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The Horten Flying Wings II

The following was posted on a Usenet newsgroup by John Powell about 1994. His credits appear below. If I have trespassed on anybody's copyrights, please let me know and I will take this down. -- Dan Ford

Preliminary Remarks

The subject of "all-wing" aircraft is too extensive to be covered in depth here. Therefore, only the Horten H V, H VII and H IX (the latter also known as the Ho or Go 229) will be dealt with, all of which were twin-engined aircraft.

Doctor Reimar Horten, together with Dipl.Ing. Peter Selinger, has written about all of his aircraft in detail in the book Nurflugel (Weishaupt Verlag, Graz 1983). Major Walter Horten, at that time Technical Advisor of the General of Fighters in the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM), made feasible the realization of his brother's designs.

Nothing New Under The Sun...

When the newest American super-bomber, the Northrop B-2, was revealed to the public at Palmdale, California on November 22, 1988, many aviation history enthusiasts must have noted that the configuration selected by the aircraft's designers, namely that of the "flying wing," had been resurrected from the dead, as it were. Although present day experience has shown that the all-wing configuration is the best one for avoiding detection by enemy radar (aided by the latest technology in materials, electronics and computers), the same configuration has been in practical use since about 1930. The first jet-powered all-wing aircraft flew in Germany on February 2, 1945, and at the time was also virtually undetectable by radar, partly on account of its mixed construction (wooden wings).

In the United States, John Knudsen Northrop had been working on all-wing aircraft since the end of the 1920s. His first aircraft of this configuration (although it did employ two small vertical tail fins on thin tail booms) was the "Flying Wing," which flew in 1929. Because of poor economic conditions during the 1930s, Northrop's twin-engined all-wing N1M did not appear until 1940, and the N9M until 1942.

Individual projects were undertaken in varlous countries, but in the Soviet Union there were numerous attempts, some of them very promising, to learn the secrets of the all-wing aircraft. The most successful Soviet designer was Boris Ivanovich Chernanovski, who developed a series of projects from 1921 to 1940.

In Germany, the Horten brothers, Reimar and Walter, had in mind a pure all-wing aircraft with no vertical control surfaces of any kind. Inspired by the Stork- and Delta-type tailless aircraft of Alexander Lippisch, they began their work at the end of the 1920s. Successful flight tests of their first tailless glider were carried out at Bonn-Hangelar airfield in July 1933. By 1934 they were working at Germany's "Gliding Mecca," the Wasserkuppe. The all-wing concept had achieved its first practical success.

Although development of the all-wing aircraft began at about the same time in Germany, the Soviet Union and America, there was no collaboration whatsoever between designers. In spite of this, design teams in these widely separated parts of the world were convinced that the all-wing aircraft was the best configuration and pursued the idea with much idealism. It is no wonder, therefore, that the concept has been revived in the present day.

The Northrop "Flying Wings" and the twin-engined Horten H V, H VII and H IX aircraft described herein can in a way be considered the forerunners of the B-2.

The H V was a pure research aircraft equipped with two counter-rotating pusher propellers: The H IX was designed as a twin-engined, turbojet fighter-bomber, and the H VII, also with two pusher propellers, was intended to serve as a trainer for jet aircraft. Detailed descriptions of the three types follow. Horten Va, W.-Nr. 5

The H Va was built in 1936/37 in cooperation with the Dynamit AG in Troisdorf, near Cologne. A synthetic material (Trolitax) were used in the aircraft's construction. Use of this material resulted in a series of problems, even though the glider Hol's der Teufel had previously been built using this method. Several of the solutions to these problems were patented by the Dynamit company. The nose of the H V was covered in clear Cellon and the two pilots occupied prone positions. The aircraft was fitted with a tricycle undercarriage with faired main members (only the nosewheel was retractable), and the two Hirth HM-60-R engines drove two-bladed pusher propellers directly (no extension shafts). The propeller manufacturer Peter Kempel produced the propellers from Lignofol (beech wood impregnated with synthetic resin). The H Va introduced novel movable wingtip control surfaces.

The aircraft's only flight took place at Bonn-Hangelar in early 1937. In the aircraft were Walter and Reimar Horten. The extreme aft location of the engines made the aircraft unstable, and at its low takeoff speed the aircraft's controls were unable to overcome the resulting tail-heaviness at the moment of rotation. The H Va became airborne briefly, then crashed, damaging the aircraft seriously. The injuries sustained by the two men were relatively minor (Walter Horten knocked out his two upper front teeth). Following the accident the Dynamit AG collected the remains of the H Va to carry out tests on the materials used in its construction.

Horten Vb, W.-Nr. 9

The H Vb was a research aircraft built at Cologne-Ostheim using conventional construction methods (wood and steel tube) on instructions from Major Dinort with the approval of Ernst Udet. As a result of the accident with the H Va, the movable wingtip controls were dispensed with and the designers turned to more conventional elevons. The Hirth engines of the unlucky H Va were used again, but were positioned further forward and drove their propellers vla short extension shafts, resulting in a more favorable weight distribution. The H Vb's pilots sat upright next to each other and were provided with individual raised canopies. Like the H Va, the H Vb had a fixed tricycle undercarriage. The aircraft's first flight took place at Cologne-Ostheim in autumn 1937 with Walter Horten at the controls. From the beginning of the war in 1939 until 1941 the aircraft was parked in the open at Potsdam-Werder airfield, which was not altogether beneficial for an aircraft built largely of wood.

Horten Vc, W.-Nr. 27

Efforts by the Luftwaffe-Inspektion 3 (Lln 3, or Luftwaffe Inspectorate for Fighters, whose Technical Department Head was Walter Horten) succeeded in convincing Generalflugzeugmeister Ernst Udet that it was advisable to retum the H V to flying status. In August 1941 a special detachment of Lln 3 was formed in Minden to oversee the reconstruction of the aircraft by the Peschke Firm. Peschke, a former WW I fighter pilot, had established a flying school at Hangelar and later an aircraft repair facility at Minden, The latter facility repaired aircraft such as the Fw 44 Stieglitz, He 72 Kadett, Fi 156 Storch and the RK Schwalbe. Peschke and the Horten brothers knew each other from Hangelar. In charge of the Lln 3 detachment was Luftwaffe Leutnant Reimar Horten. His team consisted of three designing engineers and five other men, including Heinz Scheidhauer, an experienced all-wing glider specialist. Later the special detachment was moved to Gottingen and enlarged to thirty men (soldiers, engineers, craftsmen and so on).

The Horten Vc was converted from the H Vb, which had been badly damaged by the elements. In Minden the two-seat H Vb became a single-seat aircraft. The pilot was accommodated in a normal seated position. The H Va's Hirth engines were retained, as were its steel tube and wood construction and fixed undercarriage. As property of the military, it was finished in standard Luftwaffe camouflage and was assigned the code PE + HO (PE for Peschke and HO for Horten).

The H Vc made its first flight on May 26, 1942. Walter Horten later flew the machine to Gottingen, where Luftwaffenkommando IX was being formed.

Flugkapitan Prof. Dr. Josef Stuper, then Director of the Instituts fur Forschungsflugbetrieb und Flugwesen (Institute for Flight Research and Aviation) at the Aerodynamischen Versuchsanstalt (AVA) Gottingen (Gottingen Aerodynamic Research Institute), carried out test flights in the H Vc. Late in the summer of 1943 an incident occurred involving the H Vc. Stuper took off from the center of the airfield with the aircraft's flaps in the down position. The aircraft's under-carriage struck the roof of a hangar and the H Vc crashed. Stuper escaped without serious injury, but the aircraft was badly damaged. It was subsequently stored at Gottingen in anticipation of restoration following the end of the war. Events were to prove differently, however, as all of the aircraft held there were assembled at the edge of the airfield and burned following Germany's surrender. A projected glider tug based on the H Vc was not built.

Horten VII, W.-Nr. 29

Construction of the H VII took place at the Gottingen Bureau. The aircraft's wings, which were of wooden construction, were built by the Lln 3 workshop, while the center section, which was of welded tube steel construction with Dural skinning, was manufactured by the Peschke Firm in Minden. The aircraft made its first flight in May 1943 with Heinz Scheidhauer and Walter Horten on board. The aircraft had originally been conceived as a flying test-bed for the Argus-Schmidt pulse-jet engine after the H V had proved unsuitable for the role. When this plan was abandoned it was proposed as a fighter training aircraft. The H VII was powered by two Argus AS-10-SC engines drivinq two-bladed constant-speed propellers via extension shafts. The aircraft featured a fully retractable twin nosewheel under-carriage. So-called "wingtip rudders" were used in place of a conventional rudder. The aircraft was assigned the RLM-Number 8-226. The aircraft's pilots were Heinz Scheidhauer, Erwin Ziller and Walter Horten. In autumn 1944 Oberst Knemeyer demonstrated the H VII to Hermann Goring at Oranienburg, after the Reichsmarschall had expressed a desire to see a Horten aircraft in action.

Knemeyer was the RLM flight-test chief and was favorably disposed toward the aircraft developed by the Horten brothers. Goring, a former WW I fighter pilot, had not participated in the later gliding boom and was unfamiliar with the aircraft which emerged from the program. He wanted to see the aircraft fly on one engine, which Heinz Scheidhauer did without any hesitation. The Reichsmarschall was impressed; the Peschke Firm received an order for twenty examples.

Construction of the H VII V2 began in 1944, but the aircraft had not been completed when the war ended. The V3, which was to see the "wingtip rudders" replaced by spoilers above and below the wings, as on the H IX, progressed no farther than the manufacturing of various components.

In February 1945 Heinz Scheidhauer flew the H VII to Gottingen. Hydraulic failure prevented him from extending the aircraft's undercarriage, and he was forced to make a belly landing. The resulting damage had not been repaired when, on April 7, 1945, US troops occupied the airfield. The aircraft presumably suffered the same fate as the H V and was burned.

Horten IX V1, W.-Nr. 38

Walter Horten was aware of the performance achieved by the DFS 194 rocket-powered research aircraft, and thus knew that wooden construction methods were suitable for high-performance aircraft. After seeing the Me 262 in March 1943 he set out to acquire information on the Jumo 004 turbojet engine. Further work on the H VII was abandoned and all efforts were concentrated on the H IX, which originated from Goring's 1000x1000x1000 demand, in which the Reichsmarschall specified that no new project would be considered unless it achieved the following performance figures: a speed of at least 1,000 kph and the ability to carry a 1,000 kg bomb load 1,000 km into enemy territory. Justifiable deviations from these figures would be accepted. At that time Walter Horten was a Hauptmann on the staff of Lln3. He managed to obtain a transfer to Gottingen, where he took over command of Luftwaffenkommando IX. Soon afterward, however, the Kommando was officially disbanded, and as a result Lln3 ceased to be the office responsible for development of the Horten projects. New life was injected into the Horten Firm, when, in August, Hermann Goring informed the company that work on the H IX turbojet fighter-bomber was to proceed with all urgency and that it was to construct a flyable, but unpowered, example as soon as possible.

Luftwaffenkommando IX, which officially no longer existed, continued to be funded and carried on its work, but without direct influence from the Technischen Amt of the RLM. The H IX V1 was an unpowered research glider and received the RLM-Number 8-229. The aircraft was of mixed construction (welded steel tube and wood) and was covered with several layers of plywood of various qualities, the outer layer being of the best quality. This method of construction made radar detection of the aircraft extremely difficult. The pilot was accommodated in a normal seated position. The first flight of the V1 took place on March 1, 1944, at Gottingen with Heinz Scheidhauer at the controls. Following several towed takeoffs, the aircraft was sent to Oranienburg near Berlin for flight testing, with Scheidhauer as pilot. A brief report submitted by the DVL on April 7, 1944, indicated that the aircraft provided an excellent gun platform.

In order to simulate the stabilizing effect of the engines, which were absent from the V1, the aircraft's main undercarriage legs were faired from the outset; only the aircraft's nosewheel was retractable. On March 5 the nose gear failed after it developed a wobble on Oranienburg's concrete runway. A special pressure suit was to have replaced the absent cockpit pressurization, but was never used in practice.

The machine was sent to Brandis, where it was to be tested by the military and used for training purposes. It was found there by soldiers of the US 9th Armored Division at the end of the war and was later burned in a "clearing action."

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