Preservation of Horten flying wing
 

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....12bfe03325.png

The National Air and Space Museum (NASM) failed to preserve this aircraft and although now stabilised it is in poor condition.

"There had been little interest in the Horten until claims about its supposed stealth capabilities surfaced in popular media. Public pressure to remove the aircraft from deep storage and put it on display prompted the conservation department’s involvement"

"The Horten was never completed and it has never flown. NASM acquired the Horten in 1952, seventeen years after it had been captured in Germany by the Allied forces near the end of the war. At this time NASM had a shortage of storage facilities, and the museum had not been built. Consequently, it sat outdoors in wooden crates from 1952 until 1974, and this is where most of its current condition issues originate."

http://www.conservation-us.org/docs/...).pdf?sfvrsn=2

Starts on front page and continues on page 3.

Someone in the editing team of that publication is looking at a remedial course in either history or maths... Or both...

I think someone's maths are suspect as well; 1945 to 1952 is bit less than the seventeen years quoted.

Sorry Archimedes: our posts crossed.

Northrop-Grumman employees built a full size replica of this and ran in their wind tunnel and 'stealth' facility...


​​​​​​http://sandiegoairandspace.org/colle...229-v3-mock-up

Operation Paperclip was intended to gather up as much intelligence as possible from the wreckage of the Reich: obvious example is von Braun and his team. Surprised Jack Northrop didn't seem to take any interest.

An interesting side note in aviation history

The Horten flying wings were aerodynamically very far ahead of the Northrop (and everyone elses) wings. Probably would have just hurt their egos! Unless you go read the books and interpret the data (if there's any left) you wouldn't know - because they were the losers (one of the brothers was pretty hardcore NSDP so that didn't help, but its how they managed to get the attention of the hierarchy and then the resources the other needed to build the aircraft). The RAF got one of the Horten prone position gliders.

From Wally Khan's book 'A glider pilot bold...':

:ooh:

These aircraft were made under wartime conditions in the open or in unqualified factories and with ersatz materials by unqualified people including prisoners. Not made to last.
To blame the museum now for not having it airworthy is a bit unfair. I consider it a great fact that they have kept it and saved it when post-wartime research was terminated and those former high tech aicraft were abandonded and considered junk. No surprise that those remains age after all those years.

Not sure that stands much scrutiny. Horten's concept still relied on cambered sections with washout/reflex to provide a positive static margin, which generates lots of (parasitic) trim drag and a low Mcrit. Northrop's approach was fundamentally different in using non-cambered sections that had minimal pitching moment so the desired static margin was achieved with far less trim drag and a higher Mcrit. Horten DID think up the idea of using a bat-tail to prevent mid-span airflow stagnation (and consequent unpredictable wing-drop at the stall), so that feature was more advanced, but the general concept of the N9 and XB35 was arguably much more advanced.

€0.00008 supplied,

PDR

I think that was true of the series production of types like the He162 and later Me262s, but not of the experiemntal prototypes - they were still made in the prototype shops of the major manufacturers.

PDR

Ersatz materials ?
 

Interesting- but the text does not make it clear when ( what date ) the ' stealth" test was done- **** PROBABLY *** in the the late 70's ??

The northrup flying wing built in the late 40's (YB-49) was somewhat of a surprise re radar tracking as I perhaps wrongly recall

As the linked article states the replica was built by NG Corporation (founded 1995) and National Geographic channel (founded 2001) it seems unlikely to have had any noticeable impact upon the state of the art

According to the wiki page it was in 2008, and they found no significant "stealth capability" worth noting. And remember that the test sample was just a wooden skin - no engines or wheels and none of the massive steel-tube spaceframe structure of the actual aeroplane.

There are some silly claims that one of the 229s achieved ~730mph, but these people had clearly been smoking something they shouldn't have. Even if they had the power (which they didn't, with less than 4,000lbs of installed thrust) to fly at that speed they'd be well beyond Mcrit, and the short control moment to the wing-tip elevons couldn't have provided anything like the elevator power needed to oppose the the transonic trim change even if they worked at all at that speed. This was what destroyed the similarly-configured DH108s.

PDR

Some people here seem to forget that there was a savage war on when Horten built this baby and remembering all done with slide rules...

Meaning what?

PDR

Those aircraft were intended to survive few months of operational service at best. Nobody worried if glues like Kaorit would survive to the next century. Low quality of wartime production also reduced longevity. So I would say it is good enough the aircraft survived so long, and not disintegrated many years ago. It would be good, if they cobble it together in displayable condition. And it is certainly not possible to fly it without replacing all the structure which will result with a copy, and such a copy could be built right now. I wonder if there would be anybody willing to fly it, though.