Horton Ho 229 German Jet fighter WWII

This is the center section of the Horton Ho 229 German jet fighter bomber developed in WWII and captured by the allies in 1945.

This is the tail section of the Horton 229, note the lack of a rear vertical stabilizer. The US  worked for almost 50 years after the war to get our own version of the Horton Ho 229 and finally accomplished it in the B-2 Stealth bomber. The Horton designers mixed charcoal and wood glue on the aircraft skin to absorb British radar waves in this stealth aircraft.

This is a model built of the Horton Ho 229 in San Diego's Aerospace Museum. Northrop Grumman engineers studied this for years to try and copy the  features of this German design.

Here is our version of the Horton Ho 229 stealth bomber that arrived in the late nineties. Early US attempts at a flying wing design had trouble with control stabilization. It wasn't until the computer-driven B-2 (lead plane in this picture) came along that allowed the necessary stability for this plane to fly. The B-2 of course carries a more massive payload than the German engineers could ever dreamed of due to less powerful jet engines of the forties.