Praying Mantis had some potential:
It's job was to strafe enemy down in trenches...
It's job was to strafe enemy down in trenches...
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A Japanese version of pike-and-shot might well have shown up if the sengoku period lasted a bit longer.
Samurai Tercios! imagine the awesomeness!
Samurai Tercios! imagine the awesomeness!
I still think if the HO-229 had of been around in 1941-42 things may have improved for the Germans.
Mind you that is only cause I loved flying it in Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe.
Mind you that is only cause I loved flying it in Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe.
Yes it's safe to say that if the Nazis had a jet aircraft, even as awkward and impractical a one as the HO-229, it would have hiven them a large advantage in a stage of the war where biplanes were considered viable as reserve aircraft
All flying wings tend to have stability issues due to the absence of a tail fin or long fuselage to act as a lever for such, affecting pitch and yaw. Even today, there are relatively few flying wings in active production and use; I believe the only one is the B-2, which is a stealth bomber rather than a fighter. That said, I can't find any major deficiencies of the Ho-229 in particular compared to other flying wings; the speed deficiencies of a flying wing due to the drag of a thickened wing didn't really impinge on an air battlefield largely dominated by conventional props and very early jet engines. That may, however, be partially due to the lack of testing; the last version never reached the testing phase before capture, and the preceding version was destroyed in a crash. Late war Germany was also rather short on fuel, and I thought they made up part of the gap by cutting back on training and testing as well, though I could well be wrong on that.
Furthermore, while this doesn't impinge on the Ho-229 more than indirectly (the Ho-229 not even existing in 1941-1942), the jet engine designs available to Germany at that early date were required materials they did not have in abundance due to being cut off from the world economy by the Brits (like molybdenum), and a lot of important kinks hadn't quite been worked out yet, like how to keep the jet engines from vibrating themselves apart. Even the historical Ho-229 had rather serious engine issues, I thought, and that in 1944. I wonder how well these issues would have been resolved, or if this postulate simply assumes the Germans are pushing the prototype straight to production without working out these issues. I also wonder if trying to develop the Ho-229 without the knowledge gained from its glider and pusher-prop predecessors in 1941-1942 would have ended in flames.