings so slowly.
Jim