Background

The first true "stealth" aircraft may have been the Horten Ho 229 flying wing fighter-bomber, developed in Germany during the last years of WWII. In addition to the aircraft's shape, which may not have been a deliberate attempt to affect radar deflection, the majority of the Ho 229's wooden skin was bonded together using carbon-impregnated plywood resins designed with the purported intention of absorbing radar waves. Testing performed in early 2009 by the Northrop-Grumman Corporation established that this compound, along with the aircraft's shape, would have rendered the Ho 229 virtually invisible to Britain's Chain Home early warning radar, provided the aircraft was traveling at high speed (~550 mph) at extremely low altitude (50–100 feet).

In the closing weeks of WWII the US military initiated "Operation Paperclip", an effort by the US Army to capture as much advanced German weapons research as possible, and also to deny that research to advancing Soviet troops. A Horton glider and the Ho 229 number V3 were secured and sent to Northrop Aviation in the United States for evaluation, who much later used a flying wing design for the B-2 stealth bomber. During WWII Northrop had been commissioned to develop a large wing-only long-range bomber (XB-35) based on photographs of the Horton's record-setting glider from the 1930s, but their initial designs suffered controllability issues that were not resolved until after the war. Northrop's small one-man prototype (N9M-B) and a Horton wing-only glider are located in the Chino Air Museum in Southern California.