COBI Horten Ho 229 Set 5757

COBI's Horten Ho 229 is a 1:32 model built from 953 blocks, 23.5 cm long with a 52.5 cm wingspan. New bricks were made for the nose, cockpit and engine intakes. The landing gear retracts, the cockpit opens, and a test pilot figure is included with two interchangeable headpieces. The underside uses a new light blue brick. No stickers.

Two brothers who were not engineers

Walter and Reimar Horten were Luftwaffe officers and gliding enthusiasts who had been building tailless aircraft since they were teenagers, out of conviction that a wing without a fuselage or tail is the most efficient shape an aeroplane can have. Neither had an engineering degree.

They were right about the aerodynamics, and their flying wings worked. The Ho 229 was their design fitted with two Junkers Jumo 004 jet engines — the same troublesome units as the Me 262 — and it flew in early 1945. The war ended with three airframes built and one flown.

About the stealth claim

You will read that the Ho 229 was the first stealth aircraft. The claim rests on a remark by Reimar Horten decades later that charcoal had been mixed into the wing's glue to absorb radar, and on the shape itself.

In 2008 Northrop Grumman built a full-scale replica and measured it. The result was a genuine but modest reduction in radar return compared with a conventional fighter — enough to shorten a defender's warning time by perhaps a fifth, not enough to make the aircraft invisible. No wartime document mentions radar absorption as a design goal.

The aeroplane is remarkable without it. The surviving centre section is at the Smithsonian, and anyone looking at a B-2 is looking at the same idea.

Specifications

Pieces: 953 · Figures: 1 test pilot with two headpieces · Scale: 1:32 · No stickers
Model dimensions: 23.5 × 52.5 × 10 cm (9.2 × 20.6 × 3.9 in)