Most people think that the USAF invented stealth in the 1970s but this is a myth and always has been. What the US did was steal from the Soviets and the Germans before them. Systematically, I am going to provide the chronology of stealth development starting with German use in World War I. The first scout Taube aircraft looked like a bird and when using doped white linen at 1200 ft was hard to see and hear. The French dubbed it the "Invisible Aeroplane" due to VISUAL stealth. This continued with the Linke-Hoffman R.1 bomber which used cellon (yes, film tape) to cover the aircraft which made it transparent. In gray skies over distance it functioned OK but when the sun hit it the relections gave it away. Attempts to minimize this resulted in 5 Fokker E.Is being converted with cellon but they never became operational. Linke-Hoffman then tried a different approach with the R.2 bomber which was made to look like a scout aircraft from a distance when in reality it was a huge bomber with 4 internal engines driving an oversized prop! Attacking aircraft would not notice the size illusion until they got within the bomber's defensive fire! One prototype was made. But these were the first attempts at stealth using 5 different types of aircraft. No one else had anything like these. In Part II, I will cover Anti-radar stealth origins with Germany again and in Part III I will cover Soviet and German efforts postwar along with US false claims. Sorry to burst the bubbles of those military aviation fans that remain willfully ignorant of the real history fo stealth and German technology's influence well into the 21st century.