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Flying wings had quite a long history in aviation; the Burgess-Dunne D.8 flew before WW1 (see Burgess Dunne | Historical Aircraft | Royal Canadian Air Force, for example) and its only stability problem was a tendency to weathercock, making crosswind landings difficult. It was well-known how to make a flying wing stable, although it was difficult to provide enough damping.
Given the supposed benefits of the flying wing, I would expect some considerable drawback, otherwise, asSaparotRob pointed out, we would have seen a lot of them by the Cold War, no?
My understanding was that the B-2 uses computers to make the flight stable (fly-by-wire), something not available of course to earlier aircraft?
The NatGeo special was/is titled " Hitlers Stealth fighter " It is a nonflying full scale replica that is hanging in the San Diego Museum of Space and Flight - One of the main points in the show was to test its radar signature with the same frequencies as English Chain Home Radar that was utilized in WW 2. They also did their best to replicate the paint/coating to test its actual radar absorption properties.If i remember they came up with if it was on the deck at 50' above the water crossing the Channel at 1,000km hr the English had it was either 6 or 8 minutes to scramble and intercept before it was on them.Even if they did manage to get anything into the air it would've run away from anything then flying very quickly - The show states the Germans test flew a prototype in a mock dogfight with an ME 262 and it outperformed the 262 across the board. Its definately worth seeing -
When I saw the film several years ago those points were IMHO most odd.
1) Already in 1940 British had the Chain Home Low Radar to detect low altitude objects. It was a very different animal to CH radar, 200 MHz frequency vs CH's 23 to 30 MHz. And they began operate CHEL radars, operating 3 GHz frequency, in 1943, just against very low flying a/c (EL = extra low). So why to test the a/c against a radar known to have problems in detecting low flying a/c already in late 30s and not against radars designed to detect low flying a/c and in service in 1945?
2) Horten proto crashed IIRC on its 3rd flight. Who believes that a revolutionary a/c design of rather unknown flight characteristics is put on its paces in a mock combat during its 2nd or 3rd flight? Fairly many, it seems.
Question was the Horten even viable with WWII-technology? My understanding is that flying wings have certain issues regarding stability I believe?
My understanding was that the B-2 uses computers to make the flight stable (fly-by-wire), something not available of course to earlier aircraft?
Thanks Koopernic, your post explained a lot about flying wings that I just didn't get, like why they don't spin around the various axis. Still kind of fuzzy about how they actually turned without a rudder/tail. Great post!