In the early days of WWII, Germany mounted an air assault on Great Britain as part of its “Blitzkrieg” battle plan. Known as the “Battle of Britain”, British forces were able to mount a defense against the German Air Force, known as the Luftwaffe.  This was due to a rather new technology known as Radio Detection and Ranging.  This new “RADAR” helped the British forces to have ample warning of an impending Luftwaffe attack.  The warning time allowed the Royal Air Force (RAF) to mount an air defense over Great Britain.  From July 10th until October 31st 1940, Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany, tried to break the British air defense.  After losing priceless manpower and aircraft, Hitler surrendered his attempt to take England and looked to his prized research and design firms to find a way to break through the British Radar Shield.  One such firm was founded by the brothers: Walter and Reimar  Horten. They proposed that if an aircraft had little to no right angles then a radio wave could not be reflected back at the home station.  Using this theory they constructed the Horton HO 229, which first flew in December of 1944.  The 229's skin was made with carbon-impregnated plywood, which was believed to absorb radar waves. This, along with the shape of the aircraft would have made the 229 virtually invisible to the radar systems of the day.  Fortunately for allied forces the aircraft was never sent into service due to the factory being overrun by American forces in April of 1945.  When allied forces discovered the plane they were astonished by the technology and found that the 229 was merely a test platform for a much larger plane that could have been capable of a trans-Atlantic flight.  The larger 229 was to be developed to carry an atomic payload to cities on America’s eastern seaboard.  Even though the HO-229 never saw combat many still regard the 229 as the first stealth fighter to ever take flight.