Submarines and their Weapons - Aircraft of World War II

JET AIRCRAFT
Above: Gotha engineers had misgivings about the ultimate
stability of the Go 229, and planned to halt the programme.
They were overtaken by events, however, and produced
only one prototype, with four more under construction.
but that it was not very manoeuvrable. A series of
designs, each better executed and more radical than
the last (and each of them tailless), followed, and by
the time of the Ho V, power had become the norm. By
1940, the Hortcns were operating a Luftwaffe design
studio known as 'Sonderkommando 9' at Göttingen,
and soon produced plans for the Ho VIII (a 60-seat
transport aircraft, powered by six pusher propellers),
and the Ho IX, a turbojet fighter with twin Jumo 004B
engines. The first prototype of the latter was completed
as a glider, and the second as a powered aircraft. It
was destroyed in an enforced single-engine landing,
but not before it had logged speeds in excess of
800km/h (500mph). It was to go into production as
the Gotha Go 229, with four MK 103 30mm cannon
and a 1000kg (22001b) bombload. Only one prototype,
with the more powerful Jumo 004C engine, was
completed before the war's end, though four more
were begun. Calculations suggest that the Go 229
would have had a top speed of over 1000km/h
(620mph) and indeed, it was presented to Hermann
Goring as a contender for the '3x1000' project, but
engineers at Gothaer Waggonfabrik were far from
happy with its straight-line stability as it had a tendency
to 'Dutch roll', yawing around the vertical Z
axis while rolling from side to side around the X axis.
The engineers planned to halt construction after the
sixth prototype. The Hortens agreed, and produced a
new design with a very pronounced, almost exaggerated,
V-shaped fin, the leading edge of which came
almost to the nose and included the cockpit. Lippisch