The insane story of German Stealth Fighter Jet F117
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- Опубликовано: 4 фев 2025
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MBB Lampyridae Firefly
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Honestly I didn't know how much of an upgrade the Opera web browser would be
Get it here: opr.as/01-Opera-browser-FoundAndExplained
Read up about Opera. It’s Chinese spyware nowadays and no longer the browser it was before it was sold. I hope you can find better sponsors. Your channel deserves it. Loved this video!
This Jet is called MBB Lampyridae, not Fire Fly...
@@einautofan6685 have you watched the video
@@einautofan6685
Oh
Dont use opera its basically chinese spyware
Leave it to the Germans to design a stealth plane so good no one ever has a chance to see it.
If it was so good theyd have actually built and tested it.
@@John_Redcorn_thats what we want you to think!
@@John_Redcorn_ Not true. Cost is a significant factor. Look at all the never-build military and commercial aircraft that never made it past the prototype stage. NGAD is just a recent example, or the Sea Raptor (carrier capable F-22).
You're welcome. BTW my father has seen the Horten 9 on their test flights just before the end of the war when he was a small boy.
@@John_Redcorn_ as told, they did, around the time of the end of the cold war, which was followed by a cancelation of all military contracts Germany could cancel and even the phase-out of several integral parts of the Bundeswehr's readiness for peer-on-peer conflict. It met the same fate as the T32 heavy tank of the US or the T-44 of the USSR: It wasn't finished as a design, but the war was over, so they were redundant.
When you play War Thunder on a potato and only low poly models are available.
"hm, why hasn't the f 177 model changed?"
damn what a coincidence finding you here. I remember you from my days playing Robocraft, used your Iron Duke and Regenerator Design a lot :)
still sometimes go back to your videos to relive the glory days of Robocraft :P
Aka cold war stealth mode
If Warthunder realeased in 1992:
ITS THE GUY BEHIND THE MEGABOTS!!!
" Mysteriously Canceled"? No I think you made it crystal clear that the US was still very much jelly over Germanys talent even after capuring most of it.
Same
"Capturing"???? You man "STOLEN" , right???😏😏
@@debrajroy5170 It's not a steal when people take a deal to escape the trials
@@debrajroy5170 ......., thats affirmative.
To the victor go the spoils, my friend. The US has the Germans by the balls, and you know it. They weren't even allowed to have a military of their own for ages. Ever heard of the treaty of Versaille? The Germans may have had "talent" but they were also well known for being misguided and unnecessarily brutal with their "experiments".
There was a lot talking about stealth technology in Germany in the 80s. They also build a stealth tank...you can see the prototyp in the German Panzer Museum.
In Munster or where?
@ yes
English:
ruclips.net/video/9r0Ssd2jR2U/видео.htmlsi=COeUAFon1W5IoGoK
German:
ruclips.net/video/EgabvU-fqDM/видео.htmlsi=k6stsKMaF_kwgk6E
@@malitwat2874 ye
Cost of maintenance more than cost of aircraft ?! So THAT’S where Mercedes and BMW got their idea!
Cost of maintenance over time of complex weapon systems being higher than initial purchase? Is that really so strange in our “for profit” west? Wait, it is more ironic, they can’t even produce more F-22s if they wanted to, why is that?
@@TK421-53they can't make produce more raptors because Congress is stupid and thought they wouldn't need more raptors, so they cancelled production instead of fully fleshing it out.
That's every fighter jet in existence. Calculate the total cost of plane maintenance, flight hour cost * lifespan in flight hours. It will always be several times the unit cost.
Doesn’t matter if it’s an Aston Martin or a high-end BMW or Mercedes expensive cars cost a lot and maintenance. If you get a basic BMW or Mercedes, the cost is reasonable. I number one guy complaining that the electrically retractable towbar in his BMW was going to cost $5000 to replace. The point is most cars don’t even have that as an option.
@@williamzk9083this exactly
I'm a life long aviation nerd but this channel seems to continually come up with subject's that I have never heard of.
Bravo sir 👏🏽
Never heard of this because it's fiction.
@@outerrealm bullshit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBB_Lampyridae
Low poly ahh f117
Fr😂
A reduced scale experiment, similar to Have Blue for the F-117 project.
As if the F-117 wasnt already low poly lol
@@cerealenjoyer3000 he should've said extra low poly lol
stupid ahh sounding ahh ahh comment ahh
MBB was quite interesting, they weren't just developing and building aircraft (planes and helicopters) but also some satellites, airbag gas generators, wind turbines (a single-bladed) and a bunch of trains, conventional ones (they co-developed the Intercity Experimental and built carriages for the ICE 1) but also monorails like for Disney parks and the Transrapid maglevs.
The M is actually the same Messerschmitt company which built fighter planes like the Bf/Me109 and of course the 262 in WWII.
The first B is actually Bölkow (with Umlaut) and not Bolkow.
And the second B ist Blohm, also known as Hamburger Flugzeugbau, it was a daughter company of the Blohm + Voss shipyards and their production facility located in Hamburg-Finkenwerder is still active, nowadays operated by Airbus.
Totally agree. However quite unfortunate that one of MBB's Chief Designers
turned out to also have been spying for east Germany for decades.
Lura Croft, man those were the days 😢
Yeahhhh boy!!!
Dunno who is Lura Croft
But I know Lara Croft
lura grofd .. fug :D
a few things:
1. Have Blue was started earlier than Lampyridae,
2. The Math behind the Stealth Dorito is very old, the soviet scientist Pyotr Ufimtsev published his theories in the 60s (translated to English in the 70s), the russians just never knew what to do with that knowledge. Thus it is very possible for the Germans to come up with that on their own.
@@Herdatec I agree. They were in heavy development of the F-117A (then the YF-117A) in the early 1980s. Since that was very, very top secret, the Germans would have known nothing about that.
@@alexdhall In the book "Skunk Works" by ex Lockheed CEO Ben Rich, he explicitly states that the Germans knew nothing of the F-117, but that they were surprised to learn of the Firefly.
@Melior_Traiano Seems like both were good at keeping secrets.
Some people think the whole Pyotr Ufimtsev story was a hoax to cover up,
how Skunkworks actually got to their results. To be clear, I don't want to downplay Ufimtsev's achievement,
but what are the odds that the Americans would discover this obscure bit of theoretical Russian math
that probably never got translated into English until after stealth became a thing?
The Lampyridae was a tech demonstrator to see if it was possible to have a low RCS aircraft that can be aerodynamically stable. Flying mockups were made for wind tunnel testing and tge reflective area was measured.
I see one big problem with the firefly. If you look at the F117, you'll see engine exhaust runs through large diffusers that mix with cold air, dramatically reducing infra red emissions, to foil heat seeking missiles. The Firefly would have a huge infra red signature
Guess it was intended to defeat just radar?
@@MarvelousSevenYes.
Does that matter when you're out of IR missile range? And, when you actually point your exhaust at the enemy you would be too far away for missiles of this time
But why is the vertical stabilizer perpendicular to the horizon ? Isn't this against the stealth design of the plane?
F22 and F35 have the same problem.
I couldn't help thinking: Did anyone ever test the radar cross section of a Cybertruck? 🤔
No. Seems RUclipsrs are too busy seeing if they're bulletproof and or "durability" testing
Well we know that they dont make good IEDs
@@user-uc4vg4rg9eThey're built like old cars before we figured out crumple zones are important, they're like battering rams.
With how flat the profile is the cross section has to be huge
Next time try and help yourself before thinking.
The Deuschland Dorito, version 3
Genau, Döritosch. Immer schön 👌
Auch ein Deutscher Kamerad hier?😂
Ziehen wir deutschen uns nicht alles rein was mit uns zutun hat? 😅
Can we get a video on the Dornier LA-2000 one day?
I would've love to see these two aircrafts work together
German: Look my Bunderswehr Wunderwaffen!
US: Wonder……No! Shut it down! It let me remember some bad thing……
Cool that you made a video about the Lampy! I built it in 1/72 and two times in 1/48. One for the Gerhard Neumann Museum, in which the 4/5 windtunnel model is exhibited (it´s the one with the bubble canopy, so it´s not full size and it is made very simple from wood just to test its aerodynamics), the other one for a former test pilot, who flew it in the wind tunnel. He said it flew very well and stable. The model from Unicraft in 1/72 I made for my own collection. I further made a small RC model from Depron. The nose gear should be below/behind the intake (you don´t want to disturb the airflow right in front of the intake) and each landing gear leg had only one wheel. Of cause, a video about the Dornier-project would be great.
Further there were some plans making a German attack helicopter by MBB, you find some drawings on the website of Unicraft Models under "Distant future releases" on the left of the site. This would also be interesting. I pointed the maker of the Unicraft kits some weeks ago on your video channel... 🙂
Jared, just for the record: Back in the days in Western Germany we used to pay in D-Marks and not in Euros. The Euro was introduced in 2002 as the legal tender. BTW. the story of the DO-LA2k sounds compelling.
@@jakobdolling8802 Der Euro kam 2001, nicht 2002!😉
@@einautofan6685 No, 2002 is correct, at least for the introduction of Euro coins and bank notes. The non-physical Euro was introduced in 1999 already and at that point, all European currencies received fixed exchange rates, turning them into effectively a single currency already.
@@einautofan6685 Sorry, da habe ich wohl mich wohl nicht richtig erinnert. Danke für die Berichtigung.
are we even suprised its the germans?
Nien, Never underestimate the children of the Fatherland. 😅😅
Yeah, they always spew BS about being first to do something
@@honeybadgerbomb4469 hi cardboard house dweller. It's true that most research and development was done in Europe and Russia. Your whole space and arms industry is built on that research and new European scientists emigrating
Ofc its the germans. The one that flew usa AND ussr into space.
You bet your ass that if the Russians or Americans have done something, my god the Germans have probably tried it to.
The design itself looked like something out of Ace Combat 3 designs. And I find it nostalgic
Never underestimate the capabilities of german engineers.
The Germans used two types of radar absorber in ww2 on u boat masts. There was a jaumann absorber code named schornsteinfehger (chimney sweep) that was 1/4 wavelength that absorbed 96% radar waves and another ferrite absorber called wesch that absorbed 80% but was only 2 mm think rubber . There is a BIOS report on it
Except when it comes to building something reliable and easy to fix.
@@John_Redcorn_ lmao
@@John_Redcorn_ MG-42, STIHL chainsaws, the original VW Beetle, the Leopard 2 (including its MTU engine and Rheinmetall main cannon) etc. etc..
@Melior_Traiano bmw, new VWs, etc. Garbage reliability. And good luck working on a bmw yourself. Its a nightmare
Finally. Some more information and attention than old Documents which barely mention it.
Lampyridae was subject to a pitch at the Royal Aeronautical Society delivered by the former head of pre-design at MBB some years ago. He recounted the story of the presentation to the US delegation. Excellently presented here. Thank you guys
This is prime form "Found and Explained" content. Bravo.
Americans used state of the art computers, meanwhile Germans simply used their Intuition. German engineering was incredible.
Why use intuition when American engineering could make state of the art computers?
The Germans were always ahead in terms of designing revolutionary jets and other stuff
Yup but if u look the nobel prizes before ww2 where mostly germany, after was U.S. after those engineers n scientists came over to west. That said they just got blinded by ideology and lack of resources/manpower. One of only things US had was material and manpower to produce it. Also after few decades of income tax(started in 1920s) and reinstatment of alchohal tax in 1930s USa had tons of $$. Then fdr removed gold standard via manipulating gold price. Letting us print all the money we deemed we could back. And that all lead us to 2025. But yeah something about german/japanese culture really pushed perfection but also that indoctrination lead to horrible human rights destruction
Except they weren't. This program is from the 1980s and never produced anything more than a wind tunnel prototype. Have Blue first flew in 1978. The entire premise of this video is a bit oversold.
@Regolith86 Everything German is. The invincible WW2 War Machine that lost 50% of its 79 million population to France in 1939, the "world's best tank" that got shredded and outclassed, over and over Germany has shown to be bark and no bite
@@Regolith86 First flight 1981. They financed the porgram in 1978.
@@captaintoyota3171 you also have to take into account post WWII America took German engineers.
GREAT video! I had heard of the Lampyridae, but not the LA-2000. I would love to see a video on that project!
Single vertical stabilizer is kind of interesting, though. Angled always have lower cross-section.
I've heard claims that, despite its angle and shape, the vertical stabilizer of the Eurofighter is virtually transparent
to radar thanks to the materials used to make it. As they say "There's more than one way to skin a cat" :)
11:25 THIS is a very important comment and it is refreshing to have a YT channel like this one include it. Do not underestimate the influence of the US military industrial complex and other economic interest. This was also a contributor to Concorde’s demise, or at the A380, the US uses any means possible to stop competitors. Look how Chinese high tech competition is picked off one by one through various means. They do so against friends and foes. It can be a sugar deal, or threats of tariffs. Either way you buy the US product or give up part of your own independence. The Germans had to give up that stealth fighter just like they had to give up on cheap natural gas. History never ends, even if some people would like lead us to believe…
Nah. The cold war was over. It was late 80s when this design was still a aerodynamic mockup and when the prototypes could be built it would be almost 90s. The anti military movements in newly unified Germany were stronger than most think. Between 70s and 80s west germans had 4 or 5 thousands tanks in active service, today they have 250. Military budget got absolutely slashed through 90s.
The Concorde lost relevance after the 1970s oil crisis and Britain/France kept them flying for pride rather than profit.
Classic allies, USA says something and everybody bends over and just takes it hard. Them Jerrys and the rest of Europoors need to grow damn backbones if they want to stay afloat! I know USA wants to keep monopoly on everything but you simply can't and shouldn't because if you control everything, there is no opposition to be competition and encourage further development. China just revealed "6th gen fighter" and we will have Mig 25 syndrome all over. Imagine if Mig 25 never existed...
France is an easy example of why your comment is flat out wrong lol
We gave up cheap natural gas.... Sure. And it definitely wasn't be because of a. Megalomaniac lite slav man starting wars of conquest and just stopped delivering when we supported Ukraine. Lol
Please do the LA 2000. Reminds me of the General Dynamics “Flying Dorito”
Very interesting. The F-117 first flew in 1981 and by October 1983 the 4450th Tactical Group was equipped and flying them. So this was about 5 years before the first German test models. Thus the Americans were not inspired by MBB's version. Also, the radar cross section of the F-117 was about .001 square meters or .01 square foot. That's about 1% of a square foot or around 1-1/2 square inches. The size of an ice cube.
Now do one on the Battle Carrier that they have been talking about on the Battleship New Jersey channel where they had plans to turn the Iowa Class Battleships into half Carriers.
I've been looking everywhere for the German Messerschmidt Firefly and there's not much info on it online so when the world's best RUclipsr makes a video it's Jackpot
I like this design stealth fighter
the first stealth aircraft design that had a good shot at service was the quiet bird back in the 60s made by the US
The F 117 was not the first American stealth jet, that would have been the Have Blue which started development in 75
I would think the Sparrow missile system would be more appropriate than the Sidewinder as the Sparrow had a far greater range and for a "Stealth" aircraft to engage at Sidewinder ranges would almost certainly require "dogfighting" maneuvers to lock on/get tone and successfully deploy the Sidewinder.
What happened to the German aviation industry is straight up depressing.
what happened
@ It doesn’t exist anymore. Airbus is a multinational conglomerate. Sure, the Eurofighter was partly developed and is partly built in Germany, but all German aviation companies do not exist anymore. And this is depressing because they were some of the best manufacturers on the planet. Today, they would easily compete with Lockheed, Airbus and Northrop Grumman, but Germany decided that they wanted a European solution and that they didn’t want to invest in defense.
@@FacitOmniaVoluntas. Same goes for pretty much everything in Germany currently. From cutting edge to 20-30 years behind everywhere.
@@derantorkiarig4592 That’s wrong. Sounds like braindead AfD talk tbh.
@@FacitOmniaVoluntas. Name something Germany invented and actually brought to market then and is still producing which other people aren't doing just as well. Bonus points if it's not "Manufactured in China, Made in Germany".
great book, "skunk works" by ben rich, covers a lot of the story of the have blue/f117 project, as well as lots of the sr71. that math paper by a russian mathematician got little attention, but when some engineers at skunk works saw it, the ramifications meant they could model radar scattering/returns in math, rather than by trial and error. i would suspect the germans also read the paper and saw the implications.
A-12 was the first aircraft designed to be intentionally stealthy, and the YF-12 was the fighter interceptor version.
Canted twin vertical fins, fuselage chines, leading edge features, materials, internal weapons bays.....it had all the hallmarks of a 5th gen stealth fighter.
German here. No, the "Lampyridae" was cancelled because the german airforce (Luftwaffe) had in the early 80´s enormous problems with it´s air-policing duties in the very densly "populated" airspaces over germany. The then existing problems with non-cooperating IFF systems, civil air traffic with over-crowded transponder systems and various "near-collision"-situations in the air space over germany made it for the german airforce clear, that the idea of shooting down "enemy aircrafts" at long or even medium distances was, and is till today, for german fighter pilots an absolute impossibility. It was clear: No german pilot will ever get the autorisation to use its weapons against an other aircraft without clear visual identification. The then "USS Vincennes"-Incident (aka Iran-Air-Flight 655 Incident) 3. Juli 1988 was then the final point, that made it clear, that the "state-of-the-art" quality of radar and electronic informations are (from the german point-of-vue) not sufficient to allow an "automated" medium or long-range attack against any kind of air target. So the german Luftwaffe decide that they need more a kind of "flying police car" than an "stealthy killer fighter" - an "flying police car" that allows it´s pilots to get close enough to potentially dangerous aircraft to identify them with "System Eyeball Mk I" - but is agile enough to survive the following dog-fight if the aircraft is an enemy... and that resulted in the development of the "Jäger 90" (aka Eurofighter aka later "Eurofighter "Typhoon"). The ideas behind "Lampyridae" were simply not suitable for the german air defence situation in those days. And MBB as a private german company was just on the way to be integrated in pan-european Airbus-Group - it had neiter the financial nor the technological capacities to finish such an high-tec project.
Great video my friend, but we wer paying in D-Mark back then.
Yes finally I ask for this a while back. I love this concept of the firefly
4.5m Euros? Don't you mean Deutschmarks? Germany didn't adopt the Euro until 1st Jan 1999.
D-Mark or Deutsche Mark.....pls
One Thing thats not fitting is f-117 first Flight at 1981. Thats when the Project started on Paper. On the other Hand, a Fighter is something different than a Bomber
I can't- I literally bloody thought that was a clip from a PS1 game.
Since no one of us hasn't heard about or seen this German stealth plane it means it was also the best one!
Given that the Lockheed Have Blue prototypes flew in Dec 1977 while the German Lampyridae project only started in 1981, this clearly shows that the Germans invented time travel so they could go back in time and provide the faceting stealth technology to the US and thus fulfill what the video states about the Germans being first. Lol
The First Stealth Fighter was the Horten Ho 229 in WWII also from the germans, there is a Video here on YT in wich I think Boing is recoinstructing the airplane and testing its capabilities and there were shocked.
Vertical tail can increase an aircraft’s RCS by more than a factor of 2, I would imagine the Germans even at that time would understand that, it would be a bad design choice to include if their objective was stealth
The jaguar’s engine provides great thrust but emit a high inferred and heat signature both not good for stealth, unless its engines were tucked in and used ambient air cool it or have ducts and channels to dissipate heat (or some other engineering solution)
It depends on the overall geometry and flight pattern. RCS requires radiation to be reflected back at the enemy radar. If a plane with a vertical tail is flying exactly perpendicular to the latter's line of sight and on the same level then yes, it would reflect a lot. But if it's viewed at an angle, then that radiation will be reflected away, while an angled tail (at just the right angle) might instead reflect it towards the radar.
A bigger issue is the combination of a vertical tail with flat wings underneath (or a round chassis), since those two elements can form a ninety degree angle which always reflects radiation back at the direction it came from, if viewed perpendicularly. But if the tail is far back enough compared to any wing surfaces, that shouldn't be an issue. In this design the chassis under the tail is flat at an angle to the tail, so I don't expect it to have added much to the RCS.
@ radar waves can bend around and reflect even curved surfaces or any geometry so having two large flat surfaces offset 90 degrees from each other generates a significant return even when plane maintains a level flight and radar waves are not directly hitting perpendicular to the flat plane of an object, you will never see a new stealth jet, strategic bomber, interceptor, or reconnaissance plane being developed now and having stealth as a priority have large flat surfaces 90 offset from each other
It would increase RCS from the side... But not from the front. So if the radar will usually be in front of the fighter, it's less of an issue. Now, which aircraft would fly right towards an enemy radar with just two missiles the size of a Sparrow? SEAD and AWACS-hunters maybe? ;-) This would have been a real "Frisbee of Dreamland"
@ yeah let’s just pretend that the flight path won’t deviate at all from a long range radar installation with an overlapping radar zone from other angles hundreds of miles away and other assets in the area
Please, do one on the La-2000. and I´m also glad that someone finally did a proper video on it, my home country was cooking back then.
The Germans almost beat the Americans at their own game with this insane stealth jet! The Firefly could have shifted the balance of power during the Cold War, but instead, it was buried in secrecy. What do you think would have happened if it had made it into production?
As this was a West German design nothing would've changed
Given that the Cold War ended for Germany by 1990 and the German government gutted their entire military budget after reunification (as per the "2+4" German reunification treaty), this airplane would likely have had a very limited production and then been cancelled anyway.
@@navypowertv To be fair, the U.S. was deep in development of the F-117 in the early 1980s...
It was outdated design.
So wild this was going on at the same time across the world! So cool! Next you should do a video about the Japanese F-2!
F-117 on N64
More like real life Lylat Wars. But on the SNES 😅
What's the song called at the start of the video?
Darude Sandstorm
No the one before that
Lofive - Yhello (Royalty Free Music)
ruclips.net/video/mOVQr0sort4/видео.htmlsi=XUKXWmVcClBba9aU
@ oh my god thank you so much I've been looking for the name of this song for almost 5 years
@@terrarium12 😁
If Cybertruck was a fighter jet
How can you not mention the Rockwell/ MBB X-31 which was also under development in the mid 1980s, and first flight October 1990?
its a thrust vectoring technology demonstrator but that thing very looks like chinese j-10
Never heard of this one in detail and I'm normally well informed on military projects of that time (spent my military time in the german army in the late 80s and am, as have always been, quite into military technolgy and hardware) ;)
I did stumble over some rumours about german stealth weapons being developed that were on par with american projects, but, as I said, no details.
Thanks, very interesting.
8:20: I'm pretty sure the Euro didn't exist in the 1980s. Are you referring to the costs in Deutsche Marks?
Interestingly the Euro's original value was pegged to the Deutsche Mark. In the broad sense, the Euro began as a Deutsche Mark under a different name.
The Eurofighter was designed in the late 80s.
@@KSmithwick1989 lmao when the Euro was introduced, it was more or less 2 Mark = 1 Euro (1:1.96 or something on that line)... however that was only realistically represented on the paychecks with the number being half as big as before, while it felt like the supermarkets etc simply scratched off the DM and put a EUR symbol there, leaving the numbers as is, effectively doubling the prices of everything...
That's obviously a bit exaggerated but kinda how it felt back then.
@@KSmithwick1989 Really? I didn't know that.
@@alexdhall That's because it's not true. It's a popular conspiracy theory though, especially in the UK, which tried to destroy the project from the start. The Euro's predecessor was the ECU - European Currency Unit, an accounting unit that wasn't in circulation - which was pegged against first eight, then twelve European currencies - and Luxembourg was the driving force behind all of this. The DM was just one currency of many it was pegged against.
Thank you for that video and I am interested to get a video for the LA 2000. May I ask in which exhibition I can find the windtunnel mock up you showed a photo of in the video?
The Germans also read Pyotr Ufimtsev's work
Awsome vid had no idea Germany did this top secret aircraft. Yes to a vid on the other please.
With a tail like the Tornado, it isn't going to be more stealthy than the F-117
That side profile of the Hopeless Diamond looks a lot like the Calvine ufo!
War thunder should add this
Thank you for the information... a project I never heard of before.👍
why does that look like a stealthyfied mirage3
Take sexy design --> make sexyier 😋
There are quite a few desktop Stelt aircraft projects that never flew or were built. I personally built several in LEGO in the 90s, and according to rumors...
0:23 And what if I told you the Americans had a Eurofighter Typhoon..?
I know…
…
…freaky, Twilight Zone type of stuff. Or Freaky Friday.
(Rockwell-MBB X-31. Still technically German development).
utter hokum. glad you know.
@@BASS-ALLIANCE-SOUND-SYSTEM No, utter truth.
@@Muschelschubs3r MBB X31 yes, typhoon, no.
But thanks for playing
@@BASS-ALLIANCE-SOUND-SYSTEMso typhoon
Oh my god, I always thought the X-31 looked like the Typhoon but I never made the connection that MBB helped develop it lol
What if I told you that "modern stealth aircraft first became possible when Denys Overholser, a mathematician working for Lockheed Aircraft during the 1970s, adopted a mathematical model developed by Petr Ufimtsev, a Soviet scientist, to develop a computer program called Echo 1."
I am pretty sure that Petr Ufimtsev was German.
What if i tell you it was german?
well, not shocked yet.
Is it surprising to hear of something and get told „yeah, it actually has German origin“. hope and do my best to this lives on for a long time.
Bölkow not Bolkow
MBB did some mad stuff, from planes like this, to maglev trains and other things.
The design reminds me of the Convair Delta Dagger/Dart.
Of course it was cancelled for financial reasons since the Soviet Union was no more but that was short sighted since while the USSR disbanded there was still Russia to contend with……
But the way history turned out it was bye bye Firefly!
Cool looking jet though
I would definitely like to see a video on the Dornier stealth project.
Man that tail fin would have really messed up the stealth though a single tail standing straight up is bad for stealth I'm pretty sure.
That’s what I was thinking! It seems so odd.
it would have a slightly bigger rcs yeah but nowhere near to the point it would really mess it up
There is no single shape that is inherently bad or good for stealth. It is all about the angle from which the radar is looking at the airplane. The angled rudders of the F-22 and F-35 are just as "bad for stealth", if the radar looking at them is at just the wrong position. The engineers who designed the F-22 and F-35 just deemed this angle to be the least bad in most situations in which those aircraft would operate, in a "In most cases the enemy radar will be here or there."-sense.
That is also why it is misleading when people say stuff like "The F-22 has the radar cross section of a Silver Dollar coin."
Yeah, but only from very specific and very narrow angles. You turn or tilt the aircraft by a degree or two relatively to the radar and suddenly the reflective cross section is way bigger.
As usual with cutting edge technology, there are always trade-offs.
So if the people behind the Lampyridae either expected their aircraft to operate in a different environment, or in a different way, the straight rudder might have been the better choice.
@@TrangleC Very true. I guess I got wrapped up in the simplification of RUclips discourse, my bad.
@@extraordinarytv5451 Wasn't meant as criticism.
Having thought about what might have been different from a German Cold War perspective, I imagine it could be that modern stealth aircraft with their angled rudders are more stealthy to long range radar signals basically coming in horizontally and then being deflected downwards, or to air based radar that is looking down on the aircraft.
A straight rudder would probably be stealthier to closer ground radar that is looking up at the aircraft, with the radar signals being diverted up into the sky.
It makes sense because back in the 70s and 80s the Soviets still relied more on ground based radar that guided their fighters and interceptors, which didn't have very powerful on-board radars, till the Mig-25/31 was introduced. They also didn't have many AWACS style airborne long range radars back then and the ones they had would operate mostly in the eastern airspace of the Soviet Union and stay clear of the more dangerous European air space and there weren't many actively homing radar equipped air to air missiles yet.
It makes sense that nowadays a stealth fighter is better off with the angled rudders because it will have to deal with airborne radar coming in at the same or a higher altitude, which wasn't the case for the Lampyridae.
So this is just speculation and a educated guess on my part, but it seems to make sense to me that they opted for a straight rudder.
One alternate timeline thing I like to ponder is what if thrust vectoring on jets became a thing as early as 1952. And what that might look like. Because for one thing it would solve the maneuverability problem for platforms like this, the F117, lotta planes really. Obligatory “all other things being equal.” Inb4 it’s not that simple: I never said it was.
1:15 and the Chinese have discovered it half a century later😅
Interesting topic I never heard before! Good vid. P. S. Opera is NOT safe, on multiple levels. Do not use it for any thing remotely important
I have noticed a lot of youtubers are shilling Opera now which is an instant red flag. Promoting a proven Spyware infested Chinese browser is bad form and disappointing for such a great channel.
Germans probably used the exact same Pyotr Ufimtsev calculations he was a Russian physicist and is acknowledged as the father of stealth. Lockheed now freely admit that their computer modeling was all based on his work which was translated into English in the 1970s.
Hopeless Diamond is such a cool name
Germany is the reason why we live in such an technologically advanced world right now.
Remind me who made the first cpu?
Uhhh. Ok 🤨
At least you had less trouble making a model for animation. ;P
Awesome video, but the claim the Firefly may have beat the Nighthawk is over the top.
The F-117 was already operational all the way back in 1983 and featured infrared and electronic signature reduction in addition to Radar Absorbent Materials.
I hope you will do a video on the Boing quiet bird from the 60’s someday.
The most German aircraft I have ever seen! I can see the value that such a plane could have don for Air to Air combat, think theses things using their stealth and engaging ComBloc Aircraft from a distance and working in conjunction with more regular fighters. These would kind of act like snipers that would support the other fighters as they engaged mor directly. Blunting the advance force of the enemy as well as force them to be more cautious thus giving the regular fighters the chance to size the initiative, it would make a great outrider that would detect the enemy aircraft without giving it presence away, thus warning other aircraft of the enemy position.
I have gotten used to the fact the Germans are the first in every and I keep having the thought the German scientist captured in operation paperclip are still helping the Americans 80 years on
In this case it was the Russians (Ufimtsev) who published the first mathematics and the Americans built the first actual airplane. The Germans weren't first at all, they were closely behind.
@alekzander2010 when it comes to ballistic misslies what country was the first to use them including cruise misslie,jet fighters and AA misslie neary every weapon system was developed in Germany ,but countries put there own twist to them. Yes Germany was not the first to invent plane, stealth plane and the calculation
@@KgaogelokhumoMojalefaGermany never once made an air to air missile, the US invented those. What about tanks? Guns? The rotary cannon? What about useful radars? The nuclear bomb? Germany didn't make those.
@gp33music41 the Ruhrstahl X-4 was a wire guided AAM developed by the Germans during WW2 and tanks where invented by the British and Nukes I'm not sure about that but the thing carrying the Nukes was developed by German and the Gun by an American with to much time on his hands
@gp33music41 Germany developed the first air-to-air missiles in WWII. The US developed the first heat-seeking missiles. The Germans invented the revolver cannon, which was copied by most Allied nations after WWII.
How about the DASA TDEFS or the DLR-FFD (Project Diabolo) video?
So this is bs, F117 was flying in the early 80s. The German version which never flew, the project was cancelled in 1987. America was first.
We're beyond PS1 at this point, were rocking the SNES airplane
petition to call this aircraft the F116.
It's not an American design! It's name is MBB Lampyridae
wow! I had no idea of this! thanks for the video.
Triangle
F 117 with afterburner
Thanks for another great video and Happy New Year!
It's funny how they claim it was stealthier than the f-117 despite the f-117 being a real plane and the MBB being nothing but a cardboard mock-up
Typical german fashion
It had the potential to be stealthier, because it was much smaller than the F-117.
Dude i didnt know about this, as a german myself i fugging love it xD
Its always the Germans!
keep your can, jerry
With that reflective vertical tail, I cannot take this seriously in terms of stealth.