The History Of The Flying Wing And U.S. Bomber Aircraft. Jack Northrop's Dream

You left out the part about the XB42 being INVISIBLE to the radars of the day. A test pilot almost CRASHED.a XB42 doing required powerstalls. A flying wing CANNOT be powerstalled. Check out Robert CARDINAS who preceded Glen Edwards. HE REFUSED to power stall the flying wing and he was removed from the test pilot program and sent to an aireonautics engineering school. SO GLEN EDWARDS WAS SACRIFICED TO TAKE THE FLYING WING OUT. stealth capabilities of that flying wing configuration if it had came into fruition would have destabilized the cold war with the Russians the airframe was absolutely invisible to The Radars of the day Moscow wouldn't have known there was a bomb coming down until it blew up over the Kremlin that's what happened to the Flying Wing that's why it was under secret development. You need to pick up a video and watch it called the wing will fly I got a VHS copy in my video tape Library. You need to get the story straight when you're talking about the flying wing it had nothing to do with the XB 36 which was a little more than a large albatross I had a physics Professor who worked on those planes. He told us they had cooling problems. They were hard to keep in the B36 didn't last for long. Reason why they did it what's to keep the Russians from developing their own flying wing

The Horton brothers were NOT ahead of Northrop. The two programs develop simultaneously with no knowledge of each other.

There can be absolutely NO QUESTION of the genius of Jack Northrop. He was years ahead of his time, with an unmatched insight into the designs of powdred flight.

Actually, the yaw problems of the YB49 were solved by using a Norton bomb site as a yaw damper. The main reason the program for the YB49 was cancelled was because of the stealth characteristics of the airframe. It is why they wete ALL SCRAPPED by the military. It was too big of a risk to the destabilization of the cold war. Did you kkow that Jack Northrop presented the flying wing airframe design to NASA to be evaluated? Thats why it came back. The military knew what they had but the world wasn't ready for it

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I met Jack Northrop about three years before he died. I found him to be a friendly and talkative man.

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SO MUTCH CORRUPTION AND WASTING MONEY

Hortens were supporting Adolf. Allied aircraft- invented by the WRIGHT brothers
Destroyed theLuftwaffe and would have blown the katzenjammer kids flying thing out of the air too.

The main government decision maker that cancelled the flying wing ended up working for the convair people after politics! But I'm sure it wasn't political that cancelled the wing! 😂

Well what came first the chicken or the egg?

The YB-49 did NOT loose out to the B-36, it WON the competition. The YB-49 was rejected when Jack Northrup refused to merge his company with Convair (builders of the B-36) at the insistence of the Secretary for the Air Force. This was reveled in Clete Roberts' report and interview with Jack Northrup (I have a copy of the full report recorded).

Wow! The flying wing is something Elon Musk can claim as his invention! We can expect a white paper on it soon.

One of the neatest things in the original “War of the Worlds” movie was the use of colour footage of the flying wing supposedly dropping the a-bomb on the Martians.
Excellent use of stock footage of this rare plane.

When I first saw a B-2 in person at an air show at Jeffco airport back in '99 or so, all I could think was that everyone in the USA should be able to have one, just as a benefit of being an American!!! ;-)

God, it's a beautiful plane!!!

What - NO mention of the B-21 Raider? Not even the weeniest of mentions?

How did he possibly get the control surfaces to work in 1947 without modern microprocessors and software? You need computer assistance to keep a tailless plane like that in bounds. EDIT: okay I kept watching more. Right, the wing crashed because the wing isn't stable enough to work without computerized assistance. Instability when aided by computers is a good thing. It worked great on the F16. But sadly for Northrop there is no way you can make a wing work in 1947.

The B36 was always soooo silly. We just dropped the bomb on Japan. Nuclear weapons don't have to be that heavy to deal tremendous damage. Why would you ever need more than 10,000 pounds of carrying capacity to deliver nuclear weapons?

Maybe that was the flying saucer they were seeing in the 50's.

..this guy put Lukes lightsaber on NVidia and Darth whoevers on AMD?...XDDD..thats why AMD doesnt sell..and why games have low pop....

The Nazis did it first! How can this be an accurate historical analysis without the mention of fact: & all those Nazis brought over to the US for “Operation Paperclip.”

Fascinating however it misses out the other programmes to produce flying wings. It’s a missed opportunity as it identifies that other talented design team found solving the stability issues difficult eg the well known Hortens and the less well known Armstrong Whitworths (fortunately their prototypes included ejector seats which saved the life of the pilot in their 1st jet prototype). The flying wing concept was a dead end for both the Germans and British as it didn’t fit their geographic or strategic needs which could be met by more conventional designs whereas there was a compelling argument for the US.

Germany was the first to create and fly the wing. Not northrup hrumman

The house I own was originally owned by the wife (widow) of Major Glenn Forbes, who died in the flying wing at Edwards AFB.

That blows me away that they such a modern design in 1929.

'Four 12,000 hp engines' at 17.00?

The audio, very bad!

Awesome

My belts are on the kitchen counter. Mike

This Monstrosity never fired a shot in anger!- Michael McClary, Professor of Trumpet 🎺, Georgia Perimeter College & GSU😢

YB-49 was not unstable, Northrop installed a yaw damper on it nicknamed "little Herbert".
An early version of today's computer stabilization. According to test pilot Charles Tucker it was "rock solid". It met all USAF requirements.
Problem was US had little money in late 1940's, Boeing and Convair had much more capable salesmen.

Glen Edwards pulled the wings off the YB-49. Pulled too many G's during a stall recovery.
Inexperienced test pilot.

Funny how crewman misses flight that crashed then quickly got dead in an accident. Funny.

This was such a tragic story. Jack Northrup feeling like his revolutionary design was a failure.... until computers could compensate for the Yaw issues of the flying wing. He left aviation feeling like his designs were a failure. BUT, later it was proven that he was just ahead of his time. I've heard that before his death, in violation of national security regulations, he was told that indeed his design would be the cutting edge of American bombers the country would adopt for future warfare. Better late than never I guess- I'm glad he knew before his death that his innovations were indeed state of the art and not failures-

12000hp is max 4300 .

Who and what was afraid of the Flying Wing? The destruction of all of the planes makes you question the decision?

Gorgeous

During the test phase of the B-2 they brought Jack (in his late 80's and in a wheel chair) to a secret location(probably know where that is begins with a number 5)....they showed him a large model of the B2...Jack took the model with his hands shaking and said "Now I know why god has keep me alive so long.."..it took him his whole life to see his dream come true, those words mean so much to me and its something that I'll never forget

He had a blank check which also helps

Pretty sad that the first use of the B2 bombed Serbia against international law.

please stop using multichannel codecs for processing mono audio. some of the audio in the last segment is awful.

I ingot any idea why they melted them down

I find it strange that the German prototypes of the Horton Ho 229 were not even mentioned here, although it is known that these prototypes and the blueprints were the template for Northrop to build its own flying wing prototypes with jet engines such as the YB 49 flying wing.

The flying wing was originally designed by the Germans the Horten HO 229.

And the Horten Brothers designs what? They had a full operational flying wing in 1945

Never liked the B2 cockpit. It’s like they reimagined the entire airplane and got there and just decided “Nah, screw it.”