thats where you are wrong buddy it was a stealth fighter but it was never considered by the US military as a stealth fighter until they got a closer look at it, it had a wood carbon based paint that absorbed radar waves and its flying wing design was also a factor
The notion that Ho 229 was designed from the onset to be stealthy is a matter of largely unreferenced debate and speculation. It is more likely that the Horten brothers built the wings with carbon-impregnated plywood panels glued together with a charcoal and sawdust mixture because late-war Germany experienced shortages of metals and Hortens needed to reinforce the plywood for transonic flight. It also had the added benefit of increasing protection to the wings against gunfire. Stealth wasn't an issue since the design specs for the plane called for speeds faster than any Allied aircraft in service at the time. There was also still plenty things on the Ho 229 that would have reflected back radar waves like the welded steel tubing used to construct the center pod.
and yes it it did fly and only once in combat and never fired a shot, its guns jammed it had to fly back
Where did you pull this bit of information from? No, on second thought, I really don't want know where you pulled it out of. Where ever you got this from, it is wrong. The Ho 229 never saw any combat nor did any of the prototypes carry any weapons. In fact, out of the two prototypes that ever flew, one of them was a glider (Ho IX V1) and the second one (Ho IX V2) crashed on its maiden flight after two hours of flight time when it tried a single engine landing after one of the engines caught fire.
So, mind telling me how the Ho 229 could have seen any combat? Or better yet, post your source.
and to you UFO junkies when the US government took these back the the bases to study them the US civilians never seen them and said they looked like out of this world flying planes
Usually around military bases where they tend to test out new/experimental aircraft, you'll get lots of reports of UFOs in the area. So it wouldn't be surprising that if a civilian was to see an unconventional aircraft like this, they would automatically assume UFO. I'm sure when the Northrop N-1M flew in 1941, the civilians around Baker Dry Lake probably thought they were seeing a UFO.
although how the germans got it to fly is beyond me and it took the US 40 50 years to figure it out, its also proof that the germans were generations ahead of everybody is that they had sonar absorbing tiles on their subs in 43 and we couldnt track then and destroy them as easily as we could have before and that was a generation or 2 ahead of any nation and the US took until the late 50s early 60s to figure out how they did it and make it work.
Took the US 40-50 years to figure out how to build and produce a flying wing? While it is still being debated on whether or not the Horten brother's work on early flying wing glider designs in the 1930's influenced Jack Northrop's own designs on a flying wing, one thing is clear that the US first flew a flying wing on July 1941 at Baker Dry Lake in California. While the plane was unstable and underpowered, the idea of a flying wing was basically sound and paved the way for Northrop's further research and design into flying wings (N-9M, XB-49, and XB-35).
N-1M first flight: July 1941
N-9M first flight: December 1942
XB-35 first flight: June 1946
XB-49 first flight: October 1947
What is the moral of this sad tale? Research! Research! Research!
ack-ack
