http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...hter-plane.html

 

Wow those Germans were ahead of their time. Glad we were able to get some of them to work with our government.

 

thats a really sleek plane and its crazy how its made of wood!

german engineering in da houuuuuuse

 

kinda scary if you think about it really.

 

It had potential but those designs were notoriously difficult to control in flight, especially prior to electronic controls. Chances are they'd have never ironed it out within a few years without compromising the design fairly significantly.

Germany had the first operational jet fighter (Me-262) as well but it was also fairly compromised and not nearly as dominant as they expected. It handled poorly at low altitudes, the engines had a very short lifespan, it lacked maneuverability, and it had a fairly short operational flight time compared to other fighters. It also started flying too late to be of much use, so one could argue it never really got a shot at changing the war.

 

Yah, I watched that show on NatGeo last night, too. My dad, who's also with Northrop Grumman, told me about this a while back when they first started in on it. NatGeo was all about some Hitler and concentration camps last night, on tv. lol

 

wow crazy

 

Incredible stuff. Too bad the video wasn't working for me here at work

Although the worm grunting video does

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but will it take off from a treadmill?

 

^ actually it would because the power is put on the wings, not the wheels or soemthing like that.

mythbusters did an episode debunking aviation myths and they did an experiment to see if the plane would take off from a treadmill/conveyer belt type of thing and it actually did