The Horten wing plane Ho 2-29 had stealh capabilities

[engadin]

That's at least what they say in this National Geographic documentary:

"To determine once and for all whether the Ho 2-29 had stealth capabilities, experts first examined the surviving 2-29 and probed it with a portable radar unit based on World War II radar tech.

Then, in the fall and winter of 2008, they set about building the full-scale re-creation at a restricted-access Northrop Grumman testing facility in California's Mojave Desert.

The construction team embraced historic materials and techniques, and the Horten 2-29 replica, like the original, is made largely of wood and bonded with glue and nails.

Unlike the original, however, the replica wasn't built to fly, though it did soar, after a fashion.

The new craft's body was constructed around a rotor, which allowed the replica to be manipulated atop a five-story-tall column. There, in January 2009, the craft was subjected to World War II-style radar."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090625-hitlers-stealth-fighter-plane.html

3D model:

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/content/hitler-s-stealth-fighter-3942/

Enjoy mates.

AA_Engadin.

[Daniël]

I would be surprised that the goal of the Ho 229 project was to produce a stealth fighter. I assume that the Germans knew that wood makes a plane less visible on the radar, but I don't think they knew alot about stealth shapes. The Ho 229 has a very aerodynamic profile, so I think that the designers wanted to build a streamlined fighter. And I think that the Germans were forced to use wood, as wood was easier to produce than aluminium.

After I have written this, I see on wikipedia that the goal was to produce a streamlined fighter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_Ho_229

Wouldn't bailing out from a Ho 229 be very dangerous? The engines are on the sides of the cockpit, so if you bail out the exhaust gasses will burn you!

[IceFire]

I'm not sure about the prototypes but a early ejector seat was meant to be fitted to a number of German jets to avoid some of these problems. The Do335 is by far the most dangerous in my mind to bail out of... explosive bolts were to be set off as part of the bail out procedure to separate the tail section and rear propeller.

It's interesting that the Go229 has some stealth related properties but it's not the only aircraft of WWII to have that. Other wooden aircraft of the period (notably the Mosquito) were discovered to have smaller signatures on radar than metal aircraft of the same size.

The Horten brothers were glider designers and the Go229 embodies much of that glider design philosophy.. having no tail was a big thing for them.

I'm not sure what the Go229 would have been like in actual combat... it's not easy to handle in IL-2 and I imagine the real life version would be even more unnerving.

[Luno13]

The real-life version crashed after one engine burned out. Presumably the yaw of asymmetric thrust was too much for the air-brake control system.

If the Go-229 was stealth, it probably wasn't designed to be stealth...they just got lucky.

[Whacker]

To be fair, this was still relatively early on in the whole revolution of flight, and the accelerated development pace during wartime didn't lend itself well to thorough and safe testing. The compressibility issue comes to mind.