A workshop in the dining room

Walter Horten, born in 1913, and his brother Reimar, born in 1915, grew up in Bonn-Poppelsdorf in the years when the Treaty of Versailles had driven German flying into gliding clubs. Inspired by Alexander Lippisch, they built tailless models and then full-size wooden sailplanes, their parents letting them turn the family dining room into a workshop. Their first flying wing glider, the H I, flew in 1933 and did well in competitions. The H II Habicht of 1934–1935 put the pilot in a prone position; Hanna Reitsch tested one and noted that her arms were too short to reach the undercarriage lever.

Officers with a side project

Horten was never a conventional factory. Both brothers became Luftwaffe officers in 1936 and kept designing on the side. Around 13 H III sailplanes were built, and one climbed to almost 7,000 metres in 1938. Their twin-engined H V crashed on an early flight, costing the brothers a broken jaw and a tooth. When war came Walter flew Bf 109s, at times as Adolf Galland’s wingman in the Battle of Britain, while Reimar ended up at a glider school. Their elder brother Wolfram was killed over Dunkirk in a Heinkel He 111 in May 1940. Walter’s closeness to senior Luftwaffe figures let the projects continue semi-officially.

The Ho 229 and the 3 x 1000 bomber

In 1943 Hermann Göring asked for a bomber to carry 1,000 kilograms for 1,000 kilometres at 1,000 kilometres an hour. Only jets were fast enough, and only a very low-drag airframe could stretch their thirsty engines that far. The Hortens offered their private H IX, a flying wing of welded steel tube and plywood. Göring ordered three prototypes for 500,000 Reichsmarks and the unit became Sonderkommando IX. The V1 flew as a glider on 1 March 1944 and the Jumo 004-powered V2 in December 1944, making it the first jet-powered flying wing to fly. On 18 February 1945 the V2 crashed after an engine failure, killing its pilot. Production went to Gothaer Waggonfabrik as the Go 229, but none was completed.

Hunted as UFO makers

The brothers also worked on the H XVIII, a flying wing to bomb the United States; a contract was signed on 12 March 1945, a month before American troops reached its intended assembly site near Kahla. The nearly complete Ho 229 V3 was shipped to America and is now in the Smithsonian collection. In 1946 American authorities, puzzled by early flying saucer reports, briefly suspected Horten designs and sent more than 100 agents looking for the brothers, before wrongly concluding they were in the Soviet Union. Jack Northrop, building flying wings of his own, contacted Reimar, but nothing came of it.

Oranges, the Andes and Argentina

In 1948 Reimar moved to Argentina and the Instituto Aerotécnico in Córdoba. There he built the I.Ae. 34 Clen Antú sailplanes and the side-by-side I.Ae. 41 Urubú, in which Heinz Scheidhauer made the first crossing of the Andes by glider on 30 October 1956. He also designed the four-engined I.Ae. 38 Naranjero flying-wing freighter, meant to carry oranges 1,000 kilometres to Buenos Aires, which flew only in 1960 before being scrapped. Walter stayed in Germany, served in the post-war air force and built the Ho 33. Reimar died on his Argentine ranch in 1994, Walter in Baden-Baden in 1998.

Fabrieken

• Family house, Bonn-Poppelsdorf · Bonn — Early gliders built at home and tested at Bonn-Hangelar
• Sonderkommando IX · Göttingen — Wartime design and construction unit for the H IX
• Gothaer Waggonfabrik · Gotha — Contracted to build the Ho 229 as the Go 229
• Instituto Aerotécnico / FMA · Córdoba, Argentina — Reimar Horten’s post-war base from 1948

Mensen

• Walter Horten · co-designer, fighter pilot — 1913–1998; claimed seven (en) or nine (de) victories in the Battle of Britain
• Reimar Horten · co-designer — 1915–1994; PhD in mathematics, Göttingen; emigrated to Argentina
• Heinz Scheidhauer · test pilot — First flight of the H IV; first glider crossing of the Andes
• Hanna Reitsch · test pilot — Wrote a test report on the H II

Records en primeurs

• Ho 229 V2: first jet-powered flying wing to fly, December 1944
• I.Ae. 41 Urubú: first crossing of the Andes in a glider, Heinz Scheidhauer, 30 October 1956