Hitler's Stealth Fighter 582
DesScorp writes "Aviation Week reports on a television special from the National Geographic Channel on what may have been the world's first true stealth fighter, the Horten Ho 229, a wooden design that was to include a layer of carbon material sandwiched in the leading edge to defeat radar. Northrop Grumman, experts at stealth technology from their Tacit Blue and B-2 programs, have built a full-size replica of the airframe and tested it at their desert facilities where they determined that the design was indeed stealthy, and would have been practically invisible to Britain's Chain Home radar system of WWII."
If it were only in the leading edge (Score:5, Interesting)
They'd only see the plane leaving, not arriving, which is quite an interesting compromise, as every other stealth programme goes with the notion that it has to be invisible at all times.
This was designed so that, once it passed Britains coastal radar, they wouldn't be able to scramble fighters fast enough once they did detect them. Rather ingenious.
outcome of the war (Score:0, Interesting)
So no one hears a Horton Ho? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The German's are doing it. (Score:5, Interesting)
The British de Havilland Mosquito was also very hard to detect with radar due to its wooden construction. It served in fighter (day and night) and fighter-bomber roles amongst others so they did see action against the P-51's contemporaries.
Re:Best Photos (Score:5, Interesting)
The development of stealth technology is one of those secretive fields that has an instant fascination. I quite enjoyed reading Ben Rich's autobiography [amazon.com]. Also Hitler's plan to atom bomb New York [youtube.com] and The Real Heroes of Telemark [amazon.co.uk] were both quite interesting, casting two sides of the same global battle from very different perspectives. German scientists were some of the best in the world (not that they are so bad today..). Sometimes I think that the world got lucky - a few small changes in history, and things could easily have gone the other way.
Bah, another crappy science article in NG (Score:5, Interesting)
This article is utterly bogus. Not that National Geographic has ever been known for quality writing on highly technical topics.
The Ho 229 was built as it was specifically to meet the "1000-1000-1000" bomber contract. This called for an aircraft that could fly 1000 km at 1000 km/h while carrying a 1000 kg warload. And it had to be built of wood, because all of the aluminum, and metalworkers, were accounted for in current projects.
The only way to possibly meet the speed requirement was through jet engines. However, jet engines of the era were extremely inefficient, especially German ones where poor alloys limited exhaust temperatures in the turbine. So in order to get the range while keeping the speed, you needed to cut drag to an absolute minimum.
And that's why the 229 looks like it does. It lacks the profusion of surfaces that conventional designs had, and minimized wetted surface due to the almost non-existent fuselage. This thing is all wing, which means you're losing all the parasitic drag.
ANYTHING else, including these "stealth" features, were utterly secondary.
Moreover I have a very serious problem with the claims that this plane is stealthy. Compressor disks in the engines are an extremely effective radar mirror. This is why the F-117 has "blinds" over the inlets, or why the F-22 has a S-shaped intake system. As you can see in the pictures, in the 229 the compressor face is directly exposed to the front.
Sure, the CH radars were longwave and wouldn't have been good against this aircraft, but that would be true of any small jet of the era. They were extremely good against targets a few meters in size, like a propeller, but anything smaller would be difficult to see.
Claiming this plane was developed _as a stealth plane_ is like claiming the DC-3 was a swept-wing design. Accidental features do not indicate design intent.
Maury
Shame we didn't learn this lesson in Vietnam (Score:3, Interesting)
It's remarkable that we had in our hands a German aircraft that contained within it a very important lesson that we flat out ignored. Building a stealth plane in 1943 meant the Germans had learned something it would take us another 30 years to figure out. Stealth is essential in aircraft.
Instead, we had the likes of unstealthy aircraft flying over Vietnam and getting shot down with rather significant losses to surface to air missiles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_losses_of_the_Vietnam_War [wikipedia.org]
More than 1700 US aircraft were shot down. That's a catastrophe. It was in response to that that the US Stealth fighter program was initiated in the early 1970s. But, just imagine if we had thought, geez, the Germans had came up with a way to evade radar, we have the plane, newer technology...
You have to wonder, what if?
Re:Hehe (Score:4, Interesting)
According to Wikipedia, this design was proposed in 1943, at which point the Battle of Britain was already lost and a good portion of the German army had just been defeated at Stalingrad. Even without the US or Normandy, it's highly unlikely the Germans could have lasted long enough to produce these things in large enough numbers to make any difference.
This design is one of a number of things the Germans could have accomplished that might have made a difference had they not been so eager to go to war in the first place. The French and British policies of appeasement, and their policy of rearming only in accordance with the provisions of Versailles while allowing the Germans to break that treaty at will without consequence, meant that before the war time was on the Germans' side. Had they waited until 1942 or 43 to attack Poland, as most of the Generals were suggesting, the outcome of the war might have been very different.
Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, the success of his audacious moves against Austria and Czechoslovakia against the advice of his military leaders were the primary factor in his consolidation of total power over the military, and therefore over the country, so it seems his recklessness in military matters may have been both the key to his success as well as the reason for his ultimate failure.
Re:If it were only in the leading edge (Score:3, Interesting)
That sounds like the SR-71 plan. Fly really high and really fast, and nothing will get you. :) I've read reports of missiles being fired at SR-71's. The SR-71 can simply outrun them without trying too hard. Of course, at over Mach 3, your travel time to anywhere is substantially reduced. :) I would imagine something like that even if it showed up on radar would look like an error. "We have a blip here. No, we have a blip there. No, it's gone, it was nothing." :)
Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:5, Interesting)
Hitler didn't make a single ultimate mistake. He made several. Launching into an unneeded second front when he broke the non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union was a huge mistake. He also diverted a lot of supplies for his war effort into his political posturing bullshit about the purity of the Aryans. If he'd been like a real politician and just said what he had to, instead of actually following through with it, his trains could have been hauling soldiers and firearms to the front, instead of Jews and homosexuals to death camps.
So remember kids: if you want to eradicate people who look a certain way and you also want to become ruler of the planet, it's best to take over everything first, then you can genocide to your heart's content. Also, don't get involved with war in the winter in Russia.
Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:4, Interesting)
Had Hitler waited, he might have had the air power to definitively defeat Britain, which might have allowed him to take on the Soviets. In my opinion, even with Britain defeated, it would have taken several years of armament production before Hitler could have realistically taken on the Soviets, and it may have never really been possible, but it certainly wasn't possible with the state of his armies in 1941, particularly when he still had to heavily defend the Western Front.
Re:Another Example of German Technical Achievement (Score:5, Interesting)
Very darwinistic view of the world that man has. If he's right, the tactics in life are the same as in quake. Anything that moves and isn't obviously on your side, shoot it. Anything that doesn't move, shoot it anyway because it's probably thinking about moving and killing you as soon as you turn your back.
Why are you making this out to be his worldview? That these were the tactics of the majority of humans for the majority of history is just a matter, of, well, history. Wars between nations, strong tribes subjugating weak ones, nation-states subjugating non-centrally-organized peoples, this actually happened and none of the people doing it read Diamond's book.
In fact, I can't recall him ever discussing it in terms of tactics or intent. The question he asked and attempted to answer was not "why did the Spanish come to the Americas to crush the Inca, Aztec, and Mayan empires." The question he asked was "when they came to the Americas with this intent, why were they able to succeed so handily?"
I mean he does discuss the success of European countries in terms of them being sizable enough to take advantage of specialization, but small enough and with enough similarly-sized and hostile neighbors that they couldn't afford to eschew some technology or tactic for cultural reasons -- the kind of every-wary shoot-first-ask-later strategy you are talking about. I don't think he ever hypothesized that a nation-state's neighbors must be hostile, or that the nation-state must subjugate those weaker than itself. That's just the reality of the situation in Europe.
But I could be wrong. It's been a few years since I read it.
Re:The Germans build nice stuff... (Score:3, Interesting)
You actually didn't show that their strategy wasn't bad at all. On the contrary, prima facie their argument can seem reasonable because the germany had limited number of material, pilots, engineers and workers in general, so it is natural to expect to go high tech to combat the mass numbers of allies.
Moreover, they didn't have much problem with the technology by the end of the war, they had extremely large problem of material and fuel supplies. This is one of the reasons the horten (which was build at the end of the war) from the article had wooden wings. That problem would be even more pronounced if they went with large numbers. So they weren't "wrong" as you excitedly exclaim in that sense. They did lost the war and air superiority, but not because of going with the high-tech route.
Re:Best Photos (Score:3, Interesting)
But one German tank could shoot down ten Russian ones. So the count alone is not the point.
Besides, Hitler's advantage was the Blitzkrieg. He was too fast. That was all.
And in the end, that killed him too, because the army was spread to much, and they could not hold the areas behind the fronts anymore.
If he had just stopped at one point, where he could still hold it, he might have had a chance.
Then wait a generation, for people to get used to it. And expand again. Like breathing.
Of course, being evil to everyone but a small group was not doing him any good anyway. I would have done it like the Chinese did, up to the 13th century.
They came with a *huge* army. Like 10 times what the others had. And much more advanced. But they did come not with kills, but with gifts. So much, that nearly everybody gave in, and joined their empire. It was nearly a win-win.
They nearly came to Europe with this tactic. But some retard thought that now China had to capsule itself off from everyone. So they stopped and shrunk.
I wonder how it would have ended, if they continued that method until now. Eurasia as one Chinese country, without communism, but with a democracy instead. America found by Columbus, the Spanish-Chinese. became independent too, but in a much bigger war, which could have been called World War I.
Or would the have been fallen into pieces, like any giant Empire ever (Egyptians, Romans, Chinese, Nazis, UDSSR, USA?, Arabic Union?)
Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If it were only in the leading edge (Score:1, Interesting)
Good points made.
To take those points and look at them from another pespective - If you are slower than your opposition and also have significantly more RCS on the aft of the aircraft like...Say...The F-35 (Joint Strike Fighter), you may be able to penetrate enemy airspace to bomb a target but you'd better hope like hell that you take out all the enemy Sukoi's on the ground or that the pilots are all AWOL as you'll be shit out of luck on the way out of the danger zone. ;)
Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:3, Interesting)
Germany's war machine was not full geared up, true. But Britain's and France's were in worse shape. And given that both countries had more production capability, it would have worked against Germany to wait.
In fact, it is sometimes seen as a British blunder to get involved as early as they did, as a few more years of prep would have helped them out dramatically.
The top three German mistakes were (in chronological order):
I've also seen on the list (although I'm not sure of it's veracity) that they could have carpet-bombed England into submission a lot faster, possibly before the US got involved, if Hitler had authorized a yet more deadly air campaign. There are all kinds of reasons (irrational love of the British?) posited as to why he did not.
Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, the Soviet attitude at the time was that no invasion by Germany could be expected until 1942, and the Soviets themselves were certainly not in any mood to go on the offensive, so Germany likely could have pulled some of the resources in the East to take care of Britain, but they didn't. Even if they had, the British victory had convinced America that Britain may actually be able to survive after all, whereas before the prevailing American opinion was that Britain was doomed. The idea that Britain could survive led the US to step up its support of Britain significantly, so a subsequent campaign in Britain would have been much more difficult for Hitler in any case.
Re:Hehe (Score:1, Interesting)
Hitler's views on warfare also hampered German's military in numerous views. He didn't exactly have the reputation of a person who listens to advice from experts...
One of the urban legends that I've heard several times was that UK secret service decided to give up trying with assassinations towards Hitler at some point when they realized that Hitler is more harmful to Germany alive than dead. If someone can find a reliable source for such a claim, I'd love to see it.
Much more recorded are his generals' numerous attempts to assassinate him, though.
Who says they lost? (Score:1, Interesting)
operation paperclip [wikipedia.org]
Now look at all the still remaining big corporations that were part of the nazi war machine and how influential they are now. Looks to me more they just went "legit" and the "powers that be" just sort of ignored it and allowed/encouraged a lot of it to go "stealth" underground, hiding in plain sight. Here's some more pretty interesting stuff, and don't dismiss it out of hand, really do some research on this. fourth reich [google.com]
Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:4, Interesting)
As to the value of so-called 'wonder weapons', you should really read Arthur C. Clark's short story 'Superiority'. And before everyone says "it's just a sci-fi story, it has no bearing on real life" you should keep in mind that this story has been required reading at the US military colleges for almost 40 years.
It's not just the time and effort that goes into R+D; it's building up a manufacturing base, getting the necessary raw materials, training your soldiers on new equipment, adapting strategies to the new technology (often a forgotten step), shipping the new technology out into the field. Then, you've got a new, fragile, and rushed technology being subjected to the worst conditions imaginable and having people's lives rely on it.
The only obvious exception is the A-bomb, and even that was a fluke. The US was safe from invasion and damage, didn't have to worry nearly as much as Germany about having the whole project ruined in a bombing raid. You only need a few A-bombs to make a huge difference in the war, not true of most Germany's pet projects (except, obviously, their own A-bomb research). Since you only need a few, it's much easier to training, deployment, and maintenance are much simpler than a mass produced weapon.
Hitler-Stalin (Score:3, Interesting)
That's true, the non-aggression pact.
However, would Stalin have necessarily kept to it?
Especially with the stark ideological divide between fascism and communism, probably not.
Was it an uneasy alliance to begin with? Maybe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov-Ribbentrop_Pact [wikipedia.org]
What Killed the Stealth fighter design? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can not find it now, but I remember encountering an article several years ago in a local Las Vegas newspaper that described how the stealth fighters could be detected easily. In places like Nevada where there are secret military bases all over the place, there are hobby stealth watchers and they had discovered that there are so many cell phones in use all over the world that stealth fighters get lit up like a x-mas tree from the ground based signals emanating from the cell phones. Even amateur stealth watchers could track them flying around the Western United States. It was not long after that article the military officially started dropping all plans for future production related to designs based primarily on right angles and radar.
Can anyone find the article or info on this?
Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:3, Interesting)
Pretty sure Hitler's problem was that he was a idiot (strategically at least anyway).
Trying to take over the Soviet Union. Ha! That really worked out well.
People point to D-Day and this and the other thing as his downfall.
Cold War BS aside, it was Russia that brought them to their knees, and Hitler's unending pursuit in Russia.
I am sure all his aides were like "Dude this is such a bad idea!" and "Man this is so not working out!" at least in their heads anyway...
For the grunt on the ground, hearing he was being sent to the Russian front must have been like a death sentence.
Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:3, Interesting)
Add to that the fact that after Hitler rose to power he and his cronies politicized academia and government research, and determined by their own whims which scientists were to be fired and which projects to fund, starving certain potentially useful research project of money. This resulted in many scientists leaving Germany and moving to Allied countries. This obviously ended up giving the Allies and the US in particular additional talented scientists. The Germans developed plenty of potentially effective weapons in World War II, but Hitler was afraid to use some like chemical weapons due to unfounded fears of potential Allied retaliation with chemical weapons. Some weapon systems were not practical to deploy, and by the time other practical designs were capable of being put into mass production it was 1944 or 1945, too late to make a difference due to lack of production facilities and resources in Germany.
Re:Best Photos (Score:4, Interesting)
Beautiful photos... I was surprised by the swastika banners in the background of the last one though.
I'm not offended. I've got absolutely nothing against swatikas per se, whether in the context of the nazis, general history, or otherwise and I loathe the kind of censorship that bans their display.
Still, I'm not the general public and given the sensitivity of segments of the general public to this symbol I think it's intriguing that someone would go through the trouble of a) creating the banners, b) getting on a ladder and hanging them in a hanger bay, and c) taking a "romanticised" photo of the whole thing. From the perspective of documenting a piece of technology it was unnecessary though it does add to the artistic aesthetic of the photo.
Is it a brave decision? An insensitive one? Maybe the swastika simply doesn't hold the kind of meaning it did 60 years ago? I just find it somewhat peculiar.
Re:Best Photos (Score:3, Interesting)
In other words, you've bought the hype. But what those books and TV shows about Enigma don't tell you about is HUFF-DUFF, traffic analysis, radar, sonar (ASDIC), the ASW patrols in the Bay of Biscay, the large numbers of convoy escorts built, the CVE/CVL (light carriers) programs, hedgehog, leigh lights, etc... etc...
Enigma was very important, of that there is no doubt. But it was only one arrow in a large and well stocked quiver.
Re:What Killed the Stealth fighter design? (Score:3, Interesting)
The military couldn't drop what they didn't have... The F-117 was all angles because the computation required to design a smoother shape were essentially impossible to accomplish at that time. The cost of computation dropped greatly between the F-117 and the B-2, and thus the flat/angular stealth scheme vanished into history. Cell phones had fuck-all to do with it since they wouldn't become common until a decade after this happened.
Re:NSFW (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:3, Interesting)
Army Group B would have easily destroyed the entire Russian force if they had been allowed to fight in the open instead of in Stalingrad during the winter as Hitler insisted on.
The advantage the Russians had was that of numbers and winter clothing, in urban combat numbers mean more than technology and firepower, in open country technology and firepower are the deciding factor. This is also why the US is having trouble fighting in urban environments to this day, force multipliers basically do not work in urban combat.
Thankfully Hitler's ego wouldn't allow him to withdraw from the namesake city of the Russian's leader.
Re:If it were only in the leading edge (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen 61-7972 at the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Center, Dullas Airport, Virginia and 61-7958 at Warner-Robbins AFB, Georgia. Apparently I've been near a few others, but didn't know they were there (Like California, Arizona, Texas, Louisana, and Florida). When I get a chance to start traveling again, I'm going to make a serious effort to see the rest of them.
I have a sneaky suspicion that they may end up un-mothballed again. The two I've seen, I noticed were in perfect condition with fresh tires and all. Looking in the intake and exhaust they still had their engines. Lots of decommissioned aircraft have the engines removed. Lots of times, you'll see the hollow space inside where an engine should be, or a well repainted (or overpainted) things that shouldn't have paint if they need to fly again. I didn't notice any of that on these. They didn't look like they were decommissioned to live out life in a museum. They look like they were being stored in a nice climate controlled environment for future use. I asked at one of them, and was told "It wouldn't be the first time they were pulled out of the museums for active duty".
You haven't looked (Score:1, Interesting)
You haven't noted how many nazis remained, and just dropped that affiliation title, and went on to still be successful. The allies really only executed a small percentage, most of them just went right on being very wealthy and influential bosses, throughout industry and in politics, and there are more than a few reports that this was the strategic decision they made to "carry on" with what they termed the fourth reich. That and they had their own diaspora and got scattered among some other nations, notably in the mideast and in particular in south america, where they remained mostly untouched and were able to accrue some power down there. There and the ones who got pampered in the US. And *most* of the stolen loot..vanished. Someone has been using that money.
This is similar to the breakup of the USSR, a lot of the same old bosses and powerful figures just became "new" bosses and powerful figures in the Russian federation. You can't call them soviet or kgb anymore, but that doesn't change who they are or what they did or what their goals (might) still remain.
And you also have to look at before the war, who the big "bank" rollers were, and where they and their companies are now. Some pretty big names made out well supporting them and are still in power today, they or now their direct progeny. So, who is to say what was a win or not? If corporations and some powerful men (even inside the US and other nations in Europe outside of Germany) made multi billions and remained untouched, even after banking and supplying the nazis (check out prescott bush for another example of a stealth US nazi, and there were a lot more around him, too) despite any official outcome, did they really "lose"? Looks more like they played both sides, so no matter the outcome, they won and had all the little peeps as suckers and victims. Therre was a lot more to ww2 that the headlines surface level.
Really, do some in depth research, you'll find although they technically lost some aspects of the war, they still won by not being completely destroyed. That's why your analogy doesn't fit, they weren't *destroyed*. A LOT of them, thousands and thousands, remained in various levels of corporate and governmental power, from small time and local all the way to the very top levels, they just swung right back into authority positions again, and there are enough smoking guns that researchers and whistleblowers have found that have surfaced to show this was their fall back plan B operation, this was part of an actual plan, and it looks to have been at least moderately successful.
These people were and are fantastical and fanatical planners, look at the main article again for just a tiny taste of their accomplishments. They weren't incompetent. They might have suffered a serious major setback, but that is moderated by them remaining mostly in power and influential to this very day, and who is to say that within their ranks there might not still be some feelings towards the old goals, just now they learned how to go about it better.
If some guys pitbull down the street bites a lot of people, can you say the pitbull is gone, been vanquished, just because the owner locked him up for a few days, and he just gave him a new name?
Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:3, Interesting)
1 panzer could take out 5 shermans, 1-2 tigers could EASILY take out 10+ shermans
Sure. And it's gasoline engine was why tankers called it the Ronson.
They certainly would have been heavier if we, like Jerry, could have run a railroad line from the factory to near the front line..
German tech/weaponry was vastly superior
Except it was overly complicated, and thus time-consuming to manufacture, and hard/impossible to field-repair.
A lot, sadly, like modern American weapons.
barring their getting totally surrounded.
Nothing so drastic needed. "Just" a flanking maneuver, which was aided by the fact that Shermans were faster and their turrets traversed much faster.
Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:1, Interesting)
That's a reallllly big if!
It's also an improbable one. Consider the words of Lise Meitner (who discovered nuclear fission while working for Otto Hahn) quoted here [wikipedia.org].
"You all worked for Nazi Germany. And you tried to offer only a passive resistance. Certainly, to buy off your conscience you helped here and there a persecuted person, but millions of innocent human beings were allowed to be murdered without any kind of protest being uttered..."
She was in a position to observe the "passive resistance" in person, and was unimpressed enough to be critical of suggestions that Heisenberg et al. sabotaged Nazi Germany in any way.
Moreover, she was quite critical of herself too, for not having protested against the attempts to Nazify theory arising from Einstein's work by attributing most of special relativity's discovery to party member Freiderich Hassenoehrl, and for not having the guts that Einstein himself demonstrated in his anti-Naziism (he openly opposed Hitler in the 1932 German presidential election (Hitler had been Chancellor since 1930), and took up a very public pro-Zionism position even in the face of death threats and actual assaults on his person even in Caputh by anti-Semitic right-wing elements).
From Princeton he wrote that could not return to a Germany that was without "civil liberty, tolerance and equality of all citizens before the law [or run by the] raw and rabid mob of the Nazi militia" (1932) and publically urging all scientists to leave Germany. Several famous ones did, including Franck and Born, and Meitner considered it but wound up agreeing with Planck that "violence and oppression would subside in time and everything would return to normal". Part of what kept her and others in Germany was insecure job prospects for scientists in the global economic downturn, part of it was holding out for unrealistic employment demands (Meitner turned down an appointment in Copenhagen and also an offer from Swarthmore in the USA), and part was the combination of bribery of and travel restrictions imposed upon scientists over the subsequent few years prior to the Anschluss.
Meitner was strongly opposed to the development of an atomic weapon at all; it is pretty clear that she had the acumen to assist in developing one, and would have been an important asset to the Manhattan Project if she had not been in Stockholm and had also not been willing to effectively martyr herself in opposition to its goals. She might have been murdered in Germany; on the other hand, she also understood nuclear fission chain reactions better than anyone still working in Germany late in the war so it's fortunate that she found herself fleeing Nazi Germany rather than embracing it, even if only slightly, like many of the colleagues she later castigated.
I think she is probably the only German scientist that fits your if. It's not clear at all that the non-development of an atomic weapon in Nazi Germany was due to intentional underperformance by those that did not leave when they had the opportunity. A much bigger factor than that was the dismissal, imprisonment, and murder of working scientists whose politics were incompatible with the Nazis (for instance, by accepting "Jewish science" as valid and useful reference work).