Horten 229 Nazi Stealth Aircraft

[gambit]

Did Nazi Germany knew how to exploit radar waves behavior?

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This Sunday, June 28, National Geographic TV airs Hitler's Stealth Fighter. Set your TiVos or just kick the rest of the family off the TV, because this one should be good.

Back when stealth was very, very secret, a few people quietly advised me to take a look at the Horten Ho229, one of WW2 Germany's most advanced designs - a jet-powered flying wing made of wood. In a German book, a British documentary producer had found something even more interesting: the Horten brothers, Walter and Reimar, had planned to use a primitive radar absorbent structure (RAS) in the leading edges. They were to be made from a sandwich of plywood around a carbon-loaded filler. The only question: how well would it actually have worked?

Horten Ho 229 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It was a personal favorite of German Luftwaffe chief Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, and was the only aircraft to come close to meeting his "1000, 1000, 1000" performance requirements.

At first glance, it would appeared to be so.

Elsewhere on this forum I posted a few explanations on basic radar behaviors on a body and the curvatures of the Horten 229 does seems to imply that Nazi Germany were aware of those behaviors.

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The Horten brothers were experimenting with crude radar absorbent material (RAM) compound as a primary response to radar. The reality was the Nazi Germany's radar technology was behind the Allies'. This flying wing design was borned out of operational necessities and far less from any scientific discovery or engineering innovations...

...a bomber that was capable of carrying a 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) load over 1,000 km (620 mi) at 1,000 km/h (620 mph); the so called 3 X 1000 project.

Streamlining the body and using wood, like the British Mosquito fighter, were obvious But the fact that they concentrated on the design's leading edges clearly indicated they were suspicious ABOUT those behaviors. It can be reasonably argued that if given time Nazi Germany scientists could have bypassed the angled facets techniques employed in the F-117 and move straight to the F-22's 'creeping wave' principle design for RCS reduction. The 229's engines would have acted like electronic beacons, frontally exposed as they are, but overall the design would have a far less RCS signature than comparably sized aircrafts.

Radar itself is an accidental discovery. Russian mathematician Petr Ufimtsev gave the world the equations that is PREDICTIVE of radar waves behavior on a body. The Soviet Union ignored his findings to their sorrow. Ufimtsev is currently teaching at University of California, Irvine. It is because of today's sophistication in radar technology and techniques that compelled the US to begin with the F-117's angled faceting design. Radar range testing of the 229 already revealed that the aircraft, despite its frontally prominent engines, would have defeated the Allies' more primitive radar back then. That accidental discovery would galvanize Nazi Germany's war effort in that electronic direction and probably alter the course of the war, just like how radar did in favor of the Allies.