The Unexpected Toy.

On my recent trip to the RAF Museum at Hendon, I came across this little aircraft model amongst a plethora of others, old and new; a quite detailed, die-cast model of a German flying wing that was developed by the Luftwaffe in the final years of the Second World War.

Developed by Walter and Reimar Horten, the Ho-229 was the world's first jet-powered flying wing, first flying in December 1944 after successful tests with a full-scale glider, the H.IX V1. The Ho-229 even out-performed the Luftwaffe's operational jet fighter, the Messerschmidt Me-262, in February 1945 but crashed two weeks later ultimately killing the pilot, Leutnant Erwin Ziller.

After Germany's capitulation, a glider and a prototype Ho-229 V3 found under construction were broughv to the United States under the auspices of Operation Paperclip and were sent to Northrop Corporation for study and evaluation as their founder, Jack Northrop, had been experimenting with flying wings since the late 1930s: this research led to the giant Northrop flying wing strategic bombers of the 1950s - one of which can be seen in George Pal's 1953 movie version of War Of The Worlds - and the B-2 Stealth bomber revealed to the public in 1988.

I have had a long-standing interest in these unconventional designs, even seeing a early Northrop design and the Horten glider at the Planes Of Fame Museum at Chino, California, so I was amazed that someone in China thought that this particular design was good enough to be included in their range of models.