Stealth technology and the Nazis

[jwmorrice]

An interesting story with an accompanying photo of the Nazi stealth bomber:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...hat-could-have-changed-course-of-history.html

jwm

 

[tboy]

Not to knock the Nazi technology, but a couple of things to remember about this:
1) A flying wing design is so unstable that the US's version had to be scrapped because it was just about uncontrollable. It wasn't until computer technology came along that the flying wing design could be put into use.
2) Radar was rudimentary during WWII. I seem to recall it was basically a nmber of radio waves were sent out and multiple receivers were placed strategically to receive any radio waves that happened to encounter an object. I seem to remember that the british radar was so unreliable that even with radio wave detection they still relied heavily on visual confirmation.

 

[ig-88]

Ya, there were documentaries on the History Channel about prototypes made by the Luftwaffe in the last days of WW2.

Japan was making interesting designs too, such as the Shinden.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL0GFQL1BFo

 

[Aardvark154]

Interesting how stories are picked up. This story was on the Fox News website a week ago.

 

[tboy]

That shinden looks like it belongs in the Thunderbirds fleet lol.....

 

[Aardvark154]

Radar was rudimentary during WWII.

One of the things the researchers did was computer modeling of the Ho-229 and British Radar of the time, which found that it was in fact "invisable" to the radar of the time period.

 

[tboy]

One of the things the researchers did was computer modeling of the Ho-229 and British Radar of the time, which found that it was in fact "invisable" to the radar of the time period.

LOL that's like the brit's "cloak of invisibility"....aka a blanket lol......

 

[The LoLRus]

This is one of those rare times Tboy is right, its very, very difficult to design a "flying wing" that can actually fly properly. It took Northrop Grumman 30 years to get the B-2 Bomber up and running, the main obstacle its highly unstable to fly one of these planes. It killed many test pilots and engineers in the process of perfecting the airplane

I know this cause I watched a whole documentary on stealth technology.

 

[ig-88]

Yup.

$737 mil a pop. There are about 21 B-2s. They were used in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-2_Spirit

 

[mandrill]

The article is of course sensationalist crap. The German war effort was unable to keep the Lufwaffe flying over the last year of the war using conventional designs and a couple of less radical new jet designs. The idea that it could have produced, fuelled and crewed advanced "flying wing" designs is ridiculous.

And how would the Lufwaffe - which was already being shot to pieces by the USAAF over Germany - have made the 100's of these bombers necessary to have a significant impact on the war?!

And even if they had, the RAF would have bombed the shit out of the airfields and wrecked them on the ground.

 

[CapitalGuy]

The article is of course sensationalist crap. The German war effort was unable to keep the Lufwaffe flying over the last year of the war using conventional designs and a couple of less radical new jet designs. The idea that it could have produced, fuelled and crewed advanced "flying wing" designs is ridiculous.

And how would the Lufwaffe - which was already being shot to pieces by the USAAF over Germany - have made the 100's of these bombers necessary to have a significant impact on the war?!

And even if they had, the RAF would have bombed the shit out of the airfields and wrecked them on the ground.

The likely plan was to use them for immediate strategic effect, for example bombing England back to the stone age in hopes of causing the Brits to surrender or withdraw from the war, or the dockyards that the Allies used to resupply their European forces. These bombers would have been wasted on tactical targets inside Europe - there were simply too many of them after the war.

Your last comment is a very good one - basing of these planes would have been a challenge. While there were German airfields still out of Allied range, the stealth bombers would have been fuel pigs and very likely would not have been able to stage from bases deep inside Bavaria, yet still reach England or Moscow.

Likely, the Germans were holding out for a big break - stave off the end of the war long enough to marry up a stealth bomber with an atomic bomb, and all of a sudden the Allies and Russians lose the advantage, and probably the war. Good thing it didn't happen(?)

 

[tboy]

Still, even if they produced an atomic bomb, to be an actual "stealth" bomber the thing would actually have to be able to fly.

Now I realize the US isn't (or wasn't?) on the cutting edge like the german engineers were but it took them 30 yrs to get one to fly safely and that is using state of the art computer flight control systems.

 

[Aardvark154]

LOL that's like the brit's "cloak of invisibility"....aka a blanket lol......

"Using radar of the same type and frequency used by British coastal defenses in World War II, the engineers found that an Ho 229, flying a few dozen feet above the English Channel, would indeed have been "invisible" to the Royal Air Force — an advantage that arrived too late for the Nazis to exploit."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529548,00.html

 

[tboy]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529548,00.html

Actually, and I'm not 100% sure of this, but wouldn't ground based radar of today be unable to detect an aircraft flying a couple of dozen feet above the surface of the ocean now?

I think they would need to install or have installed surface scanning radar to pick up a surface ship or low flying plane. I know air traffic control radar doesn't pick up aircraft below 1000 ft or something like that.

I would love to see someone try and fly that thing that close to the water lol....it'd be hairy to say the least. Especially at 1,000 mph. I know with current aircraft it is difficult to fly that close to the ground due to the pressure wave of air in front of and below the aircraft. I have heard stories of a pilot actually having to apply a LOT of down pressure on the elevators to keep it that low.....

 

[The LoLRus]

Actually, and I'm not 100% sure of this, but wouldn't ground based radar of today be unable to detect an aircraft flying a couple of dozen feet above the surface of the ocean now?

Nope, it would just appear as large wave on radar screen

 

[Larry_Fyne]

I know this cause I watched a whole documentary on stealth technology.

Well then it must be true.....

A flying wing design is not stealth based on it's design alone - it certainly has a smaller radar cross-section but it is not stealth. The Horten 229 was the German attempt to create an aircraft that was the most pure aerodynamicly. The Grail of a flying wing was something that Jack Northrop worked hard to achieve. He flew his version in 1940.

WWII era radar was really primative. One of the first successful "stealth" aircraft was the de Havilland Mosquito... why? It was made out of plywood - which was not a good relfecter of radar energy.

The B2 is stealthy mostly because of it's RAM (radar absorbing material) that covers it.

The Germans created a number of "weird" designs that popular culture likes to think that they were desparate to create somthing. The reality is, all nations with any sort of aircraft industry created "weird" designs in an effort to be the fastest, highest, etc. The Shinden was somewhat similar to the American XP-55 Ascender that flew in 1939. Both of them used the canard configuration and are still used today on Saab jet aircraft.

 

[tboy]

Thanks, LF, I was racking my brain trying to remember which aircraft from WWII was "stealthy" on the allied side.

I should have known it was the Mosquito, my grandmother built those during the war....DOH..

 

[Aardvark154]

Actually, and I'm not 100% sure of this, but wouldn't ground based radar of today be unable to detect an aircraft flying a couple of dozen feet above the surface of the ocean now?

I believe that was probably reporter's hyperbole. I'm reasonably sure that what the engineers actually said - or at least meant was flying say 600 feet above the water it was not detectable (as being an aircraft) and above that altitude was still difficult to detect.

As to your statement about modern technology although tough such systems as the U.S.A.F. (AN/FPS-118) Over-the-Horizion-Backscatter-Radar could do so.

 

[Aardvark154]

The Shinden was somewhat similar to the American XP-55 Ascender that flew in 1939. Both of them used the canard configuration and are still used today on Saab jet aircraft.

Also the Eurofighter "Typhoon".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfJgSD4VJ-w

 

[Keebler Elf]

One of the problems the German aircraft designers created was the continued development of bombers and fighter-bombers when Germany had already gone over to the defensive and those efforts would have been better used to design fighter aircraft.

Granted, these efforts were demanded by the German high command (e.g., Hitler), but the Germans ended up doing a whole lot of designing for a whole lot of different things, with the end result that efforts were too widely distributed.

Had they concentrated on fewer designs, they could have put better products into production earlier.

This wasn't unique to aircraft design. German designers and researchers had their fingers in so many different pies they couldn't help themselves. And the Allies loved the research they got their hands on at the end of the war.