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Hitler's Stealth Fighter

Posted by Soulskill on from the time-for-a-whole-new-round-of-ww2-games dept.

DesScorp writes "Aviation Week reports on a television special from the National Geographic Channel on what may have been the world's first true stealth fighter, the Horten Ho 229, a wooden design that was to include a layer of carbon material sandwiched in the leading edge to defeat radar. Northrop Grumman, experts at stealth technology from their Tacit Blue and B-2 programs, have built a full-size replica of the airframe and tested it at their desert facilities where they determined that the design was indeed stealthy, and would have been practically invisible to Britain's Chain Home radar system of WWII."

3 of 582 comments (clear)

  1. Best Photos by samtihen · · Score: 5, Informative

    The most interesting photos:

    http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGC/StaticFiles/Images/Show/39xx/394x/3942_Hitlers_Stealth_Fighter-09_10240768.jpg
    http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGC/StaticFiles/Images/Show/39xx/394x/3942_Hitlers_Stealth_Fighter-08_10240768.jpg
    http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGC/StaticFiles/Images/Show/39xx/394x/3942_Hitlers_Stealth_Fighter-04_10240768.jpg
    http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGC/StaticFiles/Images/Show/39xx/394x/3942_Hitlers_Stealth_Fighter-11_10240768.jpg

    1. Re:Best Photos by DerekLyons · · Score: 5, Informative

      Sometimes I think that the world got lucky - a few small changes in history, and things could easily have gone the other way.

      Mostly because you've bought into the hype surrounding WWII German VunderVeapons. In reality, Germany never had an atom bomb (they weren't even close), let alone a plane capable of delivering it over strategic distances (they weren't even close), let alone a plan to use these non existent bombs and aircraft to attack New York. Sure, they had enough bits and pieces that with enough hype and lack of journalistic integrity one could create the illusion of such things for entertainment value... But such entertainment should not be confused with a documentary.

  2. "Superiority" required reading at West Point! by wisebabo · · Score: 5, Informative

    There was a short story written by Arthur C. Clarke titled "Superiority" that discussed this. Of course, it being science fiction, the weapons were very interesting (matter annihilators, space distortion systems). Also, since it was written (in the 50s?) some of the vocabulary is quaint (I think the term "torpedoes" refer to what we would call missiles).
    Still I didn't know (according to Wikipedia) that it was (once?) required reading at West Point! (For those not from the U.S., that is one of the premiere military academies).
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_(short_story)