A 1940's Northrup Flying Wing...restored.

[Hauksbee]

A short, but pretty, clip of the 1940 Flying Wing in all its bright yellow glory.

 

[+Wrench]

seen it several times at Chino (I even reached over the ropes and TOUCHED it when nobody was looking!)

[+Olham]

The craft made it's first flight in1942. That's quite interesting, cause it shows, that ideas like

the "flying wing", or the jet plane must have been in several peoples' minds at the same time.

 

There are actually several good videos at YouTube - here are 3 of them:

 

Northrop Flying Wing - Wing Camera

 

 

 

Northrop N-9M at Chino

 

 

[rjw]

Hi Olham;

 

I see the Northrop as a poor cousin of the Horten 2-29, a beautiful looking craft ahead of it's time in design. :

 

 

See links below:

http://news.national...hter-plane.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_Ho_229#Operational_history

Edited December 25, 2012 by rjw

[+Olham]

Yep, I have seen a long report and testing of a rebuilt HORTEN center section (by Grumman, I think).

They came to the result, that the use of wood instead of metal might have been a kind of stealth

bomber idea. Maybe that's right. But I'm glad they didn't really build and send them in masses to

bomb England, which is a beautiful country as it is.

 

The American design is smaller, but they had the same idea. Had the engines been more reliable

and no test pilot been killed, they would have built larger ones.

[rjw]

Yep, I have seen a long report and testing of a rebuilt HORTEN center section (by Grumman, I think).

They came to the result, that the use of wood instead of metal might have been a kind of stealth

bomber idea. Maybe that's right. But I'm glad they didn't really build and send them in masses to

bomb England, which is a beautiful country as it is.

 

The American design is smaller, but they had the same idea. Had the engines been more reliable

and no test pilot been killed, they would have built larger ones.

 

I'm probably not the first to come to this conclusion, but If our governments would financially back technical and medical advancement to the same extent that they back war efforts, think of what we could achieve!!

[Lewie]

Actually Northrup did build larger ones, the XB series of experimentals both propeller and jet powered the XB35 (image..)

 

was powered by the same engines as it's competitor the early B36 by Convair. Because of the complex counter-rotational props, the XB35 had many maintenance issues, and the later XB49 jet version was faster and more reliable, but because of the narrow CG range was hard to trim for multiple bomb weights, and this finally killed the project for Northrup.

[Burning Beard]

That early Northrup flying wing is as sexy as a cheerleader at a homecoming game.

 

Beard

[Hauksbee]

I'm probably not the first to come to this conclusion, but If our governments would financially back technical and medical advancement to the same extent that they back war efforts...

In large part, military spending is how we financially back tecnological advances. It's why all our airliners look like smoothed out B-52s. It's what built the Interstate Highway System. It built the Internet. It's the sole function of DARPA. The list goes on...