The most secret weapon of the Luftwaffe

[tony.osborne]

I share with you a lot of pictures, some of them previously unreleased, rare and never before seen by me, referring to one of the secret weapons of the Luftwaffe. We are talking about the Horten flying wing. Perhaps, the aircraft of the Second World War the most ahead of its time than any other, went into production too late to be put into service. Do you think if he had gone into production would have changed the course of the war and history? Visit the link below and give us your opinion about it.


Aviação em Floripa: A mais secreta arma da Luftwaffe


Best Regards.

 

[Alystyr]

If it had gone into service and also used in its intended role, the it might have had an effect.
I mentioned "intended role", because there were several cases where the higher-ups had aircraft regularly performing missions that they weren't suited for, such as the Me-262 being used for close-air-support instead of as an interceptor.
One interesting thing that I heard about the -229 (don't know how true) was that the outer wing panels had a radar-absorbent quality due to their makeup.

 

[defcon4]

Awesome!

 

[Picaro]

I share with you a lot of pictures, some of them previously unreleased, rare and never before seen by me, referring to one of the secret weapons of the Luftwaffe. We are talking about the Horten flying wing. Perhaps, the aircraft of the Second World War the most ahead of its time than any other, went into production too late to be put into service. Do you think if he had gone into production would have changed the course of the war and history? Visit the link below and give us your opinion about it.


Aviação em Floripa: A mais secreta arma da Luftwaffe


Best Regards.

Great stuff, as usual for your posts here.

As for changing the outcome of the war, probably not. Changing history? Of course. If it were introduced earlier, it would have merely spurred on the arms race and would have been countered, as was and is the case with all wars.

This aircraft would still have been hampered by Germany's tendency to produce weapons they couldn't spare manpower and production capacity to both maintain and train personnel fast enough or in large enough numbers to make them more than marginally effective. Their production capacity far outstripped their abilities to keep complex systems in the field. They had already had to concede almost total air superiority on the eastern front to the Soviets by early 1943, despite being able to produce planes out the wazoo for the entire war. These would have made headaches for the Allies, but it wouldn't have been decisive, especially after D-Day. They could only field maybe 90 of the 262's out of some 400 or so produced, and few of those flew more than a couple of missions, for instance. The ground war would have gone on.

Contrast Germany with Britain's engineering feats, or how fast the U.S. developed and put into production the B-52, a design still in use and effective today.