During World War 2, the Luftwaffe made plans to bomb U.S.A mainland. To do this they needed an aircraft which would have the range and sufficient bombload to cause heavy damage to American cities. The shape of the aircraft would be delta wing planform with or without vertical tail surfaces. Alexander Lippisch, and the Horten brothers, Walter and Reimar were advocating such shapes for future Luftwaffe aircraft. Walter and Reimar had been producing flying examples of delta wing aircraft, both gliders and powered aircraft, since the early 1930's. The Horten brothers had made a glider constructed as a wide delta-wing shaped aircraft with its leading edge swept back at 24 degrees and its trailing edge straight, but the Ho II had its trailing edges swept back, too. Four examples of Ho II were built as gliders. One of them was fitted with a 60 hp Hirth motor driving a pusher propeller. The Big Bomber By 1940, the Horten brothers were operating a Luftwaffe design studio known as 'Sonderkommando 9' at Gottingen. They soon prepared detailed plans for Ho VIII, a 60-seat transport aircraft powered by six pusher propellers, and the Ho IX, a turbojet fighter with twin Jumo 004B engines. The first prototype of Ho IX was developed as a glider and the second as a powered aircraft. It reached a speed of 500 mph, but was destroyed in a forced landing after one of the engines failed. It was to go into production as the Gotha Go 229, with four MK 103 30mm cannon and a 1000kg (2200lb) bombload. Only one prototype, with the more powerful Jumo 004C engine, was completed before the end of World War 2, although work on another four had started. According to calculations, the Go 229 would have had a top speed of 620 mph. To bomb the U.S.A, the Hortens enlarged their Ho IX, which they called P.18, and then again into the P.18B. This aircraft employed four HeS 011 engines in place of the six Jumo 004s or BMW 003's, saving 1000kg (2200lb) with little loss of thrust. The aircraft would have had a range of 6835 miles at 530 mph and would have flown at an altitude of 52,500 ft with a 8800lb bombload. Because of its delta wing shape, it would had been very hard for the enemy radars to have detected this aircraft in other words stealth technology had evolved. By the time the go ahead was given for production, only 10 weeks of war were left. Had it been produced early and in strong numbers it probably would have been used bomb U.S cities. Post War After the war, the Horten brothers continued work in aviation for the rest of their lives. Walter Horten become a leading figure in the new Luftwaffe, and Reimar Horten went to Argentina to set up a aircraft industry for its government. The stealth fighters and bombers used so sucessfully by the U.S Air Force against Iraq in the Gulf War showed some of its roots in WWII Germany. American aerospace engineers and physicists studied the captured German stealth aircraft of World War 2 in late 1970's and came up with the state of the art Stealth aircraft of today. Bibliography Ford, Roger: Germany's Secret Weapons of World War 2: MBI Publishing, Osceola, 2000. Back to Table of Contents -- World War Two Newsletter September 2002 Back to World War Two Newsletter List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Shahram Khan. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com