COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
certainly looked the part.
As for the Third Reich's famous woman test pilot, you had to
admire her for skill and courage, even if she was a bit of a self
publicist. Watching her in animated conversation with Skorzeny it was
impossible to believe that she was beyond politics. She had too many
friends at the top. Seen for the first time she looked tiny, and fragile,
with an air of suffering. Yet it was difficult to feel any sympathy.
Much more to my liking was Willi Scheidhauer, ex chief test pilot
to the Gebruder Horten in Germany. A comfortable and warm
personality. When Rheimer Horten moved to Argentina, and continued
developing tailless aircraft, Scheidhauer had gone with him. And the
Argentine team in Madrid was equipped with two of the latest Horten
XVs.
There was an fascinating RAE report on Horten. The two brothers
were primarily interested in gliders and thought nothing of diverting
German government funds, allocated for military aircraft, to finance
the development of new and better sailplanes. Most impressive were
the Horten IV and VI, with a level of performance years ahead of their
time.
Best of all was the story about the Mustang laminar flow wing.
When the technical details and test data were circulated to the German
aircraft industry, the first thing the Hortens did was to build a laminar
flow version of the Horten IV.
So I badly wanted to talk to Scheidhauer, even if he had almost no
English and I had as little German and when the opportunity came we
managed to communicate surprisingly well:
"In Horten Segelflug" - presumably he meant the Horten IV - "I
make fourteen times the gold C height and eight times the distance."
He was quite unselfconscious about his missing fingers explaining
that he had lost them through frost bite, on the end of a parachute,
after his glider had broken up in a cu-nim. As for the handling of
these high aspect ratio flying wings, he agreed that they were
different, but a good pilot soon got used to them.
Most marked was the lack of directional stability and damping in
yaw. If you got into difficulties you used both drag rudders together
and individually they were more than adequate to cope with the
aileron drag. He could definitely recommend the prone position.
Although somewhat tight for space it was very comfortable, even after
many hours flying, and he was a heavy man!
It was the Horten IVb, with the Mustang derived laminar flow
162