The Horten Ho-229 Aircraft [History Column]

The subject of this column is a quite remarkable German aircraft from World War II (WW2): the Horten Ho-229. This was a single-seat fighter/bomber aircraft with a steel and laminated plywood airframe, powered by two turbojet engines, and designed and built by the Horten brothers, Walter and Reimer. Its maximum speed was close to 1000 km/h. It looks for all the world like a modern-day stealth aircraft - but from 75 years ago. A prototype aircraft flew in test flights in February 1945 - just three months before the end of WW2 in Europe. The results were encouraging, but there was no time and no manufacturing capability to develop it to operational status. The prototype was recovered as the Allies overran Germany, and now-declassified documents in the British National Archives show that the airframe was carefully inspected and the performance assessed. It is not clear how much of this information may have been used in the design of the Northrop XB-35 (1946) and YB-49 (1947) "flying wing" aircraft. The prototype aircraft lay in storage for many years, but has now been taken to the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy museum, close to Dulles airport, VA, USA, where it is being restored.