Horten Ho 229
A twin-jet flying wing designed by brothers Reimar and Walter Horten, the Ho 229 was built to meet Hermann Göring's 1943 requirement for a fast, long-ranged warplane. Only two prototypes flew, an unpowered glider and a single jet-powered aircraft that crashed on its third test flight, and the type never entered service. The unfinished V3 survives at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
Why It Mattered
The Ho 229 was the world's first jet-powered flying wing, a German wartime combat aircraft unlike anything else tested in the Second World War. It was built to Hermann Göring's 1943 requirement for a new twin-engine warplane that could carry 1,000 kg of bombs to a penetration depth of 1,000 km, a demand no conventional German design of the day could meet. Its only powered prototype crashed after several test flights, and the type never entered service; what survives is the originality of the design, not a service record.
Design Notes
The Ho 229 is a single swept wing: there is no fuselage, and no vertical or horizontal tail, so nothing interrupts the wing's smooth surfaces from tip to tip. Two Junkers Jumo 004 jet engines propelled the powered version, mounted in the wing's center section. Construction mixed the new with the traditional: a steel-tube framework enclosed by a plywood skin. Whether so pure a shape would have made a practical combat aircraft remains an open question, as the Smithsonian's curators themselves note.
Operational History
The first prototype to fly was an experimental glider version, the V1. Months passed while the wing was redesigned around its engines — the Junkers power plants had proved too large for the space built for them — before the powered V2 was ready to fly. Test pilot Erwin Ziller first flew the V2 in February 1945. Ziller flew the jet once more, but he was killed when it crashed during the third test flight. The crash ended the programme's flying: the remaining prototypes were never finished — the V3 was approximately half finished when American troops found it — and no Ho 229 ever entered service, flew an operational mission, or equipped a unit. Series production had been assigned to Gothaer Waggonfabrik, but the war ended before any production aircraft was completed.
Afterlife
In April 1945, the U.S. Army found the Ho 229 prototypes V3 through V6 at Friedrichroda, Germany, and shipped the V3 to the United States. The V3 is the only Ho 229 to survive, the only extant example of the type. Some writers called the jet the Gotha Go 229, after the firm building the later prototypes; this catalog uses Ho 229, the designation bestowed by the German Air Ministry. The V3 is currently on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center's restoration hangar, where museum staff continue to document its condition and stabilize its delicate structure. Reimar Horten asserted in 1983 that radar evasion had been part of his original intent for the design. Smithsonian conservators later examined the V3's plywood skin for evidence of radar-absorbing compounds and did not find the layer the claim required.