Ho229 : A great WWII fighter? or the greatest WWII fighter

[MacDave99]

Thats a good idea...never thought about that. The speed it could hit the bombers at with either cannons or rockets would be brutal...hell Id keep the 30mm cannons just because you could get close enough. The slower muzzle velocity isnt a factor if you're at point blank range and besides, 30mm cannon rounds would drop a bomber in a few hits. Mix that with the R4M and it would be devastating

 

[CalBear]

Landkruizers look nice on paper but would be easy targets for tac bombers and guided missiles.

I hereby re-jack this thread.

Yes, you would need a good pilot for the Ho229, and the Horten brothers were building glider craft like this much earlier - if the Germans could get this plane in the air earlier (say issue the 1000-1000-1000 requirement 18 months earlier and give the Hortens Luftwaffe back-up to get this plane flying in late '43) it could give them a *serious* advantage and prolong the war for a while. But the "coffin corner" on this plane would be brutal, and I'd take out the 30mm cannons and replace them with 20mm ones instead, even if the Mk 108 is a great cannon.

Flying wings are impractical without computer controlled "fly by wire". It is possible to keep one in the air, but they are more or less unrecoverable from a spin or serious roll event (they have a nasty habit to go into "falling leaf" spins, where you are divergent in all three axes). This makes them particularly unsuitable as fighters or even interceptors, where radical manuevers are a general requirement.

Overall they can be flown, but they require so much effort to control that the pilot is effectively fully taxed, especially in a single seat configuration, leaving no margin to perform combat actions.