Junkers EF 140

I do not know if this aircraft is pure fake or some post war fantasy or a real draft of German aircraft engineers during or after the war. Some time ago I saw a model of this configuration but with smaller dimensions and two jet engines in a Heinz Nowarra booklet. It was described as a further fighter development of the Horten H IX.
 
There is no evidence I'm aware of that either design is genuine. No known contemporary document describes either or anything that comes close. The bomber seems particularly unconvincing, since most jet aircraft design drawings of this period were at pains to show precisely how the engine would be positioned in relation to the intakes - and these drawings don't show that, making them fairly useless to anyone attempting to assess that particular characteristic.
 
The only reference I can think of to a bomber along the lines shown in the drawing comes from David Myhra's interviews with Reimar Horten during the 1980s. The transcripts of these interviews are really essential reading for anyone studying the jet bomber designs of January to April 1945. The following is from pages 295-296 of what Myhra labels Volume 3.
Myhra asks Horten 'when and why did the plans change to the Ho 18B from the Ho 18A?' The 'B' was the one with a fixed undercarriage (though the period drawing just calls it the 'Horten 18' without a 'B' or an 'A') and the 'A' is supposed to have been a design with the engines in the wings.
Horten responds by talking about the range possible with the different designs then says, 'The committee had come up with a committee-designed aircraft. It took the wing form from my designs but they [sic] committee was unwilling to make it completely all-wing. So they added a huge vertical rudder to it. To make this bomber it would require more working hours. In my plane with its straight tappered [sic] wing took very few hours or if the wing was rounded (which aerodynamically speaking) the rounded wing is better. So when I went back to Dessau I was already thinking about a better form (which I did not tell the people there at the committee) and which later on came to be the Ho 18B. Another reason why I had choose [sic] instead to produce the Ho 18B was that I was going to use the Heinkel-Hirth HeS 011 turbojets of 1,300kg instead of the Junkers Jumo 004's. Therefore I could eliminate two turbojets and now just by with four. I did not like the use of the vertical fin on the model suggested by the Dessau committee.
Myhra asks 'Why?'
'That vertical surfaces was not required on a large great plane bomber. It would produce drag and reduce the range of the bomber. I believed through my calculations that if we didn't have the vertical fin that that aircraft could fly up to 1,000km more in range.' He then goes on to explain how the Ho 18B was originally intended to land on skids but eventually the fixed undercarriage was decided upon.

So - a few things to unpack from that. First, this is evidence from the 1980s and isn't corroborated by period sources as far as we know. However, in Reimar's defence, he's actually pretty accurate in most of his recollections when compared against the contemporary documents. You ignore or disbelieve what he says at your peril. Secondly, we know that what he calls the Ho 18B was presented at the Langstreckenbomber conference in February 1945 and Junkers had been working on stats for the Horten design at least as early as Feb 22. The switch from the Ho 18A to 18B must have happened some time prior to that.
The so-called 'committee-designed aircraft' with its 'huge vertical rudder', according to Horten's timeline, must have been drawn up circa January to early February 1945. There are no known drawings of it but Horten says it existed. My guess would be that if it is genuine, the design we're talking about here is this 'committee bomber'.
Then again, it could be someone's attempt to imagine what the committee bomber might have looked like. Or it could be a complete fabrication. We cannot say for certain.

NB. Also worth bearing in mind that it would be H IX c or Horten IX c (if such a thing existed). The only aircraft ever referred to with 'Ho' was the 8-229. And even the Hortens themselves tended to refer to this as the 8-229 rather than Ho 229. Gotha occasionally called it the Go 229!
 
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@post#6

Dan, thank you for the enlightenment.

It is interesting that in his book Nurfluegel Reimar Horten shows a photo of a (wooden?) concept model named Ho XIII of more or less this configuration but with a more sharply swept wing and a singe HeS 011 and an additional rocket engine for a target speed of Mach 1.3.
 
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Basil said:
@post#6

Dan, thank you for the enlightenment.

It is interesting that in his book Nurfluegel Reimar Horten shows a photo of a (wooden?) concept model named Ho XIII of more or less this configuration but with a more sharply swept wing and a singe HeS 011 and an additional rocket engine for a target speed of Mach 1.3.
Click to expand...

Yes - pages 152-153 show models of the H XIII b and two drawings - one of which shows a Horten X (H X) Volksjaeger and the other a Horten XIII b (H XIII b) supersonic fighter aircraft. Both drawings were apparently by, or sourced via, an H J Meier. They are both labelled 'Stand: 1945' in the top right corner. The 'Volksjaeger' is puzzling because we know from a wealth of other sources that the Volksjaeger competition was well and truly over by the end of 1944.
The fact that there are no specific dates on these drawings makes them seem somewhat less trustworthy - as though they are postwar sketches created perhaps from memory rather than being original wartime drawings. Again, we have no particular reason to disbelieve Reimar, but neither can we be entirely certain that these drawings are authentic wartime designs. Certainly, as with the subject of this thread, there is no known wartime reference to either design. There is no evidence that the Hortens were invited to tender for Volksjaeger, nor is there any evidence that their 'supersonic' design was anything other than a private experimental project.
It could be that someone extrapolated the design of the bomber we're discussing from looking at these designs. But that is all merely speculation. And even if all these designs were created during the last few months of the war, and looked exactly as we see them today, none of them were evidently deemed important enough to make them contenders for any of the competitions of the day.
 
Since that (committee designed) rudder is only on a short moment arm, it would contribute little to yaw stability.
By the same token, that short moment arm means that it would also contribute little to turning.
To be effective, the rudder(s) would need to be as far aft as wing tips ... or even farther aft.
 

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