Hitler's Stealth Bomber Rebuilt

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In an American hangar the recreated Hitler stealth fighter bomber. Courtesy National Geographic Channel

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By Noel Young
Copyright 2009
Edit International

It could be something out of Star Wars. Or a version of America’s feared B2 stealth bomber. The giveaway is the large black crosses on the wing.

This is Hitler's stealth fighter-bomber, a little known secret weapon which might have altered the course of World War 2, outpacing RAF fighters such as the Spitfire, and - because of its low radar profile - giving anti-aircraft gunners much less time to defend Britain.

The plane has been recreated and its radar-beating capability put to the test by the men who actually built America's stealth bomber.

Their verdict: “Yes, it could have made a big difference.”

The plane’s potential is laid out In a TV documentary, shown this week in the U.S. on the National Geographic Channel, and to be broadcast in Britain and elsewhere in Europe in August.

The all-wing Ho 2-29 looked more like today's U.S. B-2 bomber than any World War II aircraft - although it is only one-third the size.

Made primarily of wood and powered by Messerschmitt jet engines, it was designed for speeds of up to 600 miles an hour (970 kilometers an hour).

With four 30mm cannons and two 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) bombs, it was also meant to pack a punch.

Working from original German blueprints, and the remains of a prototype in a museum warehouse in Washington DC, the US engineers of Northrop Grumman recreated the Nazi plane complete, except for the engines. These were simply mocked up with turbine blades to give the right radar response.

The replica, with its bat-shaped wings, was then tested against World War 2 type radar on top of a five-story pole at a Northrop test facility in California’s Mojave Desert.

It was manipulated by a rotor as the American engineers determined just how radar-resistant the so-called stealth fighter was.

The plane's radical, smooth design would have given it a significant advantage against radar, said Tom Dobrenz, a Northrop Grumman expert in stealth, or "low observable," technology, who led the project.

"This design gave them just about a 20 percent reduction in radar range detection over a conventional fighter of the day," Dobrenz told me.

World War II British radar would have picked up the Horten over the English Channel at about 80 miles (129 kilometers) out, versus 100 miles (160 kilometers) for a conventional World War II fighter.

But because of the Ho 2-29's tremendous speed, the time from detection to target—the British mainland—would have been lowered from the usual 19 minutes to just 8 minutes, making it difficult for Allied defenders to respond.

"Probably, for at least a short amount of time, it could have been a game changer, until a counter was developed for it," Dobrenz said.

On the surviving Ho 2-29 the Germans had put carbon-type material in between the layers of plywood on the plane's leading edges," Dobrenz told me in an interview."I cannot understand that being for anything other than to defeat radar." Even so, Dobrez added, "I'm not so sure that they had any clue what it was going to do or whether it was going to work or not."

As Hitler's Thousand-Year Reich crumbled, he clung to dreams of secret Wunderwaffen—miracle weapons.

The bat-plane must have seemed to be just that. The plane’s designers were the Horten brothers, Walter and Reimer.

Walter was a military man who had lost hundreds of Luftwaffe colleagues during the Battle of Britain in 1940.

"That loss never left him to the day he died," said David Myhra, author of The Horten Brothers and Their All-Wing Aircraft, who interviewed the brothers before their deaths in the late 1990s.

"He was burning with revenge and felt the need for a plane that would be pretty much invisible to Britain's home radar system. That's what he wanted his brother to design."

The lead designer was Reimar - a glider designer "obsessed with the all-wing plane because of the possibilities it created for low drag and exceptional performance," said Myrha.

A Ho 2-29 prototype made a successful test flight just before Christmas 1944. But by then time was running out for the Nazis, and they were never able to perfect the design or produce more than a handful of prototypes.

Some experts question the Hortens' postwar claims that their plane had been intended as a stealth plane, saying that the real goal was speed and range. But Myhra says the plane was intentionally designed for stealth.

"When I talked with Walter Horten he always referred to his aircraft as low-observable," said Myhra, a former aerospace scientist.

Horten said he had learned about radar evasion from Nazi navy officers hoping to camouflage their submarines.

"These guys knew about this stuff," Myhra said. "They were probably the only people in the entire German aviation community that were pursuing this line of thought."

What if Hitler’s stealth fighter had been available at the time of the Battle of Britain? “With a two-to-one speed advantage and less warning because of its radar characteristics, it could have made a big difference,” said Dobrenz.

A spokeswoman for National Geographic Channel said in London, “I have just watched the show – it’s amazing!

”The originally plane’s stealth and speed would have left the allies with a much shorter reaction time once it was spotted. A larger version was planned to drop a nuclear bomb on the USA.”

In a different place and time, with further development, the Horten
2-29 might have had a disastrous impact on the Allies.

But by early 1945 - the year after it first flew - aviation historian George Cully said, "The Germans had run out of pilots, fuel, and time."


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