Horten brothers

Walter was a fighter pilot on the Western Front, flying a Bf 109 for Jagdgeschwader 26 in the first six months of World War II; he eventually became the unit's technical officer.

In response, German military flying became semi-clandestine, taking the form of civil "clubs" where students trained on gliders under the supervision of ex-World War I veterans.

[1] The Hortens' glider designs were extremely simple and aerodynamic, generally consisting of a huge, tailless albatross-wing with a tiny cocoon of a fuselage, in which the pilot lay prone.

Although the turbojet-equipped Ho 229 V2 nearly reached a then-astonishing 800 km/h (500 mph) in trials, the production of the third prototype V3 was given over to the coachbuilder Gothaer Waggonfabrik, subsequently called Gotha Go 229.

As the war ended, Reimar Horten emigrated to Argentina after failed negotiations with the United Kingdom and China,[6] where he continued designing and building gliders, including one experimental supersonic delta-wing aircraft and the four-engined flying wing FMA I.Ae 38 Naranjero, intended to carry oranges from producers to Buenos Aires.

In the late 1940s, the personnel of Project Sign, the U.S. Air Force's flying saucer investigation, seriously considered the possibility that UFOs might have been secret aircraft manufactured by the U.S.S.R. based on the Hortens' designs.