Plane Tales artwork

The Wing That Broke Jack Northrop

Plane Tales

English - August 29, 2022 12:48 - 20 minutes - 31.7 MB - ★★★★★ - 143 ratings
Aviation Leisure Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed

Previous Episode: The Eager Beavers
Next Episode: Oh Canada, Our UFO

Arguably one of the most talented and innovative aircraft developers of his time, John Knudsen Northrop had long sought an aircraft design that could start a revolution… a craft with minimum drag and a level of lift unachievable in any other form. Jack, as John Northrop was usually known, pursued his dream of building a pure flying wing strategic bomber that would exceed the capabilities of anything else his less imaginative competitors were designing.

The gliders of Otto Lilienthal

 

The Armstrong Whitworth AW-52

 

The Avion/Northrop Experimental No1 pusher 

 

The remains of a Horton flying wing

 

The Northrop N1M

 

Nortons XB35

 

The XP-79 fighter

 

The XB-49

 

The YB-35s being broken up at the cancelation of the project

 

The final successful B-2 Spirit

 

 

Images shown under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the USAF, the Library of Congress, Northrop, National Museum of the Air Force, Michael.katzmann, the IWM, Sanjay Acharya, the National Archive and NASA.

Arguably one of the most talented and innovative aircraft developers of his time, John Knudsen Northrop had long sought an aircraft design that could start a revolution… a craft with minimum drag and a level of lift unachievable in any other form. Jack, as John Northrop was usually known, pursued his dream of building a pure flying wing strategic bomber that would exceed the capabilities of anything else his less imaginative competitors were designing.


The gliders of Otto Lilienthal


 


The Armstrong Whitworth AW-52


 


The Avion/Northrop Experimental No1 pusher 


 


The remains of a Horton flying wing


 


The Northrop N1M


 


Nortons XB35


 


The XP-79 fighter


 


The XB-49


 


The YB-35s being broken up at the cancelation of the project


 


The final successful B-2 Spirit


 


 


Images shown under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the USAF, the Library of Congress, Northrop, National Museum of the Air Force, Michael.katzmann, the IWM, Sanjay Acharya, the National Archive and NASA.