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The US had a flying wing after WW2. Made by Lockheed? Anyway, they could never get it to work to it's promised potential. Tricky to fly, all sorts of problems. The Hortens were ahead of their time. Ahead of the technology too. Needed computers to make the sucker work. Light enough and powerful enough processors did not come around for a couple more decades.
The US had a flying wing after WW2. Made by Lockheed? Anyway, they could never get it to work to it's promised potential. Tricky to fly, all sorts of problems. The Hortens were ahead of their time. Ahead of the technology too. Needed computers to make the sucker work. Light enough and powerful enough processors did not come around for a couple more decades.
Actually, Jack Northrop's company, Northrop Aircraft, built the first prop-powered flying wing, including a sub-scale demonstrator. I don't remember the "Y" designator for the prop-driven version, but the next-gen jet-driven flying wing (also built by Northrop) was the YB-49.
And, yes, they weren't very stable since they had no vertical surfaces; the B-2 is the first "stable" flying wing, and that's only because it's basically being flown by a (redundant) computer that's making corrections to the flight control surfaces several hundred times a second.
Hello All! It has been a long time for me away, but I am now back. These bombers could have been ready much sooner, when they were needed to go over the Urals. Dose any one have thoughts on that? I know the 4 engine program was doomed when the general was kiled in a car accident, but that did not have to kill everything. I think that with some more work the Kondore would have worked. Could have been big trouble for the British, and would let the Me-110 be an escourt. Now you can all tell me how bad an idea that is
I dont think he was talking about the Fw 200. He was talking about the German bomber designs that were being tested Ju 390, Me 264 and so forth.
The Fw 200 did not have the range to strike at the East Coast of the US.
Nah, it was designed as an airliner and as such, wasn't strong enough to a) carry a significant bombload and b) not break up on landings, as many did with all the extra equipment on board
The reason the U.S. put out the contracts for the XB-35 (Northrop Flying Wing) and the XB-36 (Consolidated Peacemaker) was precisely to bomb Germany from the United States in the event that Britain surrendered and we found ourselves in a war with Germany and no unsinkable aircraft carrier off the coast of continental Europe.
In the event, neither the 35 nor the 36 could have made the round trip from Presque Isle, Maine, to Berlin, though the B-36 came close. That's why it, and not the Flying Wing, was chosen as SAC's interim Very Heavy Bomber until the B-52 came on line.
The Northrop Flying Wings were never very satisfactory. The prop-driven XB-35 had seemingly intractable problems with its driveshaft, which was very long and high above the trailing edge of the Wing. So the airframe was pushed into the turbojet version, dubbed YB-49. (There was no X version, since the XB-35 was regarded as the experimental model, allowing the 49 to go straight into service test.)
The 49 was a lovely airplane, and folks have great fun "proving" that the Northrop B-2 Stealth bomber is basically a modernized B-49, even unto the exact same wingspan. (Actually, it reminds me more of an enlarged Horten nurflugel.) But it was not a good flier; it had a tendency to make the bombardier seasick from Dutch Roll, and famously it killed Glen Edwards and several others when it apparently it flipped over backwards and went into a lateral spin near what is now Edwards Air Force Base.
But even if those problems had been ironed out, the B-49 just didn't have sufficient range or payload to make it an adequate bomber for the 1950s.
As for the Amerika Bomber, David Myhra goes into it (and the supposed nuclear bomb) in his The Horten Brothers and Their All-Wing Aircraft.
Blue skies! -- Dan Ford
Apparently Glenn Edwards was warned about the stall based on a near fatal spin caused when doing a stall test - and that is what killed him.. stall, flip over nose to tail and flat inverted spin.