Following months of preparation, members of the Collections Processing Unit moved the center section of the Horten Ho 229 V3* from the Paul E. Garber Restoration and Storage Facility to the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar at the Udvar-Hazy Center last Friday.

Work to conserve the center section has temporarily stopped while conservation staff shifts their attentions to other artifacts such as the Ryan NYP Spirit of St. Louis in the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall in the Museum in Washington D. C. The Milestones gallery is undergoing a major renovation that is scheduled to be finished next year.

Readers will note a change in the aircraft designation from H IX V3 in earlier blog posts to Ho 229 V3. After much thought and consultation with other curators and historians, I decided to change the nomenclature to more accurately reflect the official status of the aircraft during World War II. Reimar Horten privately used roman numerals to identify his various designs, hence H IX correctly identifies the all-wing jet project. After Hermann Göring approved building the V1 (prototype 1) glider prototype around August 1943, the project gained official status. The Reichs Luftfahrtministerium (German Air Ministry) used a numbering system to abbreviate the names of all aircraft manufacturers. Horten received the number ‘229,’ hence the RLM designated the glider prototype Ho 229 V1. The ministry designated prototype 2, which flew twice before crashing, the Ho 229 V2, and they assigned the designation Ho 229 V3 to the Museum’s artifact. Although variations in this terminology can be found in official documents from the period, I believe that Ho 229 V3 works best.