Re: OT: "Warplane" Documentary Starts This Week on PBS
- From: Peter Stickney <p-stickney@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 09 Nov 2006 22:37:01 -0500
Pat Flannery wrote:
OM wrote:
...The interesting thing is that, according to some stories I've heard
from my Pop and some of his Air Farce buddies years ago, they were
reportedly experimenting with the wedgies back in WWII with a couple
of B-29's in hopes of at least reducing the cross-section enough to at
least play some havok with the German radar returns. The story is that
it happened really late in the war, and by the time they got anywhere
towards getting any positive results both sides of the war were over.
The Germans were playing around with RAM late in the war; they put a
"waffle" patterned rubber coating on their U-boat snorkels, and were
planing to make the Go-229 jet powered flying wing fighter out of
plywood whose layers were held together with a charcoal impregnated glue
for reduced radar signature.
Radio or Radar absorbing materials have been around for a long time.
It's been commercially available for use in test cells and the like, where
you want to keep other people's signals out for almost ever.
I'll admit to being a bit dubious about the stealth claims for the Horten
IX/Go 229. I think the carbon was in teh glue to add strength. The steel
tube structure and exposed engine faces and tailpipes tend to show up much.
much better than the skin.
The Mosquito had much less metal in its structure, and the Germans had no
problem tracking them with their crappy radars.
(Catching them, on the other hand...)
But then, we'll never know - the Go 229 only made 2 flights, and it's safe
to say nobody ever pointed a radar at it.
--
Pete Stickney
Without data, all you have is an opinion
.
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