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Was the flying wing a viable thing in ww2, not only for bombers, but for other 'big' planes (transport, marine patrol etc).
There were plenty of flying wings world wide long before FBW, going back to the dawn of flight even. But some or most had control "irregularities" that might have kept them from general acceptance.
I wouldn't consider a Me163 a flying wing though, it has a definite fuselage, it just doen't have a sparate horizontal stabilizer.
Not True...they had all the knowledge needed to design a 'stealth' bomber 30 years in advance.
And that was just one part of the puzzleThe Germans were quite ahead in the development of coatings able to reduce the energy reflected by Radar and Sonars
This is the shroud developed to reduce the signature of Schnorkel masts against centimetric radars employed by the Allies
They still didn't have the whole recipe for the whole concept. As stated, they were on the right track but decades away from real stealth technology, at least with regards to aircraftNotice the multi faceted structure; the material itself is quite close to what is employed today to shield anechoic chambers. Even if the Germans were quite behind in radar technology because they lacked the Magnetron, they did very advanced studies about the nature, propagation and physics of centimetric radio waves. Proof is than when they finally recovered some Magnetrons from downed bombers they created some very advanced radar designs in some respects even superior (as it was stated by post war evaluation of the captured German technology) to those of the Allies.
Absorption properties are important but one order of magnitude less important than shapes. The primary breakthrough for Lockheed was linking an obscure paper written by a Soviet Wave propagation/Signal Processing expert.
The Germans were quite ahead in the development of coatings able to reduce the energy reflected by Radar and Sonars
This is the shroud developed to reduce the signature of Schnorkel masts against centimetric radars employed by the Allies
View attachment 216194
Notice the multi faceted structure; the material itself is quite close to what is employed today to shield anechoic chambers. Even if the Germans were quite behind in radar technology because they lacked the Magnetron, they did very advanced studies about the nature, propagation and physics of centimetric radio waves. Proof is than when they finally recovered some Magnetrons from downed bombers they created some very advanced radar designs in some respects even superior (as it was stated by post war evaluation of the captured German technology) to those of the Allies.