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May I present my rendition of this iconic aircraft. The build and kit This recently re-boxed Dragon moulding from 1992 includes two relatively detailed Junkers Jumo 004 engines with removable dorsal cowls. It fits together well and with some minor fettling, both the engine cowls and ventral cannon access hatches can be left removable for display purposes. However, Revell’s assembly instructions for the engine accessory parts are somewhat sketchy. I reckoned that working the location of these parts out is important if you want to have the cowls removable, because the cowls are rather thick in cross section, making the clearance tolerances rather tight. I think I worked things out in the end, but my arrangement is nothing like Revell’s drawings and I couldn’t find any relevant Jumo 004 photos on-line other than units taken from Me-262s, which appear to have a somewhat different accessory configuration. I built the kit straight out of the box and finished it in one of Revell’s suggested two-colour splinter camouflage schemes based on the Luftwaffe’s late WWII camouflage palette. The only original part discarded was the pitot tube, which I replaced with the more robust Master AM144-012 turned brass pitot tube intended for the Airfix 1/48 TSR-2. Paints used were the AMMO MIG-7209 Luftwaffe WWII Late Colo(u)rs Acrylic Smart Set for the camo, various Tamiya acrylics for other details, Alclad metallic finish lacquers for the engines and AMMO MIG-7416 Early RAF Fighters and Bombers Airplane Weathering Set for the panel line and rivet detail pin washes. The wings are attached to the centre section by means of four pins in much the same way as the original’s wings. The instructions have you attach the wings late in the build after the centre section is assembled but this does mean that the wing root alignment isn’t guaranteed to be a perfect fit. After attaching the wings, I had to carefully pare away excess plastic above and below the wing roots to remove slight step-ups and this makes me think it might be better to cement the wing outer panels to the upper and lower centre sections first and before the wing and centre section upper and lower halves are assembled. Whilst this might instead risk leaving gaps between the wing halves, these would I think be easier to fill and re-shape if required without the risk of damaging any of the kit’s fine surface detail. Doing this would also prevent the wings nasty tendency to flex on their pin mounts, which made cementing and filling the resulting joints somewhat challenging. The only other major fit issue encountered was that the windscreen provided in the kit proved to be slightly under scale and therefore didn’t match up with the canopy frame in its forward position, so I made a new windscreen bow frame out of plastic card to fill the gap. Functionally, I had a hard time believing the cannon ammunition feed layout, or rather the complete lack of ammo feeds in the kit! It provides open ammo boxes with cannon shells visible, which sit directly behind the cannon stocks. I came across some sectional line drawings on-line, which showed the location of the ammo boxes appeared to be correct, but also showed that the shells were intended to be fed forward over the top of the gunstocks and delivered first via a 90-degree lateral turn and then by a 180-degree downward turn into the breech. I wasn’t sure how much of this would be visible in the final build (not much as it turns out), but I scratch built some feeds to replicate this arrangement. In doing so it occurred to me that these tight turns could have caused frequent stoppages. I have no idea if Gotha ever tested this ammunition feed configuration, but this together with the fact that the cannon muzzles are directly adjacent to, and ahead of the jet intakes makes me wonder if the Go-229 would have been quite the wunderwaffen it’s been made out to be? I believe that several cannon armed jet fighters, including the Hawker Hunter had major problems initially with engine surges caused by hot gun gas ingestion at altitude and due to their total lack of jet engine experience, it’s not unreasonable to think the Go-229 would have had similar problems. So, I installed the projecting cannon barrels with the muzzle brake ejector ports orientated vertically, rather than horizontally as shown in the kit instructions as this might have helped steer gun gas sufficiently out of the way above and below the wing, rather than laterally inwards and directly into the jet intakes? I used the supplied decals with some additional Balkankreutz for the engine cowl sides and a lone Nazi Swastika for the rear underside from my spares box. The kit decals are well registered, have dense colour and are very thin, but they didn’t adhere very well and despite applying a gloss clear coat and copious use of Micro Set\Micro Sol, I still had problems with hazing of the decal carrier film. As this is a semi-fictional subject and because of the gun gas ingestion issue in my alternative universe, which meant the first Gruppen to be equipped with the Go-229A were taken out of front-line service and not flown much while they awaited their replacement aircraft, I didn’t apply any further weathering effects. 🙂 Some further background for anyone unfamiliar with the Go-229 Nazi Germany was developing several aerial Wunderwaffen towards the end of WWII, many of which were purely paper exercises, but this is one that did get realised and flew, if only in prototype form at the end of 1944. Variously known as the Horton IX, Horton Ho-229, Horton 8-229, or Gotha Go-229, this aircraft has developed something of a cult following over the years. Unsurprisingly perhaps, because even today it looks so futuristic and back in late 1944 would have been way more advanced than anything the Allies had up their sleeves. My interest in it was piqued when I happened across the Go-229 V3 prototype on display at the NASM Udvar-Hazy Center in Washington DC back in 2008. If you ever have some time to kill waiting for a flight out of Dulles International airport, the Udvar-Hazy Center is only a short taxi ride away and well worth a visit! The German epithet “Nurflügelflugzeug” translates literally as “only wings aircraft” in English, but in common usage becomes “flying wing aircraft.” Personally speaking, I think “only wings aircraft” is a far better description for this planform than “flying wing.” After all, aren’t all aeroplanes with wings intended to fly? Designer and engineer Reimar Horten was committed to the nurflügelflugzeug concept because it represents both the simplest, and in theory the most efficient structure for an aeroplane. The main aerodynamic advantage being that virtually everything in the structure contributes to lift whilst minimising parasite drag. However, in the real world this comes with an inherent loss of stability in both pitch and yaw due to the lack of a stabilator. In the modern era, computer-controlled fly-by-wire systems make it possible for virtually any shaped object to fly and one shouldn’t forget that the awkwardly angular and multifaceted tailless F-117 Nighthawk would be unflyable without constant automatic control inputs from its computerised fly-by-wire system, and so it carries the alternative moniker of “The Wobblin Goblin.” Back in the 1930s when Reimar was refining his nurflügelflugzeug designs, relaxed static stability wasn’t an option because flight control was of course achieved entirely through mechanical linkages and pilot “feel.” After several design iterations, Reimar perfected a swept back wing planform with a central trailing edge extension that helped instil a degree of pitch and yaw stability, with pitch, roll, and yaw controlled via elevons, outer wing mounted spoilers and drag rudders. The Ho-IX V2 prototype was intended to make use of the World’s first production jet engines and although the V2 prototype eventually flew with the Junkers Jumo 004, the Ho-IX was originally intended to be powered by the shorter BMW 109-003, but this was delayed in its development. These early jet engines were somewhat unreliable and indeed the in-flight flame-out of one Jumo 004 was the cause of the V2 prototype’s demise in early 1945 along with the test pilot Lt. Erwin Ziller, who apparently had never been shown by Junkers how to start, let alone re-start their engines! The production variant represented by this kit purports to be the Go-229A single seat fighter/bomber variant powered by the Jumo 004C. This never flew, but Gothaer Waggonfabrik (abbr: Gotha), the company contracted to build the production aircraft was in the process of building the first of these and was also working on a more definitive two seat B variant when Nazi Germany surrendered in 1945. Bearing in mind the potential high-altitude performance of this aircraft, its steel tube and wooden construction caused a major headache when it came to providing a pressurised cockpit. There are extant photos of a rather unhappy looking chap sitting in the prototype wearing a Draeger prototype pressure suit and looking every bit like someone out of a 1960s Sci-Fi movie. This presumably was seen as the solution to flying the aircraft at higher altitude. Much has been made of the stealthy appearance of the Go-229, which is very similar to the modern-day Boeing Grumman B2 Spirit strategic bomber. Indeed, it’s been said that when designing the uber-stealthy B2, Northrop took a good look at the Go 229 V3 prototype sent to the US after WWII, although of course Northrop already had extensive experience with its own flying wing designs. In 2009 a National Geographic TV programme followed the construction of a full-scale replica of the Go-229 and the investigation of its radar cross sectional characteristics by the Lockheed Martin Skunkworks. They concluded that its mostly wooden construction over a central steel framework, combined with the lack of tailplane and fin did indeed provide a relatively low radar signature, but the lack of snaking intakes meant that the engine compressor faces still showed as highly reflective. Post-war, Reimar Horten claimed he had intended incorporating coal dust in the glue used to bond the plywood wing skins to increase electrical conductivity and so dissipate incoming radar emissions. The jury is out on whether this was just an afterthought on his part.

Hello guys, I present to all of you my most recently finished model. It's the latest incarnation of Revell's excellent Horten Ho 229 in 1:72. There're two decal options provided and the option to have the aircraft on an in-flight position. Here are the photos: