Originally posted by davidpt40
Amazing. I believe the majority of the Ho-229 was constructed out of wood. Can't believe its still in such good shape.
IIRC, the facility where the Ho-229 was being developed and tested was overrun quickly by Allied troops, where they found the third prototype being prepared for flight testing; that plane is the one at Garber. So it never had any service time to
start its deterioration, and got a basic preservation job done on it immediately. By now, it would take some serious work to put it into flying condition, and being only the third prototype would probably not be very safe to fly.
(more historical information at
http://www.hotel.wineasy.se/ipms/stuff_eng_detail_hoix.htm and
http://www.geocities.com/nedu537/go229/)
So theres gotta be a reason that there are not many flying wings around, even today. Are they less maneuverable than conventional aircraft? Produce a larger radar signature? Crash too much?
The US flying-wing design program was for the B-35 (later, as a jet version, the B-49); high maneuverability wasn't a big issue for a bomber. In fact, Northrop had a contract for two proof-of-concept aircraft, 13 prototypes, and 200 series aircraft -- all before the first airframe ever flew (welcome to wartime procurement); limited manpower and production space availability delayed the first prototype until 1946.
A pure flying-wing design will have less maneuverability than a design with vertical control surfaces; the XB-35 and YB-49 designs suffered from a lack of yaw stability due to the relatively primitive state of flight-control assistance available in the 1940s; Northrop was never able to satisfactorily address the yaw stability problem; it took too long for the plane to settle into stable flight -- direct bombing competitions between the XB-35 and the WWII era B-29 indicated that without an auto pilot the XB-35 could not fly a stable bombing run in less that 4 minutes while a B-29 flown manually consistently set up bombing runs under 45 seconds.
A flying-wing design, with the reduction in the number of reflecting surfaces, is inherently much stealthier than a conventional aircraft design; the XB-35 and YB-49 demonstrated this repeatedly, with ground radar failing to pick up the aircraft until they were virtually on top of the field -- and this with no attempt to reduce its radar cross-section.
Although test pilot Glenn Edwards was killed flying the second YB-49, what actually killed the flying-wing program were high procurement costs, reliability and maintenance problems, the inability of the airframe to carry the Air Force's stockpiled nuclear and large earth-penetrating bombs, and the fact that even if the time and effort had been put into rectifying these problems, the B-49 would have been outclassed by newer, higher-performance aircraft like the B-52 which was then under development.
It would have been very interesting for the U.S. to have pursued the flying wing concept instead of conventional jets (such as the P-80 and F86).
Unfortunately, they never solved the yaw control problem, and the requirements that the Air Force placed on the design (the Fat Man nuclear bombs wouldn't fit in the aircraft's bomb bays, requiring external fairings, for example) pretty much killed the program, and without a military development contract, Northrop couldn't afford to work on a civilian transport version -- which functionally eliminated flying wings from the skies of America.
