Helicopters & rotorcraft, airships, balloons, paragliders, winged suits and anything that sustains you in the air is acceptable to post here.Looks like you're using new Reddit on an old browser. In December 2011, the National Air and Space Museum moved the Ho 229 into the active restoration area of the Garber Restoration Facility, where it was reviewed for full restoration and display. Ziller's test flights seemed to indicate the potential for great speed, perhaps a maximum of 977 km/h (606 mph). It turned out to have a very small radar profile. But its original green paint appears on the interior and parts of the exterior plywood panels. The Horten H.IX, RLM designation Ho 229 (or Gotha Go 229 for extensive re-design work done by Gotha to prepare the aircraft for mass production) was a German prototype fighter/bomber initially designed by Reimar and Walter Horten to be built by Gothaer Waggonfabrik late in World War II.It was the first flying wing to be powered by jet engines.. At the time of Ziller's crash, the RLM had scheduled series production of 15-20 machines at Gotha.Horten had planned to arm the third prototype with cannons but the war ended before this airplane was finished. Hersham, England: Ian Allan, 2006.Horten H IX V3 curatorial file, Aeronautics Division, National Air and Space Museum.Reimar and Walter Horten Oral History Interviews [Myhra], National Air and Space Museum Archives. Hilariously I saw a documentary on it that claimed it was sitting in a government testing facility since the war because of its stealthyness. To minimize the risk of experimenting with such an advanced aircraft, Reimar built and tested several interim designs, each one moderately faster, heavier, or more advanced in some significant way than the one before it.Reimar built the Horten H V b and H V c to evaluate the all-wing layout when powered by twin engines driving pusher propellers. The Horten Brothers and Their All-Wing Aircraft. In 2013, Museum staff began evaluating the Horten’s center section to see if it could be safely moved to the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center for conservation.This story is a selection from the September issue of Air & Space magazineThe aircraft features a steel-tube framework enclosed by a plywood skin, which had been damaged during storage: “The plywood was badly delaminating in some areas,” says Lauren Horelick, an objects conservator at the Museum.While the initial objective was to stabilize the aircraft so that it could make the 40-mile trek from the Museum’s warehouse to its Virginia restoration facility, conservation staff gathered a wealth of information.The center section’s structural wooden supports, the team discovered, are made from Scots pine—not a wood widely used for aircraft. The Horten Ho 9/Ho 229 Technical History. In September 1944, Göring selected Gotha to mass-produce the Horten jets.All versions of the Ho 229 resembled each other in overall layout. Parasite or form drag was virtually nonexistent. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts The next steps in its restoration and preservation include treating the plywood wings and rotating the big, heavy outer wing panels from a vertical to a horizontal orientation. "They apparently did not believe that Reimar shaped the Ho 229 solely for aerodynamic reasons, that the jet was simply one in a long line of all-wing Horten aircraft, and that there exists no physical or documentary evidence to support Horten's claims. Share your story and read what others have to say. They ended up testing it and it turned out to be just a rumor. Learn how aviation and spaceflight transformed the world. Its wings sit close by. The Horten H.IX, RLM designation Ho 229 (often wrongly called the Gotha Go 229 due to the identity of the chosen manufacturer of the aircraft) was a German prototype fighter/bomber designed by Reimar and Walter Horten and built by Gothaer Waggonfabrik late in World War II. There is no evidence that any wing sections were recovered at Friedrichsroda, however members of the 9th Air Force Air Disarmament Division found a pair 121 km (75 miles) from this village, and these wings might be the same pair now included with the Ho 229 V3.In 1983, Reimar wrote in Nurflugel: Die Geschichte der Horten-Flugzeuge 1933-1960 (Herbert Weishaupt, 1983) that he had planned to sandwich a mixture of sawdust, charcoal, and glue between the layers of wood that formed large areas of the exterior surface of the Ho 229 jet wing to shield, he said, the "whole airplane" from radar, because ""the charcoal should absorb the electrical waves. Samples taken from the aircraft and analyzed under a digital microscope showed small black particles. The restoration team found scorch marks on the belly panels that line up with the engine exhaust tubes. Sometimes, it was also called the Gotha Go 229, because Gothaer Waggonfabrik was the name of the German maker who manufactured the plane. First flight on 1 March 1944. Whatever the reason, he believed that an aluminum wing was unsuitable.As they developed the Ho 229, the Horten brothers measured the wing's performance against the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter.

It may have been chosen because of wartime shortages, but, says aeronautics curator Russell Lee, “we have to remember that this particular airframe was highly experimental. Discover (and save!) It was in no way designed to be a production airplane. This photograph by Kenneth S. Kik shows the outer wing panels attached to the center section of the Horten Ho 229 V3. Air & Space Magazine Göring believed in the design and ordered a production series of 40 aircraft from Gothaer Waggonfabrik with the The H.IX V2 reportedly displayed very good handling qualities, with only moderate Two weeks later, on 18 February 1945, disaster struck during the third test flight.