Horten H III h

Horten craftsmen built this Horten III h, Werk Nr. 31, in 1944 at Göttingen. Uncertainty surrounds the subtype designation 'h,' but the glider probably first flew as a two-place Horten III g, and then Reimar modified it into a single-seat glider, installed special test apparatus, and changed the designation to 'III h. During September 1944, Josef Eggert of Zimmer Unter den Burg, a small town near Rottweil, Germany, flew the unmodified III g 20 times and amassed 14 hours and 17 minutes of total flight time. Eggert reported excellent handling qualities, but he apparently chose not to grapple with adverse yaw because he commented specifically on the very tight but flat turns that were possible using only the drag rudders. Eggert warned that stall recovery was good but only when the aircraft was properly trimmed.The special equipment consisted of a portable box-shaped device, approximately one meter square and half-a-meter wide, rested behind the pilot's seat. Atop the box a sprocket and chain drove cables leading forward past the pilot's left shoulder. A boom projected from the lower leading edge of the center section, right of the nose, and it apparently supported a precision angle-of-attack instrument. Remnants of two other crude but functional devices that precisely measured yaw remain fitted to the center section today. Clearly the sailplane featured in a flight test program but more specific information remains unknown. Photographs are all that remain of the box, sprocket, chain, boom and drogue device. These items were stripped from the glider long before transfer to the National Air Museum (it became the NASM in 1966).