Secret Aircraft of World War II

German military aircraft designs were decades ahead of their Allied counterparts. To insure the Luftwaffe's air superiority, Germany's cutting edge designers conceived and tested highly advanced concepts including swept-wing and vertical take-off aircraft, and long range stealth bombers. Their innovations influenced the world's military and civilian aircraft designs for much of the post war period. Had Hitler's forces held on for another few years, the Luftwaffe's airborne arsenal would have changed the war's outcome. Using archival footage and computer-generated images, this program traces the development of high production jet fighters, dive bombers, swept-wing fighters, and vertical take-off planes. The centerpiece of the Luftwaffe's plans, the Horton 18 long range jet bomber, was destined to drop a nuclear bomb on the U.S. So advanced was the Horton 18's design, it became a model for the American stealth bomber fleet of the 1980's.

At the outset of World War II American and British military aircraft designs were woefully behind the more technologically superior German and Japanese planes. What closed the gap, however, was the genius and ingenuity of innovators on both sides of the Atlantic. For the Americans, it was a handful of visionaries and their teams. For the British, it was a creative and thoughtful spirit emanating from the top leadership on down. This hour presents the untold stories of the American and British cutting edge aircraft designs and solutions, some of which proved to be decades ahead of their time.

In spite of the constant danger of being arrested for expressions of radical ideas and false accusations of treason, Soviet aircraft designers mastered technical hurdles astonishing even by today's standards. The innovative aircraft include a cutting edge swept-wing Delta aircraft design from 1933; a rocket-powered fighter from 1939; a long distance fixed wing aircraft with features incorporated two decades later in the U-2 spyplane; a flying tank prototype; a submarine-bomber combination designed to attack unsuspecting enemy ships in port; and a canard wing, mid-40s aircraft that resembles a modern day Burt Rutan-designed plane. Also examined is a 1936 Soviet rocket-power fighter, an innovation that bested the Germans by several years.

Charting the incredible strides the Japanese aircraft designers made during the 1930's and their subsequent ground breaking developments during WWII. These culminated in the development of helicopters, rocket fighters and long range aircraft designed to strike at the US West coast armed with biological weapons. In the 1930s, Japanese designers created a range of warplanes, culminating in the legendary Ki-43 "Oscar" and the A6M "Zero". As the war turned against Japan, designers created the rocket-powered "Shusui", the "Kikka" jet fighter, and the experimental R2Y"Keiun". We also disclose frantic preparations to assemble a secret airforce of jet and rocket planes to counter an anticipated U.S. invasion in1945, and chronicle post-war aviation and the birth of the Japanese rocket program in the 1950s and '60s.