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."
Hitler wasn't some demonic bad-ass bad-guy. He was a crazed political genius at the right place and right time. His downfall: he wasn't a real geek! He lost because of technical cluelessness! He didn't have the technical knowledge to realize the value of the wonder-weapons until late in the war when the 3rd Reich got desperate, and then it was too late. His right-hand man Goering didn't have a complete grasp of the importance of good intelligence and command and control. (He would have won the Battle of Britain, but he didn't know that he should've continued his campaign against the sector stations.) Even Hitler's understanding of economic warfare was that of an enthusiastic amateur.
We won not because our geeks were better, though they were darn good. We won because we *listened* to them!
The Secret History of Silicon Valley. (How geeks won WWII and the Cold War, and how that led to Silicon Valley.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFSPHfZQpIQ [youtube.com]
Hitlers single, fatal mistake was taking on the Soviet Union without first ensuring that Britain and the rest of the Allies were out of the war for good. Had Hitler not committed to the Eastern Front, he could have easily have prevented an Allied invasion, and indeed have triumphed in North Africa.
Hitlers basic failure was greed. He wanted the Soviet Union as well, when there was no possibility he would have won that war due to the sheer size of the USSR. He had no heavy strategic bombers, nothing to interfere with Soviet production facilities once they were moved further east, and that doomed him to lose.
Well, that was his second fatal mistake;). This is one of the things that makes WWII so interesting from a military perspective...there are many points where you can find mistakes by Hitler and his cronies, and you can debate endlessly if the avoidance of that particular error might have turned the tide of the war.
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.
I don't think Hitlers underestimation, if he even did, of Britain and Frances wish to fight for Poland was damaging at all - by the middle of 1940, Germany had caused France to capitulate and thrown the British army out of Europe. Had Germany won the Battle of Britain that year and not invaded the USSR, then in all probability Europe would still be in the hands of the Third Reich.
Without Britain as a staging post, the US, Canada and Australia would have had no firm base to launch an invasion of Europe. With Britain out of the war, Hitler would have held North Africa as well, preventing the Allies from using that as an invasion staging post. Basically, the Allies would have lost any easy gateway into Europe, and with that went any hope of liberation.
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.
Tell them you were reminding yourself about just how bad a person Hitler was. And then chomp down on a big banger while saluting a picture of the queen to let them know how much you love England.
Europe learned a lesson from the fascists. Curtailing free speech was a powerful aid in keeping those regimes in power.
Therefore, in order to completely disavow that era, European governments have decided to turn the power to curtail free speech towards the purposes of good. If you are a European government minister, this makes complete sense.
It's important to bear in mind that free speech has never had the same value or application in Europe that it has in places like the US. In the US, its a sacred right, the Most Holy First Amendment. In Europe, it's just considered a pretty good idea, as long as it doesn't get overly inconvenient or embarrassing for the government. Just because they invented the concept doesn't mean that they have fully implemented it.
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.
I think that the world got lucky - a few small changes in history, and things could easily have gone the other way.
Not hardly, as Jacob McCandles would have said. The Germans biggest problem in the war wasn't their technology, it was their production. The USA built enough tanks that they could afford to give away more than the total German tank production. The Soviets built more tanks than the USA.
Airplanes, the USA built enough to give away more than the Germans made. The Soviets didn't build more than the USA, but they built nearly as many.
The USA built more ships than everyone else combined, much less the Germans.
And on and on like that. Nothing the Germans could have done would have mattered a hill of beans, really - the only way they could have won that war was if they'd started building up their industry to USA/USSR levels in the 20's.
And even then, their chances would have been slim at best - they didn't have the manpower to operate industry at our level and put 20 million men in the field at the same time.
Sometimes I think that the world got lucky - a few small changes in history, and things could easily have gone the other way.
Mostly because you've bought into the hype surrounding WWII German VunderVeapons. In reality, Germany never had an atom bomb (they weren't even close), let alone a plane capable of delivering it over strategic distances (they weren't even close), let alone a plan to use these non existent bombs and aircraft to attack New York. Sure, they had enough bits and pieces that with enough hype and lack of journalistic integrity one could create the illusion of such things for entertainment value... But such entertainment should not be confused with a documentary.
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.
Other astounding inventions from tree-dwelling tailhangers in the first half of the 20th century: nuclear power, transistors, purified penicillin, and television.
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.
every other stealth programme goes with the notion that it has to be invisible at all times.
Not exactly. You will never be invisible, and stealth technology/employment is a lot more complicated than "we'll just be invisible". Even today, remaining undetected until past the threat is a fairly well-used technique. Just look at the F-22. And even if your airframe isn't fully-LO, you see a lot of emphasis on reducing frontal RCS. The B-1, Typhoon, Rafale, and Super Hornet all use some degree of RCS reduction, which buys them that much more time to get in close. Modern cruise missiles use the same principle.
Interestingly enough, raw speed can buy you some of the same advantages. Go fast enough and high enough, and the defenses just won't have enough time to react, even if you're lit up like a billboard.
It's kind of scary all the truly advanced tech Germany was working on at the end of the War. They're rocket scientists were disturbingly advanced compared to anything on the Allied side. It took Korolyov YEARS just too replicate Von Braun's V-2 in Russia, and that was working *with* Von Braun's own assistant, Helmut Gröttrup.
I'm sure in 20 years we'll find German plans to make ray guns, giant mech fighers, etc. Castle Wolfenstein game plots seems less & less like fiction as the years go on.:)
The Germans were doomed as soon as they opened up a second front against Russia. The Japanese getting the US involved obviously didn't help, but once Hitler decided to split his forces and assault Russia, his days were numbered. A technology like this may have been effective in the Battle of Britain, but it came too late for that, and stretching the timeline enough to allow for a rebuilding of the Luftwaffe and mass production of these planes, even ignoring the US completely, is not a realistic scenario given the events on the Eastern Front.
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.
Obviously this is all speculation, and doesn't matter much when you're comparing it to a real timeline... Yes, the United States developed an atomic bomb... But the Germans were also working on one. So if you extend the timeline to allow the Germans to develop this stealth jet, would they have had time to develop their own atomic bomb as well?
Albert Speer (who as minister of armaments after '43 was in a position to know) wrote that the Nazi atomic program was in its infancy in 1943. When Hitler was informed that an atomic bomb would probably not be produced until the 1950s, he downgraded the priority of the research.
The Nazis' were hampered by Hitler's view of technology. The Me-262 (first jet fighter) was outfitted as a light bomber, for instance, because Hitler saw more value in bombing than in defending airspace (in 1945!). The V-2 rocket was pushed hard, even though a single B-17 raid carried more explosives than the entire V-2 production. Anti-aircraft missiles were ignored and naval armaments were always given a low priority.
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.
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.
You are going on about the shape, which wasn't even claimed to be for stealthiness. The claimed stealth feature was the layer of carbon material sandwiched into the leading edge of the plane to reduce its radar signature. Thus, it was the first plane to incorporate design features specifically for stealth. Nothing you said even addresses that. Whether stealth was considered of secondary importance, or whether all the components were designed for stealth, is irrelevant.
Technical sophistication is one advantage on the battlefield, but manufacturing capacity is also important.
The Germans choose technical complexity over quantity believing that superior machines could beat the vast numbers of inferior machines the allies built.
The Germans were wrong.
As Stalin said "quantity has a quality all its own". A stealth aircraft or two may have been pretty trick, but if you have thousands of targets to bomb, you better have hundreds if not thousands of aircraft (and pilots) to do the job.
There was a short story written by Arthur C. Clarke titled "Superiority" that discussed this. Of course, it being science fiction, the weapons were very interesting (matter annihilators, space distortion systems). Also, since it was written (in the 50s?) some of the vocabulary is quaint (I think the term "torpedoes" refer to what we would call missiles). Still I didn't know (according to Wikipedia) that it was (once?) required reading at West Point! (For those not from the U.S., that is one of the premiere military academies). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_(short_story) [wikipedia.org]
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.
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.
Not exactly. It is possible to build a flying wing type aircraft that is stable. They're generally not as easy to fly as more traditional designs, but it's possible. Also keep in mind that aircraft of that era flew much slower. Part of the difficulty with modern designs is with the insane speeds they can reach. The aerodynamics of very fast (ie. supersonic) craft are much different from slower craft.
If you aren't mature enough to look at a swastika in a relevant place (we're talking about Nazi Germany here) you shouldn't be on the internet. Let me guess, you are also for the elimination of the flag of the Confederate States too? Please, show some maturity, if you can't handle seeing a swastika, perhaps you shouldn't be looking up information on Nazi Germany.
It just took quite a few years for us to make a plane that looked like a Horton.:) Actually, there were quite a few developed and some manufactured [wikipedia.org]. They simply weren't as popular as "conventional" aircraft. I would suspect part would be due to the difference in manufacturing cost, and some to do with customer faith. "I know an airplane with wings and a tail can fly. Why should I believe something like that can?". Maybe the long gap in development of flying wing aircraft wasn't. It was just classified. What do you think they do at Area 51 (among other secret facilities), store alien bodies and reverse engineer wormhole technology?:)
I love aviation, and have been amazed with Horton's aircraft. There were several similar aircraft. I saw one in person at the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles. There's a Horton Ho IIIf on display (hanging from the roof), part of a Horton Ho IIIh, and I found reference to a Horton Ho 229 being restored for display there. If I remember correctly, you'd go straight in the front door, and to the left behind the SR-71, but before the room with the Space Shuttle Enterprise. They have some beautiful aircraft there. It's worth the visit if you like aviation.
To be fair, the utterly stupid and ridiculous rules of engagement forced on US forces by the civilian leadership for most of the war prevented them from doing anything against those air defense sites except in reaction to being fired upon. It's kinda like fighting while handcuffed.
Also, the German technology was mostly serindipitous. Radar cross-section is much more a function of airframe shaping than materials; it just happened that flying wings tended to be better-shaped than traditional aircraft. But all of this was a trial-and-error process. We learned some from this, and incorporated those lessons into the B-70 proposal and the SR-71. However, it wasn't until the F-117 program (and its contemporaries) came along that we had
A. The theoretical base on which to reliably compute radar reflections (ironically enough, most of that was developed by the Soviets and seemed to be largely ignored by them for a while).
B. The computational power to work out reflections over even a simple faceted shape.
C. The control technology to make such shapes flyable.
And even then, the result was a flat-faceted, ungainly monstrosity. It took a little longer before we could compute reflections of curved surfaces, and develop something like the B-2.
Man (Score:5, Funny)
What DIDN'T Hitler Do?
Re:Man (Score:5, Funny)
What DIDN'T Hitler Do?
make friends as a child?
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Re:Man (Score:5, Funny)
Succeed as an artist?
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Re:Man (Score:5, Funny)
I'm guessing you haven't seen Hitler's artwork.
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Re:Man (Score:5, Funny)
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Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:4, Insightful)
Hitler wasn't some demonic bad-ass bad-guy. He was a crazed political genius at the right place and right time. His downfall: he wasn't a real geek! He lost because of technical cluelessness! He didn't have the technical knowledge to realize the value of the wonder-weapons until late in the war when the 3rd Reich got desperate, and then it was too late. His right-hand man Goering didn't have a complete grasp of the importance of good intelligence and command and control. (He would have won the Battle of Britain, but he didn't know that he should've continued his campaign against the sector stations.) Even Hitler's understanding of economic warfare was that of an enthusiastic amateur.
We won not because our geeks were better, though they were darn good. We won because we *listened* to them!
The Secret History of Silicon Valley. (How geeks won WWII and the Cold War, and how that led to Silicon Valley.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFSPHfZQpIQ [youtube.com]
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Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:5, Informative)
No, he lost because he over extended himself into Russia.
No weapon at the time wold have stopped the russians once the begain moving toward Germany.
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Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:5, Insightful)
Hitlers basic failure was greed. He wanted the Soviet Union as well, when there was no possibility he would have won that war due to the sheer size of the USSR. He had no heavy strategic bombers, nothing to interfere with Soviet production facilities once they were moved further east, and that doomed him to lose.
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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.
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Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:5, Insightful)
Without Britain as a staging post, the US, Canada and Australia would have had no firm base to launch an invasion of Europe. With Britain out of the war, Hitler would have held North Africa as well, preventing the Allies from using that as an invasion staging post. Basically, the Allies would have lost any easy gateway into Europe, and with that went any hope of liberation.
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Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:5, Funny)
Besides, where would we have entered it from?
Sarah Palin's house.
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Re:Good thing he wasn't a Nerd (Score:5, Funny)
He wanted the Soviet Union as well, when there was no possibility he would have won that war due to the sheer size of the USSR.
So, don't get involved in a land war in Asia. Got it.
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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.
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Re:Man (Score:5, Funny)
I'm glad that Indiana Jones was able to destroy this thing in Egypt, before it got off the ground. Otherwise, who knows how the war would have gone?
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Best Photos (Score:5, Informative)
The most interesting photos:
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGC/StaticFiles/Images/Show/39xx/394x/3942_Hitlers_Stealth_Fighter-09_10240768.jpg [nationalgeographic.com]
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGC/StaticFiles/Images/Show/39xx/394x/3942_Hitlers_Stealth_Fighter-08_10240768.jpg [nationalgeographic.com]
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGC/StaticFiles/Images/Show/39xx/394x/3942_Hitlers_Stealth_Fighter-04_10240768.jpg [nationalgeographic.com]
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGC/StaticFiles/Images/Show/39xx/394x/3942_Hitlers_Stealth_Fighter-11_10240768.jpg [nationalgeographic.com]
NSFW (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:NSFW (Score:5, Funny)
Tell them you were reminding yourself about just how bad a person Hitler was. And then chomp down on a big banger while saluting a picture of the queen to let them know how much you love England.
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Re:NSFW (Score:5, Funny)
In America, we call it a sausage in the mouth.
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Re:NSFW (Score:5, Funny)
I've got mod points, but I can't find anything that matches +1 Frightful Police State.
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Re:NSFW (Score:5, Funny)
what with swastika flags and all. I'll be in trouble if someone has overseen my screen just then, being a german living in Britain.
Speaking of which (and paraphrasing The Extras), where did these people get those huge swastikas?
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Re:NSFW (Score:5, Insightful)
Europe learned a lesson from the fascists. Curtailing free speech was a powerful aid in keeping those regimes in power.
Therefore, in order to completely disavow that era, European governments have decided to turn the power to curtail free speech towards the purposes of good. If you are a European government minister, this makes complete sense.
It's important to bear in mind that free speech has never had the same value or application in Europe that it has in places like the US. In the US, its a sacred right, the Most Holy First Amendment. In Europe, it's just considered a pretty good idea, as long as it doesn't get overly inconvenient or embarrassing for the government. Just because they invented the concept doesn't mean that they have fully implemented it.
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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.
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Re:Best Photos (Score:5, Insightful)
Not hardly, as Jacob McCandles would have said. The Germans biggest problem in the war wasn't their technology, it was their production. The USA built enough tanks that they could afford to give away more than the total German tank production. The Soviets built more tanks than the USA.
Airplanes, the USA built enough to give away more than the Germans made. The Soviets didn't build more than the USA, but they built nearly as many.
The USA built more ships than everyone else combined, much less the Germans.
And on and on like that. Nothing the Germans could have done would have mattered a hill of beans, really - the only way they could have won that war was if they'd started building up their industry to USA/USSR levels in the 20's.
And even then, their chances would have been slim at best - they didn't have the manpower to operate industry at our level and put 20 million men in the field at the same time.
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Re:Best Photos (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Best Photos (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone kills Hitler their first time.
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Re:Best Photos (Score:5, Informative)
Mostly because you've bought into the hype surrounding WWII German VunderVeapons. In reality, Germany never had an atom bomb (they weren't even close), let alone a plane capable of delivering it over strategic distances (they weren't even close), let alone a plan to use these non existent bombs and aircraft to attack New York. Sure, they had enough bits and pieces that with enough hype and lack of journalistic integrity one could create the illusion of such things for entertainment value... But such entertainment should not be confused with a documentary.
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Re:Another Example of German Technical Achievement (Score:5, Informative)
Read Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, it's the best explanation I read so far.
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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.
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Re:Best Photos (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because people were generally stupid then.
Other astounding inventions from tree-dwelling tailhangers in the first half of the 20th century: nuclear power, transistors, purified penicillin, and television.
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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.
Re:If it were only in the leading edge (Score:5, Insightful)
every other stealth programme goes with the notion that it has to be invisible at all times.
Not exactly. You will never be invisible, and stealth technology/employment is a lot more complicated than "we'll just be invisible". Even today, remaining undetected until past the threat is a fairly well-used technique. Just look at the F-22. And even if your airframe isn't fully-LO, you see a lot of emphasis on reducing frontal RCS. The B-1, Typhoon, Rafale, and Super Hornet all use some degree of RCS reduction, which buys them that much more time to get in close. Modern cruise missiles use the same principle.
Interestingly enough, raw speed can buy you some of the same advantages. Go fast enough and high enough, and the defenses just won't have enough time to react, even if you're lit up like a billboard.
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Re:If it were only in the leading edge (Score:5, Insightful)
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not so fast (Score:5, Funny)
I believe that the advances in detection technology would always have allowed the allies to hear a Horton Ho.
Re:not so fast (Score:4, Funny)
I'd be more certain that the plane would pick up local BBC Radio chatter
meaning that maybe, Horton heard Dr Who...
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So no one hears a Horton Ho? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So no one hears a Horton Ho? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure in 20 years we'll find German plans to make ray guns, giant mech fighers, etc. Castle Wolfenstein game plots seems less & less like fiction as the years go on. :)
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Hehe (Score:4, Funny)
From the article (yeah I know, Slashdot, not supposed to, etc)
IIRC the United States developed something called Atomic Bombs that would have counteracted any advantage Germany would have gained from stealth jets.
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.
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Re:Hehe (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe, maybe not.
Obviously this is all speculation, and doesn't matter much when you're comparing it to a real timeline... Yes, the United States developed an atomic bomb... But the Germans were also working on one. So if you extend the timeline to allow the Germans to develop this stealth jet, would they have had time to develop their own atomic bomb as well?
Albert Speer (who as minister of armaments after '43 was in a position to know) wrote that the Nazi atomic program was in its infancy in 1943. When Hitler was informed that an atomic bomb would probably not be produced until the 1950s, he downgraded the priority of the research.
The Nazis' were hampered by Hitler's view of technology. The Me-262 (first jet fighter) was outfitted as a light bomber, for instance, because Hitler saw more value in bombing than in defending airspace (in 1945!). The V-2 rocket was pushed hard, even though a single B-17 raid carried more explosives than the entire V-2 production. Anti-aircraft missiles were ignored and naval armaments were always given a low priority.
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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
Re:Bah, another crappy science article in NG (Score:5, Informative)
You are going on about the shape, which wasn't even claimed to be for stealthiness. The claimed stealth feature was the layer of carbon material sandwiched into the leading edge of the plane to reduce its radar signature. Thus, it was the first plane to incorporate design features specifically for stealth. Nothing you said even addresses that. Whether stealth was considered of secondary importance, or whether all the components were designed for stealth, is irrelevant.
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The Germans build nice stuff... (Score:5, Insightful)
Technical sophistication is one advantage on the battlefield, but manufacturing capacity is also important.
The Germans choose technical complexity over quantity believing that superior machines could beat the vast numbers of inferior machines the allies built.
The Germans were wrong.
As Stalin said "quantity has a quality all its own". A stealth aircraft or two may have been pretty trick, but if you have thousands of targets to bomb, you better have hundreds if not thousands of aircraft (and pilots) to do the job.
-ted
"Superiority" required reading at West Point! (Score:5, Informative)
There was a short story written by Arthur C. Clarke titled "Superiority" that discussed this. Of course, it being science fiction, the weapons were very interesting (matter annihilators, space distortion systems). Also, since it was written (in the 50s?) some of the vocabulary is quaint (I think the term "torpedoes" refer to what we would call missiles).
Still I didn't know (according to Wikipedia) that it was (once?) required reading at West Point! (For those not from the U.S., that is one of the premiere military academies).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_(short_story) [wikipedia.org]
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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: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.
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Re:The German's are doing it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't matter what the plane is made out of as long as it's faster, accelerates faster, and climbs faster than than what the other side has.
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Re:Control surfaces? (Score:5, Informative)
Not exactly. It is possible to build a flying wing type aircraft that is stable. They're generally not as easy to fly as more traditional designs, but it's possible. Also keep in mind that aircraft of that era flew much slower. Part of the difficulty with modern designs is with the insane speeds they can reach. The aerodynamics of very fast (ie. supersonic) craft are much different from slower craft.
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Re:I like the decoration (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
It just took quite a few years for us to make a plane that looked like a Horton. :) Actually, there were quite a few developed and some manufactured [wikipedia.org]. They simply weren't as popular as "conventional" aircraft. I would suspect part would be due to the difference in manufacturing cost, and some to do with customer faith. "I know an airplane with wings and a tail can fly. Why should I believe something like that can?". Maybe the long gap in development of flying wing aircraft wasn't. It was just classified. What do you think they do at Area 51 (among other secret facilities), store alien bodies and reverse engineer wormhole technology? :)
I love aviation, and have been amazed with Horton's aircraft. There were several similar aircraft. I saw one in person at the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles. There's a Horton Ho IIIf on display (hanging from the roof), part of a Horton Ho IIIh, and I found reference to a Horton Ho 229 being restored for display there. If I remember correctly, you'd go straight in the front door, and to the left behind the SR-71, but before the room with the Space Shuttle Enterprise. They have some beautiful aircraft there. It's worth the visit if you like aviation.
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Re:Shame we didn't learn this lesson in Vietnam (Score:4, Informative)
To be fair, the utterly stupid and ridiculous rules of engagement forced on US forces by the civilian leadership for most of the war prevented them from doing anything against those air defense sites except in reaction to being fired upon. It's kinda like fighting while handcuffed.
Also, the German technology was mostly serindipitous. Radar cross-section is much more a function of airframe shaping than materials; it just happened that flying wings tended to be better-shaped than traditional aircraft. But all of this was a trial-and-error process. We learned some from this, and incorporated those lessons into the B-70 proposal and the SR-71. However, it wasn't until the F-117 program (and its contemporaries) came along that we had
A. The theoretical base on which to reliably compute radar reflections (ironically enough, most of that was developed by the Soviets and seemed to be largely ignored by them for a while).
B. The computational power to work out reflections over even a simple faceted shape.
C. The control technology to make such shapes flyable.
And even then, the result was a flat-faceted, ungainly monstrosity. It took a little longer before we could compute reflections of curved surfaces, and develop something like the B-2.
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