[MikeNoun]

The flying wing dates back to 1930's Germany. They were building gliders using flying wing and delta wing technology, and later developed for WWII. The German aircraft designers were at least 10 years more advanced than the American and British designers.

The German designers also had radio controlled V-1's that were launched from a bomber, and guided to the target by a man in the bomber. They also tested TV camera technology in a guided V-1, similar to what we saw 45 years later in Desert Storm.

If you see that National Geographic special on the building of the Ho229, the old retired Lockheed engineers had no idea that Germany built this plane in 1944. From us WWII aircraft geeks, we knew about this aircraft for the past 20 or so years.

The FW-190 fighter was also the first aircraft to use a single-yoke control. When a man went to scratch build an FW-190 a few years ago, he approached a large aircraft company about providing a possible duplicate of the Focke-Wulf design from 1943. The engineers were stunned. They had no idea that the single yoke control dated back 50+ years. They thought that it was developed in the mid-1950's by American engineers.

This is the fighter version of the Horten flying wing.



And this is the Messerchmidt P1101. You can see how Amercian and Russian post-war aircraft development came from these Luftwaffe designs, especially the Bell experimental aircraft (taken directly from this German aircraft).