Horten brothers

Walter (* 13 November 1913; † 9 December 1998 Baden-Baden) and Reimar Horten (* 12 March 1915; † 14 March 1994 Villa General Belgrano, Argentina), sometimes credited as the Horten Brothers, were German aircraft pilots and enthusiasts. Though they had little, if any, formal training in aeronautics or a related field, the Hortens designed some of the most advanced aircraft of the 1940s.

Biography

Early lives

Between the World Wars, the Treaty of Versailles limited the construction of German military airplanes. In response, German military flying became semi-clandestine, taking the form of civil 'clubs' where students trained on gliders under the supervision of decommissioned World War I veterans. As teenagers, the Horten brothers became involved in such flying clubs.

This back-to-the-basics education, and an admiration of German avant-aircraft designer Dr. Alexander Lippisch, led the Hortens away from the dominant design trends of the 1920s and '30s, and toward experimenting with alternative airframes -- building models and then filling their parents' house with full-sized wooden sailplanes. The first Horten glider flew in 1933, when both brothers were still in their teens.

The Hortens' glider designs were extremely simple and aerodynamic, generally consisting of a huge, tailless albatross-wing with a tiny cocoon of a fuselage, in which the pilot lay prone. But the great advantage of the Horten designs was the extremely low parasitic drag of their airframes. They were 'slick' and scalable to high speeds.

During World War II

By 1939, with Adolf Hitler in power and the Treaty of Versailles no longer in effect, Walter and Reimar had entered the Luftwaffe as pilots. (A third brother, Wolfram, was killed flying a bomber over Dunkirk.) They were also called upon as design consultants, though Germany's aeronautical community tended to regard the Hortens not as part of the cultural elite.

In 1937, the Hortens began using motorized airplanes, with the debut of the twin-engined pusher-prop airplane Ho VII (an earlier glider had a mule engine). The Luftwaffe, however, did not actually use many of the Hortens' designs until 1942, when grudging (and partly under-the-table) support was given to a twin-turbojet-powered fighter/bomber design, designated under wartime protocols as the Horten Ho IX.

Securing the allocation of turbojets was difficult in wartime Germany, as other projects carried higher priority due to their rank in the overall war effort. Although the turbojet-equipped Ho IX V2 nearly reached a then-astonishing 500 mph in trials, the project was soon given over to the theretofore low-tech aircraft company, Gothaer Waggonfabrik, as the Horten Ho 229 (subsequently often erroneously called Gotha Go 229).

The Ho 229 was a fighter jet with great potential, but arrived too late to see service. Among other advanced Horten designs of the 1940s was the supersonic delta-wing Ho X, designed as a hybrid turbojet/rocket fighter with a top speed of Mach 1.4, but tested only in glider form (as the Horten Ho XIII).

Post World War II

As the war ended, Reimar Horten emigrated to Argentina, where he continued designing and building sailplanes and one twin-engined flying wing transport, which was unsuccessful commercially. Walter remained in Germany after the war and became an officer in the post-war German Air Force Luftwaffe. Reimar died on his ranch in Argentina in 1994, while Walter died in Germany in 1998.

In the late 1940s, the personnel of Project Sign, the U.S. Air Force's flying saucer investigation, seriously considered the possibility that UFOs might have been secret aircraft manufactured by the U.S.S.R. based on the Hortens' designs. [Michael D. Swords, "UFOs, the Military, and the Early Cold War" (pp. 82-122 in "UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge", David M. Jacobs, editor; University Press of Kansas, 2000]

Unrestored examples of the Horten III and Horten VI sailplanes are displayed at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center facility of the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in Washington, DC. Two of the Horten's sailplanes built in Argentina can be seen at the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica located in MORON few miles west of Buenos Aires. The turbojet powered Ho 229 V3 brought to the U.S. as part of Operation Paperclip for evaluation is in storage at the NASM awaiting possible restoration, and an example of the Horten IV sailplane is located in the "Planes of Fame" aircraft museum in Chino, California. A restored Horten IV is also on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

References

ee also

*Horten Ho XVIII
*Horten Ho 229
*Fábrica Militar de Aviones
*I.Ae. 34 Clen Antú
*I.Ae. 37
*I.Ae. 38 Naranjero
*I.Ae. 41 Urubú

External links

* [http://www.nurflugel.com/Nurflugel/Horten_Nurflugels/horten_nurflugels.html Horten Nurflugels]
* [http://www.twitt.org/Farnborough.html Royal Aircraft Establishment]
* [http://www.luft46.com/horten/horten.html Luft '46]