Early stable flying wing

[neobaron]

Wouldnt matter about the B2.

A quote from one of the test pilots: "I tried to stall it, but it wouldnt LET me."

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The B-49 was horribly unstable. A fatal crash on its second flight nearly caused the plug to be pulled.

As far as the 229... not sure. All I know is its going to have the universal flaws inherent to the design itself... which is a nasty stall if youre not careful in climbing.

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I'll look into it. Will give me something to do during A+ OS...

I havent learned anything in 2 weeks.

[Gen. Volkov]

Silly Volkov, which Northrop design was the first one to be flyable with men inside and stable enough to actually take out "for a spin"

(Assuming you didnt stall it with a high AoA... otherwise you fall to the ground like a feather dropped on its side. wink.gif )

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The Gotha (manufacturer) flying wing was the first, and without it, Northrop would not have had his out by... '48?

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And yes, i did get that information from "The War Channel"

I thought it was interesting.

The Avrocar was leet. One day, they'll get it right. tongue.gif

Northrop N1-M 1940 - Fighter flying wing that was later scaled up for bomber.
Gotha/Horton 229 1944 - 4 years after Jack Northrop first flew his flying wing.

Pwnt. XD.

*laughs*, War Channel, yeah, interesting but way sketchy.

Avrocar.. bah. Maybe when we perfect anti-gravity.


Beatles, all flying wings are unstable. Northop's were, which is why they were abandoned, the Germans were, which is why they're program never got off the ground, and the B-2 is. It's because they lack tail surfaces and a fuselage, which stabilize an airplane. A flying wing wants to either flip over backwards or slip sideways, unlike a normal plane which prefers to flying straight and level. The reason the B-2 doesn't stall is the flight control system won't let the pilots do it.

[The Beatles]

Disagree, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_wing#Stability_and_control

What I know about stability isn't from there, but that is an adequate summation.

[Gen. Volkov]

You can increase the stability yes, but the flying wing design is always going to be inherently unstable.

Successful aircraft such as the Northrop flying wings and the Horten series of sailplanes and fighters have applied this kind of design solution in the past.

Yet both these aircraft had significant stability problems. All aircraft are unstable to some degree yes, but flying wings have a much bigger problem with it than normally configured planes. The very length of the fuselage in a normal plane, and the distance between it's tail surfaces and lifting wings help with stability. As said in the article, there are ways to correct it, but you will still always have problems. The B-2 did make sacrifices to stability to retain stealth, but that was because the flight control system was good enough to let them do that, and it would have needed that control system to remain stable anyway.

[The Beatles]

From what I gather, the Horten did /not/ have stability problems.
It's interesting, too, that the Horten is jet-propelled. So it's both a jet and a flying wing.

[Gen. Volkov]

The later model of Northrop's flying wing was jet powered, and there were plans to make a jet powered flying wing fighter.

And the Horton planes DID have stability issues. From what I gather, the best they could was about the same as what Northrop came up with, which as we know, had stability issues.

Neo, while there was one powered Horton plane that predated Northrop's first powered wing, there is no evidence that any captured German flying wings or even the designs for them were in America before 1945. Northrop's first flight in any sort of flying wing, was in 1929, the Horton's first flight in an unpowered flying wing sail plane was in 1933. Like I said before, I think it's convergent thinking, not Americans studying captured German planes to improve their own. (Though that certainly did happen in more than one case.)

[The Beatles]

Well, I can't cite anything to back up my case that the Horten was stable. Draw if you can't either, you win if you can.

[Gen. Volkov]

Alas, this Ho 5 crashed on its first flight in 1937, breaking the aircraft, Reimar's jaw, and one of Walter's teeth. The problem was that bugbear of all-wing aircraft: the center of gravity was too far back.

The Hortens moved the engines forward and lengthened the propeller shafts, so that their all-wing looked even more like the N-1M.

From http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/horten.html

Same place I got the dates for the first Horton flying wing. There was a glider in 1931 as well, but I don't know if that counts.

It's hard to find accurate data on the stability of the Horten flying wings I think. Prolly because so much was destroyed in Germany in WW2, and because the German state was very secretive about that sort of info, and would have tried to destroy it before the Allies could capture it. I dunno if the US ever did comparative flight tests between it's Northrop designs and the German ones, but I doubt it ever happened.

Call it what you want. Heh.

[The Beatles]

It's the '44 plane I'm interested in. So yeah -- draw, I guess.

[Devari]

The funny thing is, I know nothing about what is being discussed here, but when I spotted "Horton" I immediately thought of Tim Horton's, a rather popular Canadian donut/coffee shop chain.

[Gen. Volkov]

*laughs*. I was actually spelling it wrong I think. I'm pretty sure the proper spelling is Horten, not Horton, which is even funnier.