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The imaginative Horten brothers, Walter and Reimar, approached the ideal of the flying wing with their own powered aircraft of the 1930s and 1940s. All of the Horten craft were innovative and were distinguished by experimental shapes and diverse control systems. Their impact on flying wing design was significant, and special consideration will be given to Horten designs of World War II in a later page.
... The Future Aircraft Technology Enhancements (FATE) Program was sponsored by Wright Laboratory (WL) FI in  Dayton, Ohio, and originally led by Captain Mark Cherry, the program manager. Captain Cherry subsequently was  replaced by a new program manager Mr. Tom Black, who also serves as chief engineer. Program tasks were authorized and performed under Contract No. F33615-97-C-3804 from June through October 1997. 
... A simple means of obtaining a positive value of Cm0 is to choose an airfoil section with negative camber or with reflex. But there is a good reason that most airfoils have negative pitching moments: concentrating most of the lift forward of the airfoil's 1/4 chord point results in long, adverse pressure gradients with correspondingly low CLmax and only short stretches of laminar flow.  Some recent progress has been made in the area of low and positive moment airfoil design, but there are fundamental limits as to what may be done in this area.
Gotha Go 229 / Horten Ho IX  The Go 229 was initially designed by the brothers Reimar and Walter Horten, pioneers in early flying wing aircraft designs. The Horten brothers were attempting to figure out ways to eliminate every sourse of parasitic drag. 
SECRET - HEADQUARTERS BERLIN COMMAND OFFICE OF MILITARY GOVERNMENT FOR GERMANY (US) BERLIN, GERMANY   (These are text only sites.)
COLANI Energy Saving Airplane  "Proposal for an extremely low-fuel-cost, lightweight  plane which, seating two to four passengers, dashes  forward and upward by means of its engine and glides forward and downward with the engine stopped. 
     The Armee de l'Air  produced some interesting airplanes. I don't know much about this one except what the 3Vu shows.  I remember pictures of a lightweight French airplane with a similar planform. But I am about positive this qualifies as a fantasy airplane. Maybe the French released the plan to give the Germans something to worry about.  In any case you have a genuine period 3vu to show a skeptical CD.
      If anyone knows more about this I'd sure like to here from them. Write me at... dannysoar@worldnet.att.net      The drawing is from the September '39 Flying Aces. 
   Click on the picture to enter a site on the Horten Flying Wings by AeroSite. 
       Unfortunately for some, it is in what appears to be Flemish(???) so is not for everyone one unless you have a good translator program.  But since TWITT is an international organization, it offers all those searching our site the ability to find things that interest them.
HORTEN FLYING WING PROJECTS OF THE 30S,  By Hanspeter Dabrowski 
     Horten aircraft almost always consist of wings only, i.e. they are planes without fuselage or vertical steering and stabilising elements as opposed to Alexander Lippisch's tailless planes.  However, it was the later who inspired the Horten Brothers Reimar (1915-1993) and Walter (1913-1998) to take up their flying wing model experiments at the beginning of the 1930s. 
     The two brothers started to build their first glider, which was large enough to carry a human being, in their parents' flat. The flying wing known as the H I had a wing span of 12.4 meters and was test flown by Walter Horten on the Bonn- Hangelar Airport in July 1933. 
    William Horton had a dream, the "wingless airplane". Instead of a long high aspect ratio wing the fuselage was to create the lift and tip plates which he called "sealers" were to prevent the high tip losses that otherwise plague such airfoils. 
     Horton had designed the airplane in the early 1950s but didn't have the money to develop it.  He then was able to get into a partnership with Howard Hughes and Harlow Curtis, since Hughes obviously had the money for producing the plane.  The venture failed not because the airplane didn't fly, but because Hughes wanted to take full credit for the patents and production rights, which Horton refused to do. 
     Did you know that there are only three of Jack Northrop’s "Flying Wings" known to be left in the world? The Western Museum of Flight is extremely fortunate to have one of them, the Northrop JB-1 "Bat". The other two are the Northrop N-1M at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C., and the beautifully restored Northrop N-9MB at the "Planes of Fame Museum," Chino, California. 
     During June 1996, the Western Museum of Flight’s JB-1 restoration team consisting of Rick Hilton, Alex Von Tol, and Fred Erb lovingly restored the Northrop JB-1 "Bat." 

 
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