The Horten brothers were famous for their flying wing designs that ran from the 1930s all the way until 1945 and then postwar in Argentina. Among their achievements was the world's first jet flying wing, the Ho-IX which flew in Feb 1945. It was also the world's first dedicated stealth fighter designed to absorb radar with a stealth filler material plus dielectric materials to be applied to the production Go-229 aircraft as well as anti-radar paint applied to the wing leading edges. Besides the Ho-IX there were multiple aircraft prototypes built to push flying wing and delta craft to their limit for the time. The Ho-X was a full-size delta glider intended to be developed into a fighter while the Ho-XII was built as a trainer. The V-shaped Ho-XIIIa was built to test 60 degree swept wings. To accommodate a pilot, a nacelle was slung underneath, giving him an excellent view and the control colum had to be installed inverted! The odd plane flew for just 10 hrs before pilot Scheidhauer landed in a barbed wire fence! Beyond these, the Hortens had an order for the new Amerika bomber- the Ho-XVIII which was under construction. And to top it off a UFO-looking Horten Parabola was built using slave labor help. Upon liberation, they burned it in haste and it was lost. An amazing aircraft for the time the Horten XIIIa must have been a strange sight in the skles over Germany in 1945.

Long before the F-117 and B-2: http://www.twitt.org/ho_xiii_a_in_flight.jpg The even stranger Parabola: http://www.twitt.org/parabola_2.jpg