Comments by "FiveCentsPlease" (@FiveCentsPlease) on "Sandboxx" channel.

+@hemutzollner5496 The example in the Smithsonian is the V3 third prototype which never flew. When Patton's forces captured the Gotha workshop with the partially complete V3, there were also the frames for V4-V6. It's my assumption that they were destroyed in place. There were no production examples made.
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+@TJTinerella NATGeo made the show, and yes it was bad. Although the guys at the Northrop model department should get good credit for building the mock-up.
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+@hiddentruch1982 Asylum was rejected by many countries until he went to Argentina.
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+@chriss-nf1bd Correct. The design theories behind flying wings before WW2 was low-drag and speed. This drove the ideas by Northrop, the Horten brothers, and others. Nothing about stealth.
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+@roberthargrave3636 Northrop didn't rebuild the Ho-229. The took some measurements and built a mock-up shaped like the Ho-229 for some radar tests. They did not copy and build the structure for an aircraft.
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@jgrizz7943 The Japanese were researching radar disrupting paint for aircraft before the 229 project had ever started. The Horten brothers didn't invent stealth as a science and were focused on 1920s flying wing concepts of speed and low drag.
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@jgrizz7943 Japan's research was aimed at reducing aircraft radar signature and was paint formulations with added compounds. The Horten brothers were following the pre-war concepts of tailless aircraft which were low drag, fuel efficiency and speed. They created a plane with a small cross-section, just like Jack Northrop had already started before the Horten brothers. Reimar Horten tried revisionist history when he made "stealth" claims in his memoirs.
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@jgrizz7943 There's no rubber in the 229 (aside from the tires and fittings.) It's laminated plywood and tube steel frame. The engine fairings are welded sheet steel. (A lot of metal for a radar signature.) Selecting wood for construction was a consequence of late-war materials shortages rather than a radar advantage. Following your logic that a low cross section was the only metric to win the "stealth" race, there were multiple flying wing designs years before the 229 project began. The Horten brothers were just following work completed by others, and to their credit they contributed their own aerodynamic innovations. The 229 wasn't a success. The program only completed three different prototype designs and only managed a couple of flight hours on the second one. The last V3 example that survives today was designed mostly by engineers at Gotha without input from the brothers since Gotha had been selected as the manufacturer that could begin the steps for a production example.
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+@gregwilliams386 Starting in 1943, the Japanese were researching paint additives for IJN aircraft to reduce radar reflectivity. So I would say that the Japanese should be given credit for early stealth work.
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+@TubeNotMe Northrop's flying wing platform was a more mature design but it had two things working against it. 1) Inherent instability, which not a good design feature for a precision bombing platform and 2) Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington. The YB-49 had range and stability problems at the start of the Cold War. Symington was a vindictive sob and he terminated the YB-49 program to punish Northrop for not agreeing to merge with Convair. Even the drawings were destroyed and future flying wing development slowed. The only platform that could perform a long-range strike into Soviet territory was the B-36.
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+@mikestarkey7989 I'm going to say that the Japanese invented stealth. Starting in 1943, Tokyo Engineering University started researching radar reflectivity with paint additives. They were trying to reduce long-range radar detection of Japanese Navy aircraft by adding metallic compounds to aircraft paint.
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+@rosesprog1722 There was no radar-absorbing paint. The V3 example surviving today was found still incomplete at the Gotha workshop and painted with a green fireproof coating.
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+Freesoler01 Also the 229 engines were covered in welded steel panels from front to back for fire protection. That would produce a lot of radar return.
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+@davidmarkwort9711 The second prototype was the only powered example that flew, and only for about two hours of test time before the fatal crash on 19-Feb-1945. That crash essentially ended the Horten's efforts. The third V3 prototype was captured by Patton's forces while still incomplete in the Gotha workshop in mid-April.
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@davidmarkwort9711 That's all that needs to be said. The Horten brothers blamed pilot Ziller for the fatal crash for not handing the single-engine recovery. They deserve due credit for the work that they did, but they did not invent stealth. Northrop didn't need to copy their ideas. And that NatGEO show hyped this this thing up into a magic UFO when it was only a prototype based on the 1920s and 1930s theories of tailless aircraft and fuel efficiency.
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+@jukkatakamaa7274 The naming convention from the RLM for new aircraft in Germany included "Versuch" or "attempt" or "experiment." Prototype aircraft would typically be the type followed by a V. The Horten 229 program produced three prototypes, all different and named V1 to V3. V1 was an unpowered glider, destroyed during a landing. The V2 was the first jet-powered prototype and also destroyed in a fatal crash after engine problems. (Also killing the 229 test pilot Ziller.) The example that is in the Smithsonian Museum is the V3 prototype that was captured in mid-April 1945 at the Gotha workshop still unfinished and never flown. Also inside the Gotha workshop were the steel frames for the V4, V5, and V6. It is likely that the V4-V6 were probably destroyed in place at the shop. During the Summer of 1945 while the RAF were given an opportunity to examine the V3, British Intelligence attempted to locate the wreckage of the V1 and V2 but were never able to find them.
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+jimj.9106 The Germans developed a rubberized coating for submarines that was intended to lower the sonar signal. It would have never many any sense to wrap an aircraft in several thousand pounds of rubber to avoid radar.
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