The most secret weapon of the Luftwaffe

[sjk.fly4ever]

I share with you a lot of pictures, some of them previously unreleased, rare and never before seen by me, referring to one of the secret weapons of the Luftwaffe. We are talking about the Horten flying wing. Perhaps, the aircraft of the Second World War the most ahead of its time than any other, went into production too late to be put into service. Do you think if he had gone into production would have changed the course of the war and history? Visit the link below and give us your opinion about it.


http://aviacaoemfloripa.blogspot.com...luftwaffe.html



Best Regards.

[lnuss]

I tend to doubt it would have changed the outcome (some web sources to the contrary). In the U.S. a practical flying wing apparently had to wait for computer technology in order to be stable enough (C.G. problems, at the least -- read about the Northrop B-35 and B-49) for operational use. If the B-49 is any indication, the non-combat losses of the Horten would have been pretty high, and it had the benefit of all the German research.

From what I read, the Horten had an estimated range of just over 1100 miles, which certainly could have reached Britain and return, and could carry two 500 kg bombs. But Britain and the U.S. each had jet fighters under development at the time, too.

If you postulate the Horten being in service earlier, then you'd have to also postulate the Allies jet fighters being in service earlier. AND, the Luftwaffe would have needed some fairly secure bases to operate from.

[Mayhemxpc]

Lots of ifs. The allies were working as fast as they could, so it is unlikely that they could have speeded development up that much. The Germans, however, were wasting tremendous resources on various pet projects. Udet complained about that and Speer tried to control it, but political dreams trumped military effectiveness. A Horton bomber may have been unrealistic. The designs indicate that it would not have had the radar attenuation of the smaller version. The smaller version was, apparently, quite stable and maneuverable (Jack Northrop's single seat version shows this to be likely as do the gliders the Hortons also designed and flew.) But a Horton based fighter would not have changed anything. Operational deployment of Me-262's in 1943 might have, and that would almost certainly have happened if Hitler had not ordered a redesign to make it a fighter-bomber instead of just an air superiority fighter.

In the end, even that might have only delayed things about six months. Tibbets wrote that his unit was training to drop bombs on Germany as well as Japan. Martin Caidin wrote a short story about what could have happened with some common sense approaches to Luftwaffe resource allocation beginning in late 41 or early 42. It ends in August '45. But…to be successful, an atomic bomb drop would have needed almost absolute assurance that one particular bomber would get through. Over Germany, that was a far from sure thing right up until VE day as it was. With Me262s in 1943 and other systems that could have been fielded effectively given some common sense resource management, who can say?

But it didn't happen that way, and I am glad for it.

[Frank Giger]

Once the Western Allies had fighters that could escort the bombers to and from Germany, the game was over as far as bomber interdiction went. It's not just coverage of the bombers themselves - once we had the long range fighter we could strike interceptors where it really mattered - at their airfields.

Indeed, the airfield where they take off and land is the best place to intercept bombers - but the attempt at air superiority over the UK was lost in 1940.

All the jets the Germans came up with - most notably the Me-262 - just didn't have the legs to really make a dent, even if they could have produced them in numbers. Remember that in 1943 the USA was flying a 54 bomber combat wing box - and that was for one single mission.

Here's a picture of just a part of the one thousand B-17's that were part of the bomber stream over Germany:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing...ber_stream.jpg

Now throw in B-24's, B-25's, A-20's, Typhoons, Thunderbolts, etc. coming over the Channel and the Axis just didn't have a chance to control the air regardless of how good the plane they came up with.