Northrop YB-49 jet-powered flying wing bomber prototype, cancelled in the early fifties in favor of the B-36 piston-powered bomber, as while heavily advanced, the design presented too many flaws not easily fixable by the technology available at the time.
Nonetheless, its design and the lessons Northrop learned during its development helped shape the Northrop B-2 Spirit, the world’s first and so far only stealth bomber currently in service, some thirty years later.
Here’s and interesting anecdote regarding the Spirit and Jack Northrop, founder of the company bearing his name, the most important pioneer of the flying wing concept, and the designer of the YB-49:
Thirty years later, in April 1980, Jack Northrop, then quite elderly and wheelchair bound, was taken back to the company he founded. There, he was ushered into a classified area and shown a scale model of the Air Force’s forthcoming but still highly classified Advanced Technology Bomber, which would eventually become known as the B-2; it was a sleek, all-wing design. Looking over its familiar lines, Northrop, unable to speak due to various illnesses, was reported to have written on a pad: “I know why God has kept me alive for the past 25 years.” Jack Northrop died 10 months later, in February 1981, eight years before the first B-2 entered Air Force service.
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