Sunday, October 14, 2018

Northrop YB-49


8 comments:

  1. Read somewhere that shortly before his death, the folks at the Skunk Works brought Jack Northrop in his wheel chair into the hanger to see the B-2. You were right, Jack.

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    1. The Skunk Works is Lockheed; Kelly Johnson originally, another genius. Northrop built the B-2, and they did indeed bring Jack in to see the plane before it was declassified. As to Jack being right, IIRC, the B-2 and the YB-49 have the same wingspan, 172 ft, again, IIRC...

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    2. Rich is right. My Brain fart.

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  2. The YB-49 was a far advance from conventional aircraft design. It was in competition with the B-36 for the U.S. intercontinental bomber. From Wikipedia (and I have seen similar elsewhere):

    All remaining Flying Wing bomber airframes, except for the sole YRB-49A reconnaissance version, were ordered chopped up by Symington, the materials smelted down using portable smelters brought to Northrop's facility, in plain sight of its employees. Jack Northrop retired from both the company he founded and aviation shortly after he saw his dream of a pure, all-wing aircraft destroyed. His son, John Northrop Jr., later recounted during an interview his father's devastation and lifelong suspicion that his Flying Wing project had been sabotaged by political influence and back room wheeling-and-dealing between Convair and the Air Force.

    In a 1979 videotaped news interview, Jack Northrop broke his long silence and said publicly that all Flying Wing contracts had been canceled because Northrop Aircraft Corporation refused to merge with competitor Convair at Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington's strong suggestion, because, according to Jack Northrop, Convair's merger demands were "grossly unfair to Northrop." Shortly thereafter, Symington became president of Convair upon leaving his post as Secretary of the Air Force. Allegations of political influences in the cancellation of the Flying Wing were investigated by the House Armed Services Committee, where Symington publicly denied exerting pressure on Northrop to merge.

    Symington was a real SOB.

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    1. Woops, forgot to include that Convair was the builder of the B-36.

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  3. For me, that is the Flying Wing that dropped the nuke on the Martians in War of the Worlds. How thrilling it was to see that aircraft!

    I'd never seen anything like it in my life, and it just blew my mind because it was real!

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  4. When I was a little kid I saw one fly into Lake Charles (later Chennault) Air Force Base.

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