ANT-23
Gotha Go.P 60 A-1 1/48 scale kit
Product Description
| In August 1944 the Gotha Aircraft Company was given the job of series production of the Horten brothers' Ho IX all-wing fighter, which would be known as the Horten Ho 229. After receiving the plans and design data, Gotha engineers found some areas for improvement. The Ho 229 was limited in space to install new equipment or to add more crew members. More importantly, since the engines were to be enclosed in the wing, different engines could not be fitted without extensive aerodynamic testing, which was not possible time wise considering the worsening war situation for Germany. The Gotha designers, proposed an alternate all-wing design. The basic construction was to be a welded steel tube frame covered by plywood and "Formholz", a molded and formed wood sheathing. The Gotha Go P.60A was a flying wing that was powered by two turbojet engines near the rear of the wing center section, one above the wing and one below. Two BMW 003A-1 with 1763 lbs of thrust were to be used at first. Three fuel tanks were enclosed within the wings, one 1200 liter (317 gallon) tank in each outer wing panel and one 1200 liter (317 gallon) tank behind the cockpit. The pressurized and armored cockpit, located in the extreme nose, held two men who were in a prone (lying down) position. The prone position had the advantage of allowing the crew to withstand G-forces better. The main landing gear legs retracted to the front and rotated 90 degrees to lay flat. The nose gear was offset to the port side and retracted to the rear. To cure stall during landing, the wing leading edge was fitted with hydraulically activated split flaps. There were also pair of conventional split flaps mounted at the rear which were installed with a 15 degree forward sweep and also could be used as air brakes The other three types of control were: • Elevators/Elevons - located in the inner trailing edge of the wing and were provided with auxiliary trim tabs • Ailerons - located in the outer trailing edge of the wing and had internally balanced control flaps • Drag Rudders - located in the wing tips at a 18 degree angle (to the aircraft centerline), they were designed for the pilot to be used during high speed maneuvers Armament was to be four MK 108 30mm machine cannon. Antares Models would like to express a very special “Thank you!” to Dan Johnson and his Luft’46 website. Some images and the info about the Gotha were taken with the permission of Dan Johnson from his site. You can check out the amazing information about this plane and other ones in Dan’s site www.luft46.com. Also, we want to give our acknowledgement to Justo Miranda for the excellent drawings of the Go P.60. |
