Horten 229

[cblf49]

Slightly off topic but perhaps of interest:

hortenwings

[thorst]

That's a great model! Congratulations!

Originally Posted by Amccombs3

We have a Horten 229, or Horten H IX, at the National Air and Space Museum near Washington, D. C. The fuselage used to sit right behind my workbench and was always in my way! The fuselage is still at the Garber Facility and is not available for viewing, but the wings can be seen at the Udvar-Hazy Center.

Isn't the Ho 229 V3 (the last remaining one) in restauration since about a year or so? I remember having read something like this... made me happy! Such an elegant looking aircraft mustn't be destroyed.

Thorsten

[Amccombs3]

Not restoration, exactly, but it's getting a lot of love from one of our conservators who is doing heavy-duty research on the materials used in its construction, especially the adhesives. She's written about it; go to blog.nasm.si.edu and search on "Horten" to see what she's said.

[KCStephens]

Originally Posted by Amccombs3

We have a Horten 229, or Horten H IX, at the National Air and Space Museum near Washington, D. C. The fuselage used to sit right behind my workbench and was always in my way! The fuselage is still at the Garber Facility and is not available for viewing, but the wings can be seen at the Udvar-Hazy Center.

While on our behind the scenes tour at the Udvar Hazy center this year, following the 2012 IPMC, I snapped this photo in the restoration shop...
Are these the wings that you are referring to?

[Amccombs3]

Yup, that's them. We eventually plan to show the aircraft, assembled but unrestored, in the south end of the Engen Restoration Hangar, as we have done with the Sikrosky JRS-1 flying boat. Right now the fuselage is too fragile to be transported from its current location. The Conservation folks are working on ways to stabilize it.

[Revell-Fan]

Originally Posted by Amccombs3

Yup, that's them. We eventually plan to show the aircraft, assembled but unrestored, in the south end of the Engen Restoration Hangar, as we have done with the Sikrosky JRS-1 flying boat. Right now the fuselage is too fragile to be transported from its current location. The Conservation folks are working on ways to stabilize it.

That's great! Was the plane you are working on actually in service (in other words: did it really fly) or was is just a 1:1 study model?

[thorst]

No, the V3 didn't fly. It was not completed before the war ended. The Go 229 V1 was a pure glider version for tests and flew several times. The Go 229 V2 was equipped with two Jumo 004 jet engines and flew, but on one of the first flights, an engine shut down preliminarily and the plane crashed, killing the test pilot Erwin Ziller.
After the war, the almost completed V3 as well as airframes for other prototypes (I think up to V6) were found at a factory. V3 was shipped to america and their skin was completed so that it was possible to show the completed prototype at an exhibition (here also the paint sheme was applied), but it was not airworthy. Since then, it rests disassembled in the collection.

If you want to read more about the story of the plane, try to get "Horten Ho 229 Spirit of Thuringia" from Huib Ottens and Andrei Shepelev.