THE 'STORY' BEHIND THE STORY
By Michael Jorgensen
Michael Jorgensen, of Myth Merchant Films, is the producer of Hitler?s Stealth Fighter.
The question I get asked most often is: "How do you get the ideas for your stories?" In the context of this story, the answer began a few years ago when I had the opportunity to visit the holding facility for artifacts governed by the Smithsonian Institution. Inside one building I saw something that looked more like a Hollywood prop than an actual airplane. It was a jet powered flying wing with a pair of weathered swastikas on its tail.
It's no secret the Horten 229 V3 had survived the war but its existence hasn't been advertised either. Its forerunner the V2 had first flown in 1944 and the Luftwaffe head, Hermann Goring, was so impressed he had ordered forty aircraft to be built as quickly as possible. At the time I was making a film which included a radar facility built to test stealth concepts. It was perhaps one of the "coolest" places I had ever been and thought it would be the perfect place to answer the question of the Ho 229's stealth once and for all.
I wrote a letter to a curator at the facility inquiring about the rumored stealth properties of the Ho 229 aircraft and received a detailed response: "I have examined the aircraft and many primary and secondary sources of information about the Hortens' work, and I have found no reliable evidence to confirm this idea. Reimar Horten described these low RCS [radar cross section] techniques during the early 1980s as news reports began to appear that described the stealth qualities of the Northrop B-2 bomber. I have examined the Ho 229 V3 numerous times and found no evidence of a "mixture of charcoal and glue" applied to the skin that would lower the RCS. I believe Horten 'invented' the notion of the stealthy Ho 229 to draw attention to other interesting and innovative aspects of his work."
Well, this all sounded reasonable, but it would have been impossible for Reimar Horten to have co-opted public information on the B-2 bombers flying stealth qualities since the program didn’t emerge from the classified world until 1989. Dates and personal opinion aside, this was a great mystery so why not have a team of world class stealth experts answer the question? And who better than the designers of the modern stealth flying wing: Northrop Grumman.
While the documentary would focus on the Northrop Grumman team building and testing a full-scale model of the Ho 229, I wanted to give viewers some insight about the aircraft's designers. Walter and Reimar Horten were an odd couple of self-taught aircraft designers working outside the mainstream of German aviation during the Nazi regime. The brothers had started designing and test-flying all-wing aircraft while they were still part of the Hitler youth. To sell their idea of a jet-powered flying wing, they would have to convince Luftwaffe head Hermann Goring.
Goring was a major figure in Hitler's Third Reich and an intimidating personality with a taste for expensive art and narcotics. To recreate the Reichmarshall's office, I thought the Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Alberta would be perfect. Once we convinced the powers that be that hanging a pair of Nazi flags in one of Canada's most beautiful hotels was in the best interest of history, we were all set.
With only a day to film the historical re-creations, we got to work early in the morning to shoot several exterior scenes of the brothers arriving to meet Goring. Two Luftwaffe officers and an SS guard with a rubber rifle followed me, with camera in hand, through the opulent hallways past the hotel spa.
Two minutes later we were outside in the cold Rocky Mountain air being pursued by three RCMP cruisers and a police dog. I guess one of the girls in the spa thought the Nazi's had invaded Canada with one rifle, one bazooka, and a camera. Fortunately the officers had a great sense of humor and were quick to remind us they "always get their man."
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