By April MacIntyre Jun 27, 2009, 20:24 GMT
History buffs please note: National Geographic Channel brings you "Hitler's Stealth Fighter," a documentary that combines historical ephemera, correspondence and documents with modern technology to unveil a little known stealth fighter from the World World II era.
RIDGECREST, CALIFORNIA: A full scale replica of the Ho 229 bomber made with materials available in the 1940s at prefilght. (Photo credit © Linda Reynolds / Flying Wing Films)
This documentary airs Sunday, June 28 at 9PM ET/PT on National Geographic Channel.
During World War II, brothers Walter and Reimar Horten designed a prototype for a German stealth plane that, if completed, could have changed history as we know it.
From Nat Geo:
Walter and Reimar Horten began designing and building their own gliders in the 1930s as part of the Nazi Hitler Youth program.
The first modern jet aircraft to be designed from the ground up to be virtually undetectable to radar was the F-117 Nighthawk.
The only surviving Horten 229 is the V3, which is held in storage in the Smithsonian’s Paul. E. Garber facility.
The Germans invented several weapons that would become part of modern military including, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles.
Although Congress did not authorize this action until 1913, the Secret Service began protection of the president-elect in 1908.
The Horten brothers in Germany, along with Jack Northrop in the United States, both believed a better aircraft could be built by dispensing with the tail and fuselage.
The only flying wing known to be in military use today is the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit.
The Special Operations Forces Laser Marker (SOFLAM) is a laser rangefinder that allows precision pinpointing on the ground to designate enemy targets. The marker is essential in guiding aerial vehicles to their target points for dropping bombs.
Reimar Horten died on August 14, 1993, and his brother Walter died on December 9, 1998.
In researching the books he’s written about the Horten brothers, author David Myhra visited with Walter numerous times at his home in Germany, and spent several months with Reimar in Argentina.
For the filming of Hitler's Stealth Fighter, the National Geographic team is the only television film crew ever allowed into Northrop Grumman’s Tejon Test Range.
The Horten brothers had plans to make a Nightfighter version of the Ho-229 using the latest in German radar technology.
Walter Horten secretly flew as wingman for famed German ace Adolph Galland during the Battle of Britain and shot down seven British aircraft.
During the Battle of Britain, Walter Horten was a technical officer for the Luftwaffe.
For successfully completing the Ho-229 prototypes, the Horten brothers received 500,000 Reichsmarks.
The Ho-229 prototype had been initially designed to use the BMW jet engine, but was later modified to use the Jumo-004.
The production version of the Ho-229 was designed to have four 30mm-MK-108 cannons and could carry two 500-kilogram bombs.
The Northrop Tactic Blue demonstrator aircraft was the world’s first all-aspect stealth aircraft.
For more than half a century, little was known about this mysterious aircraft, called the Horten 229. Now, with an elite team of Northrop Grumman aeronautical engineers, National Geographic Channel (NGC) works from the original plans and prototype to reconstruct a full-scale replica of the jet to determine if it had stealth capabilities.
If proven, it would confirm that Hitler was on the verge of introducing a stealth jet fighter into the battle with Allies, long before the United States began developing stealth technology in the 1970s.
The implications could have been monumental, especially in light of the Nazis’ parallel progress in developing atomic capabilities.
VIDEO EXCERPTS Video “Nazi Stealth Aircraft” – An elite team of stealth aircraft modelers are taking on a mysterious project: Hitler's secret stealth fighter:
Video “Advanced Design” – Engineered long before its time, the Horten 2-29 was the product of two brothers' desire for vengeance:
Video: Archival scenes of Adolf Hitler and stealth fighter airplanes from World War II:
Video: See rare archival footage of Northrop Grumman's test flights of their early flying wing prototype:
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