Here’s What You Need to Remember: However When American troops of VIII Corps rolled into the factory at Friedrichroda they found just the cockpit sections of the prototypes in various stages of development A single pair of corresponding wings was found 75 miles away Northrop Grumman revealed this year it is developing a second flying wing stealth bomber it was a pair of German brothers in the service of Nazi Germany that developed the first jet-powered flying wing—which has been dubbed was the primary motivation behind the bat-shaped jet plane Walter Horten was an ace fighter pilot in the German Luftwaffe having scored seven kills flying as wingman of the legendary Adolf Galland during the Battle of Britain His brother Reimar was an airplane designer lacking a formal aeronautical education the pair had designed a series of innovative tail-less manned gliders Luftwaffe chief Herman Goering laid out the so-called 3×1000 specification for a plane that could fly one thousand kilometers an hour carrying one thousand kilograms of bombs with fuel enough to travel one thousand kilometers and back—while still retaining a third of the fuel supply for use in combat Such an airplane could strike targets in Britain while outrunning any fighters sent to intercept it the new turbojet engines Germany had developed would be required for an airplane to attain such high speeds But jet engines burned through their fuel very quickly making raids on more distant targets impossible The Horten brothers’ idea was to use a flying wing design—a tail-less plane so aerodynamically clean it generated almost no drag at all Such an airframe would require less engine power to attain higher speeds Flying wing designs were not an entirely new idea and had been used before in both gliders and powered aircraft Northrop developed its own high-performing XB-35 flying wing bomber for the U.S the lack of a tail tended to make fly wing aircraft prone to uncontrolled yaws and stalls The Horten brothers were given the go-ahead to pursue the concept in August 1943 They first built an unpowered glider known as the H.IX V1 thin swept wings made of plywood in order to save weight These “bell-shaped” wings compensated for yawing problem the H.IX relied upon “elevons” (combinations of ailerons and elevators) and two sets of spoilers for control The elevons could be moved differentially to induce roll or together in the same direction to change pitch while the spoilers were used to induce yaw Following successful tests of the V1 glider at Oranienberg on March 1944 the subsequent V2 prototype was mounted with two Jumo 004B turbojet engines nestled to either side of a cockpit pod made of welded steel tubing It also featured a primitive ejection seat and a drogue chute deployed while landing while redesigned tricycle landing gear was installed to enable the plane to carry heavier loads The first test flight occurred on February 2 The manta-shaped jet exhibited smooth handling and good stall resistance The prototype even reportedly beat an Me 262 jet fighter But the testing process was cut short on February 18 when one of the V2’s jet engines caught fire and stopped mid-flight Test pilot Erwin Ziller performed a number of turns and dives in an effort to restart the engine before apparently passing out from the fumes and spiraling his plane into the ground Goering had already approved the production of forty flying wings which mostly produced trainers and military gliders during World War II The production planes were designated Ho 229s or Go 229s Because of the Ho 229’s great speed—it was believed the production version would be able to attain 975 kilometer per hours—it was repurposed to serve as a fighter with a planned armament of two heavy Mark 103 thirty-millimeter cannons Construction of four new prototypes—numbered V3 throuh V6— was initiated two of which would have been two-seat night fighters was shipped back to the United States for study along with the wings and can today be seen under restoration at the Udvar-Hazy Center of the United States Air and Space Museum in Chantilly The Hortens were reassigned to draft specifications for a flying wing jet bomber with range enough to deliver an atom bomb to the east coast of the United States. Their resulting schematics for the Horten H.XVIII “Amerika Bomber” flying wing were never realized, except arguably in the film Captain America One word you haven’t seen in this history so far is “stealth”—and that’s because there isn’t any documentation from the 1940s supporting the notion that the flying wing was intended to be a stealth aircraft the Hortens had stumbled upon the fact that a flying wing design lends itself to the sort of reduced radar cross-section ideal for a stealth plane the flying wing’s main feature was always supposed to be its speed which could have exceeded the maximum speed of the best Allied fighters of the time by as much as 33 percent Detection time would not have mattered greatly if it could outrun everything sent to intercept it stealth would have had little usefulness in the fighter role the Ho 229 would actually have assumed as the Allied daylight fighters ranging over Germany did not benefit from radars of their own The Ho 229 might have been a formidable adversary over the skies of World War II but in truth the plane was far from ready for mass production by the war’s end While it seems a stretch to claim that the Ho 229 was intended to be a stealth aircraft there’s little doubt that it pioneered design features that continue to see use in low-observable aircraft today Sébastien Roblin holds a Master’s Degree in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China and refugee resettlement in France and the United States He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring This first appeared in 2016 and is being republished due to reader’s interest Image: Wikimedia Commons The Soviet bomber fleet grew to over 2,000 airframes starting with piston-engine planes and then evolving to jet-powered craft stripped-down F-16s from Arizona storage to Ukraine for spare parts supporting NATO-donated jets and aiding Kyiv’s air capabilities amid ongoing Russian missile attacks During the nearly forty-eight-hour standoff the KV-2 had survived eight 50mm direct hits Stay in the know with The National Interest newsletter © Copyright 2025 Center for the National Interest We use cookies to enhance your browsing experience We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below The cookies that are categorised as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site We also use third-party cookies that help us analyse how you use this website and provide the content and advertisements that are relevant to you These cookies will only be stored in your browser with your prior consent You can choose to enable or disable some or all of these cookies but disabling some of them may affect your browsing experience Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors Performance cookies are used to understand and analyse the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customised advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyse the effectiveness of the ad campaigns Published: Invalid Date A CRUMBLING abandoned palace that was once home to King Charles' family has been left to rot by its new Russian owners Dubbed "Rapunzel Castle" a building in Germany once used by the royals now needs to undergo a whopping $30million restoration project Reinhardsbrunn Abbey sits in the little town of Friedrichroda part of the State of Thuringia and has been there for almost a thousand years The current King of England, Charles III, has an unlikely link to the palace as it is rumoured to be one of the first meeting places of his great, great, great grandparents Prince Albert and Queen Victoria. First built in 1085, after arguments in the church caused a power struggle over who could choose and install bishops into their position the abbey was founded by ruler of Thuringia From there it became a respected monastery and the home to a group of monks from Hirsau Abbey But after disaster struck and the abbey was looted and left in turmoil during the German Peasant War of 1525, all of its monks disappeared and left the building in disrepair. It took another 47 years until Duke Friedrich Wilhelm I carried out work to transform it but it wasnt until 1706 that the main part of the castle was restored still under the Wilhelm family name. It then became a timid hunting retreat before becoming what we see today. The Duke was the father of Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert and became the young mans favourite holiday destination The castle was surrounded by a beautiful park and had an elegant bell tower and tall spire hence the Rapunzel nickname Queen Victoria even made up a series of photos in 1858 for her husband World War II could've sparked trouble for the castle due to its height and expert views but the Duke held onto it However, just weeks after the devastating war ended, the residence was taken over by East Germans, who used it as a military hospital for Soviet Red Army troops After the hospital was shut down in 1953, the state used Reinhardsbrunn Abbey for a wide range of things including a police and firefighting training facility and later in the 60's a classy hotel The hotel theme seemed to stick as a now reunited Germany was passed around the tourism industry and had a number of new owners from hotel companies Projects were constantly floating about with the Reinhardsbrunn expected to get a makeover sooner rather than later Plans for a flashy five-star hotel were rumoured but nothing fell into place and by 1991 Reinhardsbrunn Abbey was in a seriously neglected state The building became a historic monument in the region in the early 90's after already being listed in 1891 as a landmark of the duchy and as a place of national significance in East Germany in 1980 As it slipped further away from its former glory the property was bought in 2008 for $12million by a Russian investment consortium called Rusintech Rusintech left the palace to rot away and after several more looting's the building was left trashed The purchase was believed to be related to a suspected money laundering fiasco Thuringia performed urgent repairs to the palace as structural failure was imminent and a genuine worry clouded over the culturally vital building they repossessed the palace to ensure its safety making even more history as the first of its kind in the Federal Republic to legally get back a property for negligence It is still undergoing repairs today and has been rumoured to need up to $40million in investments to make it a building that's both safe and practical in a modern world So far around $1.9million has been put aside way below the believed amount needed Our journalists strive for accuracy but on occasion we make mistakes. 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