Adolph had one of those back in the '30's!!
Posted on 08/22/2013 5:10:37 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Outside the western gates of Whiteman AFB, there is a BBQ joint. Crews of the Stealth program and all other personnel snarf this ‘Q’ and have left their endorsements all over the place; as have various playmates and church softball teams. Pure American cuisine.
Adolph had one of those back in the '30's!!
Isn’t that pic a mock up of the German design? They built it for radar testing. The paint has silver in it and costs over a $1000 a gallon.
The things you learn on Discovery channel.
BFLR.
About 15 years ago I toured the Smithsonian’s Paul Garber Facility. They did all the Air & Space museum restorations there and the ollection of unrestored aircraft was nothing short of an aviation aficionado’s equivalent of an American Pickers “Honey Hole”.
Right there amongst all the pieces, was an unrestored Horton Flying wing... with it’s wings removed so it would fit in long-term displayed storage... amazing aircraft. Highlight ofthe trip.
The plane existed, it flew. It was WAYY ahead of its time.
Yes it existed. That picture you posted is not of it, but of a model created for radar testing.
I suspect the Horton design would have been impractical using 1940s technology. But maybe some FRengineer can set me straight one way or another.
Even Northrup's original difficult to fly flying wing had little vertical stabilizers.
Here’s a link to info. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe6Te1nWMH4
It was natgeo and not discovery channel.
Yes, I know.
But I have now posted photos of the original that actually flew.
I am having trouble with Photobucket. But there are lots of photos of the original that were German production and did fly.
The greatest weakness the plane had were the engines. When they upgraded to (don’t quote me, because I can’t remember, MERKAL engines) a better engine, the plane performed better than expected.
It did fly, it was operational, good thing we beat them when we did or Manhattan would have gotten its ass handed to it.
ping
You have that right. The flying wing had lots of problems with stabilization.
OTH, the engineers thought they could “power through” the problem. To whit, the more power we apply, the more we can overcome the problem.
Trouble is, it didn’t work out that way.
The B-1 and B-2 fly the way they do because of computer control.
The Horton didn’t have that advantage. Ahead of its time? Ohh Yea.
But like the magnetic tape recorder, invented in 1920’s, it needed peripheral technology to catch up with it to make it work.
Initially, the tape recorder used PAPER tape with magnetic paste to make it work. It did, but the freakin paper kept breaking. The project was put on the shelf until PLASTIC tape came along and stopped the breaking tape problem.
PS: The damned NAZIs were the first to figure that out.
B-2 gets yaw control from a combination of engine power controls (left/right differences) and speed brakes that deploy on each wing. The engines react slowly, but the speed brakes react fast. These measures prevent the B-2 from turning into a boomerang. This is called “yaw damping.”
There may be other means as well.
As far as pitch stability (to prevent it from going into a roll around its long axis, like a falling strip of paper), I don’t know, and have always wondered about. I suspect it’s “all in the software.”
You might get a kick out this if you haven’t seen it before.
“Safe Flying-Wing Airliners circa 1949: Jack Northrop’s XB-49 as a Jules Verne Passenger Plane”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub6U9CL0K_A
Jack Northrop was toe-to-toe with the Horten brothers when it came to flying wing designs.
Yes he was. And yes he did.
The greatest mystery was that the Horten brothers, at the last minute, walked away from everything, and were never heard from again.
How sad, they HAD the knowing and the doing that no one else had at that time.
I only wish that they had resurfaced SOMEWHERE and continued what they had started.
Apparently there are now only 20 B-2s, and 80 pilots trained to fly them. Since (I assume) there are two pilots per mission, presumably only 40 pilots can be “on duty” at any given time on active missions.
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