The Story of the Northrop YB- 49 Flying Wing - Restored Color - 1949

[@primarytrainer3641]

I love this video. Wish we had at least one of these planes still around

[@rogerfox9028]

It's ashame all of them were scrapped

[@Dill_Pickle1997]

At the very least they should build a replica to give us an idea what the plane was like

[@amramjose]

By the time the wing had been cancelled, Northrup had resolved all the instability problems via electronics which controlled the flight surfaces (the B2 bomber uses sophisticated computers and soft ware). I think Northrop got screwed and set up on this deal, in favor of the B36.

[@georgew.5639]

Northrop was definitely screwed. Floyd Odlum of Convair arranged the screw job.

[@BiggHogg870]

Well in the end Northrop got the last laugh today with 20 beautiful stealth bombers.

[@dougball328]

@@BiggHogg870 And who knows how many B-21s ?!

[@willowtree5267]

I wonder where we would be today if these aircraft had gone into service.

[@Dill_Pickle1997]

@@willowtree5267 we’d probably have flying wing passenger jets

[@radioguy1620]

Those test pilots were a brave bunch

[@Brucev7]

'Northrop’s original Flying Wing was “30 years ahead of its time,” said E. T. Wooldridge when he was chairman of the Aeronautics Department at the National Air and Space Museum. Retired Brig. Gen. Robert L. Cardenas, who was the principal test pilot for the YB-49 in the 1940s, added that the airplane “had to wait for technology to catch up.”

[@lucastekkan]

@Teddles Peddles said no one ever

[@ZenosWarbirds]

Our mission is to preserve these historic films for future generations. Your DVD purchases at our store make this channel possible. www.zenosflightshop.com Get this film & much more on our "X-Treme Bombers" DVD. Includes a complete YB-49 Flying Wing Flight Manual.bit.ly/1kYGpv2 We need your support! Zeno

[@erikhertzer8434]

...and yet another documentary narrated by the great Paul Frees.

[@MrShobar]

Yes.

[@sidwalters7455]

One of my favorite aircraft

[@aandc2005]

At the end of Jack northrups's life they wheeled him in his wheel chair to a secret location probably Area 51 during the building phase of the B-2 bomber they showed Jack a huge model they had made... Jack's hands were trembling as he held the model and he..."said now I know why God has kept me alive so long..." It took him his whole life to see his dreams come true....

[@lastfirst78]

And you know this How?

[@dougball328]

@@lastfirst78 I have seen some video footage and still photos of Jack 'visiting' the B-2. And yes, he supposedly said the comment about why he was still alive. The only inaccuracy in Alan's post is that it was not at Area 51. They don't produce airplanes there. They were in Palmdale at Air Force Plant 42. Minor nit of a comment. For 2 1/2 of my 37 years at Boeing I led the aero design for an unswept flying wing. With sweep you can get longitudinal control by shifting span load. You don't get that luxury when the wing is unswept. Damn radar guys, anyway !

[@gakaface]

Great. Thanks for putting this up.

[@ZenosWarbirds]

+gakaface You're welcome! Zeno

[@pepecohetes492]

Nice job; thanks for posting.

[@lowtus7]

Would love too have seen this fly. It's funny, I have a Rc flying wing controlled by gyros and accelerometers, just what this needed, and all in a package no bigger than a matchbox, how far we have come. Still an amazing achievement.

[@wandawong]

"...making it difficult to hit or detect by radar" See! The Air Force does have smart people. After only 45 years of denial, the light bulbs above their heads began glowing brightly and they went crawling back to Northrop to design and build the B2 bomber. Which, by the way, has the same 102 foot wingspan of the XB49 shown here.

[@selfdo]

That's actually 172 feet, but yes, same wingspan

[@wandawong]

Douglas Self.. Yes! Sorry for my failing memory on that one :) You are absolutely correct. And, for the record, the little HO-229's wingspan was 55 feet.

[@wandawong]

@Meh K I've gathered printed material on Northrop's wings, going back decades before the Internet was unleashed to the public. When it comes to defending Northrop's achievement from the Horten trolls, and purveyors of unsubstantiated hearsay about the B49's stability, I could care less about a few tweaked KZbinrs.

[@wandawong]

@Meh K Information is always more important than who delivers it.

[@lucastekkan]

@@wandawong yo, mind sharing those archieves on Northrop's flying wings ? I'm huge fan of them

[@EdwardPupek]

I have always loved the Northrop YB-49

[@PointyTailofSatan]

One of the few planes that can say "I'm Batplane!"

[@Airsally]

We used to whistle the tune the trumpets make while working on the B-2.

[@TheTrueAdept]

Brandon Ware, the Flying Wing design was pretty hard to STALL. The test pilots always attempted to do so but found it extremely tricky to even get anywhere near a stall.

[@pepecohetes492]

Major Cardenas related a time when they tried to stall it, and it went into a rotating nose first motion, which he recovered from by pulling the throttles back; he said that this was a guess and it worked. Furthermore, the wing should not have been pushed into a stall or a spin as it was nearly impossible to recover.

[@TheTrueAdept]

pepe cohetes More or less, not to mention that it was pretty hard in the first place to make it stall.

[@leneanderthalien]

Aaron Neumann: the flying wing hard to stall was the Fauvel wings not the Northrop or Horten flying wings.The explanation is simple: the Fauvel flying wing use another technique: the autostable airfoil wing= in case of stall, or a spin, did this wing recover without any action from the pilot, but this technique as a cost in maximum speed (limited at ~300km/h) because the drag increase rapidly at high speed, so this wing profile was close only use on gliders (see the Fauvel AV36-AV361, and he's american developments the Marske flying wings.In addition did the Fauvel wings use vertical rudders to improve the yaw controll...

[@mollybell5779]

Got to love an airplane that's hard to stall. I was a student pilot many years ago, and had a devil of a time getting a Cessna 172 to stall at full power. The first two times I tried it, the plane just ended up in a mush, maintaining altitude with a high nose up attitude. 🤷 I finally had to pull the yoke back toward me as hard as I could, and it finally stalled.

[@kevinmcmillin3037]

I would say this stands above even the B2 for innovation and engineering. American aerospace at its finest

[@robertcombs55]

GREAT site thanx for posting!!

[@pcaetano7527]

is that paul frees narrating this ?

[@hibob418]

All right - narrated by the great Paul Frees. You can still hear him in the intro audio when you enter the foyer of Disney's Haunted Mansion(s), and as the voice of Boris in the Bullwinkle cartoons. Plus hundreds of other shows...

[@gregkreinberg3268]

Coincidence: Paul Frees narrated the opening of the movie "War of the Worlds" about 5 years later, and the movie used footage of the Flying Wing. Frees also appeared in the movie--in the scene in which the FW is to drop the A-bomb on the Martian invaders.

[@AvengerII]

Frees was the first voice of The Thing (HB, Fantastic Four 1966) and the narrator of the original, AWFUL Star Wars (1977) trailer!

[@jimfinlaw4537]

When it came to flying wing design, Jack Northrop was 20 years ahead of anybody else. When then Secretary of the Airforce, Stuart Symington tried to force Jack Northrop to merge with Convair and Jack Northrop would have none of it, this reallly pissed off Symington so much that he awarded Convair the contract for the Convair B-36 Peacemaker intercontinental bomber. Symington was heavily lobbied by Convair. It was Symington who ordered all the Northrop YB-35's and XB-35 scrapped at the Northrop factory. The YB-49 was cancelled because the jet engines were not fuel efficient and they didn't provide the range needed. Also the engines put out smoke projecting the wings flight path to the enemy, which was also a factor. Thats why the Airforce choose the Boeing B-47 Stratojet bomber over the Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing bomber. Jack Northrop was vindicated when the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber was ordered into production by the Airforce. Its fly by wire controls and static instability genrated by high speed computers made the B-2 Spirit as a more viable strategic weapon over its predecessors. The B-21 will no doubt be even more advanced with its fly by light technology using fiber optics and other technologies.

[@ZenosWarbirds]

Symington was pretty much owned by the Convair lobby. The Wing certainly had flaws, but Northrop was prohibited from further development, even if they did it without government funding. That’s why all the existing aircraft were ordered to be destroyed.

[@robertoroberto9798]

I’m just happy Jack Northrup lived long enough to see the B-2.

[@davidmartin7889]

No real mystery here. The B-49 Flying Wing was another victim of the assassination of Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in 1949. Forrestal was replaced by President Truman's chief fundraiser, the deeply corrupt and incompetent Louis Johnson. Johnson had been a director of Convair, the maker of the strategic-bomber rival to the B-49, the B-36. Because of their respective inadequacies, neither Johnson nor the B-36 lasted very long in their assigned roles. Johnson was soon sacked and in the Korean War the older B-29s did the job that the B-36 was supposed to do. Secretary of the Air Force Suart Symington, by the way, was a bitter bureaucratic rival of Forrestal's and very well could have had something to do with Forrestal's commitment to Bethesda Naval Hospital, from which he was thrown from a high window. On Johnson's B-36 connections see www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/b-36-bomber-at-the-crossroads-134062323/?c=y%3Fno-ist&page=1 That article, very tellingly, makes no mention of the superior B-49. On Forrestal's murder, start reading here: dcdave.com/article4/040927.html

[@pedrodiaz5540]

Corruption at a high level !

[@lastfirst78]

The man who narrated this documentary sounds like the same individual narrating 50s Sci-fi films.

[@marcusrussell8660]

It is such ashamed the military choose to cut up ALL examples because they were on the take from the conventional aircraft industry. Even now with the exception of the B-2 bomber, we do not use this in commercial aircraft or freight haulers.

[@leftcoaster67]

Same with the Avro Arrow and TSR2

[@JesseWright68]

Nothing new. Big business crooks still call the shots with bought congressmen and senators.

[@dougball328]

So having spent my career designing commercial airplanes, may I offer a slightly different perspective? A commercial flying wing has some severe issues. For one the wing has to very thick to accommodate passengers. This causes wave drag issue that begin at lower Mach numbers. A second issue is the further away from the centerline you are, the more you feel lateral disturbances and/or control inputs. Another is the structural efficiency issue (impacting weight). The passengers have to be in a pressurized enclosure. A cylinder is the second best container under pressure - a sphere is number 1. How accepting will passengers be of being in a cabin that has no windows? Yes, small cameras and other video displays may address this concern. Finally, and this is a major issue, is emergency evacuation. Getting everyone out of a flying wing is not as simple as it may seem. We began studying what we called a "blended wing-body" in the late 80s. John McMasters was the initial cheerleader for it. The original configuration was 'C; wing - a flying wing with swept winglets at the wingtips and then another 'winglet' on top of those winglets, swept aft and inboard, to act as a tail.

[@michaelmartinez1345]

It would be a sure thing that EVERY SINGLE BRANCH OF OUR MILITARY SERVICE PEOPLE WHO WITNESSED How well these planes operated, wanted them in the WORST WAY... The only ones who HATED this program , were their competitors... And those people had friends in the military purchasing departments in Washington D.C. Dishonesty, would be a very gentle and kind way to describe people like that.... Today is:.10/10/24 @ 11:28 PDT

[@michaelmartinez1345]

​23:05 ​​How much vertical height does a normal business aircraft have? That was about the similar height that the YB-49 had for IT's crew and weapons bays... The similar curvature radius could be used along the MAC of the wing that the wide body planes fly with every day, in fact pressurizing could actually increase the structural integrity of a 7 psi delta P pressurised vessels.. And there pressure vessels that have Large displacement that are a found in various low profile applications such as certain types of pressurant tankson 'pancake' air compressors that handle fairly large volumes at fairly high pressures with delta P ratings of 250+psi.The highest delta P the cabin would ever see is maybe 7 psig Being that the wing does have a curvature, especially in the upper surface It is an excellent place to pressurise all stress concentrated areas such as internal corners can be sealed with aluminum alloy forgings ... In fact several planes have wings and aux tanks that are pressurised with an inert gas (nitrogen) such as the center 'dry bays' on 747's , and 'dry bay' fuel tanks above the pylon attatch areas on the wings of Airbus narrow body planes are also checked for leaks using Nitrogen @3 psig for at least300 minutes... There are areas in the fuselages that are located in pressurised parts of the cabin, That are flat panels... The bulkheads behind Radomes the NLG and MLG well areas on Numerous aircraft have flat panels, pretty large too... Some planes with aft air stairs have flat panels in those areas like 727's MD'80's..of course this adds weight, because they must have extra re-enforcement... But they were able to make them work...I remember being involved in repairing certain high strees areas , such as Section 41 on the 747's..... Stringer 17 (skin lap doublers & 1/32" O.S. rivets on the 100 & 200 series 737's, 'Texas Doublers' on various cabin entry and cargo pit door sills... The most outboard sections of the wing could be used for non pressurised or low pressurised fuel stowage.... Numerous flush skylights could be provided along the upper wing surface that several planes have along the side of the their pressurised , fuselage, of which 4 paels could be emergency escape hatch's... Partner Just because the moon is a long way off, and it takes a lot to get there & back safely, does not mean it can't be done... It CAN BE DONE AMIGO... Once people start accepting that maybe they can be part of something Bigger than themselves by forming a GROUP of people and CONSIDER ALL IDEAS AS POSSIBLE VIABLE SULLUTIONS, then there is a chance that better designs might be possible... Jack Northrop and Numerous people who believed in him, helped the YB-49 to become a reality... For those who think it can never be done; Well they often (but not always) end-up being by-passed by those who want to become part of something , bigger than themselves.... But with that being said , Also be careful to not get 'sucked-in' to a loosing cause.... Try to evaluate the proposals by applying Physics.... That will often give You a good indication of those who are overstepping practicality and possibly milking lucritive programs for everything that they were able to sell to people who have little or no idea of what is being sold to them. A good example of this is the Calif. 'Green Proposals' that so many people have absolutely NO CONCEPT OR IDEA of what those proposals will produce, besides the Trillions of $ Going into them.... Physics will often give us the needed answers to provide gateways into where we want to go.... With You being an engineer , I'm confident that You are familiar with applied physics on providing facts that might be grossly over or under-estimated... I worked on various aircraft at various locations for over 30 years.... The majority of that experience is with large turbine engine aircraft but I also have some experience on smaller GA aircraft and various types of Aircraft support equipment... I had an A&P since 1986... I also have worked on various trucks and vehicles.... When people praise Talents like Jack Northrop, there is good reason for it... Believe it or not, Jack Northrop was also somewhat interested in Hot Rod cars in his Younger Years. Of course, He found he liked planes and spacecraft very early into his life... But the cars is where he got his start... Always consider what anybody has to contribute to ANY sollution, before making a quick decision based solely on age and education level... Today is: 10/10/24 @ 12:45 (pm) PDT

[@paulmurphy42]

Does anyone know the pilot's name?

[@saultube44]

Thank you. Why this never "took off"? at last as a cargo would be great

[@amramjose]

A long story, with suspicion of sabotage of flight tests by a crewman, Northrop almost forced to merge with another aircraft company, and an unfortunate fatal crash which killed Capt Edwards (it is suspected a crewman sabotaged this flight).

[@kingsnakke6888]

To everyone saying the Horten brothers should be credited for this, blame "experts" on the internet for perpetuating the same myth over and over again

[@jonathangoode546]

This should have never destroyed and dismantled .this was the best plane ever built at that time. And this would have saved many lives during the Vietnam war. It would have been impossible to shoot down. It looks like a line in the sky. Politicians really need to stay out of military business . Our military needs what they need to protect our country against any threat.

[@ZenosWarbirds]

Convair had a very strong lobby in congress, spending a lot of money. The spread lies about the Wing. I’d put them at the top of the list.

[@nissmo66]

The answer is simple!

[@cliffbraun3850]

Saw a YB-35 flying overhead when I was a kid back in the 70's probably going to the museum at SAC air base in Bellevue Ne.,,grew up in Omaha Still remember seeing that futuristic monster, couldn't have been more than 5000 ft

[@FiveCentsPlease]

+Cliff Braun The entire YB program was terminated and all examples ordered scrapped in 1949. Nothing from that project would be flying in the 1970s because no example survives.

[@mcduck5]

@@FiveCentsPlease One of the scale prototypes survived

[@FiveCentsPlease]

@@mcduck5 Correct. The surviving N9M crashed in 2019 with the loss of pilot Davie Wopat. kzbin.info/www/bejne/nZTIoWqafLV_f9k The final NTSB report just came out and they believe it was an undermined flight control failure. (The plane was on a maintenance flight.) I hope it's gets rebuilt one day.

[@dougball328]

@@FiveCentsPlease Symington was a real jerk (I kept it clean and didn't use the term I wanted to)

[@flyonthewall7026]

When we going to see one on the TR3B???

[@jamespfp]

First video on your channel I instinctively "Liked" because. Also, I think I've watched too many MST3K episodes, because I started to compose lyrics for the Northrop theme song thingie. "Stick it into your Quonset hut!"

[@PorscheGTRSWeissach]

soo, theres not one left in a museum? amazing futuristic aircraft! :-)

[@CorrieBergeron]

'Fraid not. Very sad.

[@EIBBOR2654]

Last one was cut up in Oct 1954 in Canada of all places. It was up there at Honeywell getting a device that the B-47 got to stop the yaw or sway of the aircraft, from side to side during a bombing run. Both A/C's had a problem moving sideways, back and forth like a pendulum and the Honeywell upgrade through the auto pilot stopped this. Also the Flying Wing was caught between 2 other aircraft, the B-36 and the B-47. The B-36 could fly much farther than the Flying Wing and the B-47 flew much faster, but the Flying Wing could carry a much larger payload than either the B-36 or B-47. Since aerial refueling was not available at that time it put the Flying Wing between a hard spot and a rock.

[@PointyTailofSatan]

10:30 Off to drop an A bomb on the Martian flying machines! lol

[@PointyTailofSatan]

Paul Frees is narrating.

[@georgew.5639]

Floyd Odlum must have played the roll of the skeptic. Lol!

[@peterarmentano5294]

It was featured in a scifi movie called Kronos in the 50's

[@joanhampshire9881]

Yes Michael..combine the violent spinning motion of the passengers' heads...trying to sit on a boomerang..plus the spinning of the earth.. and the spinning effects of wine that the passengers drank to build up their courage...and one wise man added a tail rotor....and so the holy-copter was invented!

[@rodgerhecht3623]

The story of the xb'35 and yb-49 is a crying shame . Politics should not be allowed to award or cancel programs. Leave it up to the military.

[@DoubleMrE]

The Flying Wing was cool, but it had a fatal flaw unfortunately . . . under certain conditions, it would go unstable and spin. You needed a LOT of altitude to recover (this is the reason that "Edwards"--whom the Air Force base was named after--crashed in the Flying Wing). The problem was NOT solvable at the time. The Flying Wing concept only became truly viable with the advent of computer-assisted flight control as in the B-2 Bomber.

[@kenzaske2278]

The flat spin you refer to is a problem that almost every aircraft built from the 1950s thru the 1980s: the fix employed for most aircraft was a small detachable drag chute deployed from the rear of the aircraft. There were stability issues, but a flat spin was not one that concerned anyone I have ever talked too. I was told (by pilots that actually flew the XB-49) that the reason for it being cancelled was two fold: political and because of how unusual the aircraft was.

[@pepecohetes492]

Actually Richard Cardenas, one of the crew, recovered from a spin, induced by trying to stall the wing, something that all test pilots and their protocols attempted to do with experimental aircraft. While it is true the wing could be unstable due to the lack of feedback and computer control (which make the B2 able to fly) it was still a very formidable aircraft, and could have flown safely without making it do things it was not designed to do.

[@prowner2777]

It WAS thought Edwards was at the controls. It is NOW believed Cardenas was at the controls. Pushing beyond the capabilities is what test pilots do, as we know, at their peril. Not the same as "hotdoggin'" by a long stretch.

[@selfdo]

It's competition for the heavy bomber role, the B-36, had enough of its own troubles (underpowered, that's why the jet engines were added) that it prompted the Navy brass to protest it's continued funding my. Google "Revolt of the

[@prowner2777]

Are you kidding? Trouble with the native language here?

[@robertcroft9320]

I have read that a bitterness that John Dulles held for Cyrus Northrup resulted in Dulles killing the Flying Wing contract, with the gov't totally responsible for the costs of most of 50 ship sets, several of which were complete. Not one of John Dulles' better moments.

[@FiveCentsPlease]

+Robert Croft Sec. of the Air Force Stuart Symington ordered the flying wing program scrapped in retaliation for Northrop not merging with Convair, and the Air Force got the B-36 instead.

[@AVhistorybuff]

@@FiveCentsPlease Not once in the history of the world did a flying wing compete with a B-36 for anything!!

[@retiredarmyoffley1777]

@@FiveCentsPleaseB36 was a piece of junk and outdated before its 1st flight

[@FiveCentsPlease]

@@retiredarmyoffley1777 The SAC movie made it elegant, but I agree. The man hours just to keep one in the air were impractical.

[@draysonroberts3666]

If you wrapped a wing in a circle with the cockpit in the middle, you'd have a flying disk.

[@mateuszmazurek6080]

John: Hey Hans! Can I copy your homework? Hans: Sure, but du need to do zome changes, so it'll look different John: Done! Hans: Hmmm...

[@peterson7082]

What are you rambling on about?

[@peterson7082]

@Carl Clarke But there was nothing to learn from the Horten brothers.

[@AVhistorybuff]

Not once in the history of the world did a flying wing compete with a B-36 for anything!!

[@David-zq6ho]

Seen one 1973 it was loud

[@pedrodiaz5540]

Something is fishy about the contracts

[@brains-sb8te]

so none of them encountered a flat spin condition. hmm.

[@peterarmentano5294]

Was passed over for the B36

[@AVhistorybuff]

This is pure myth. The Flying wing(s) never competed against the B-36 for anything at anytime. B-49 = MEDIUM bomber. B-36 = HEAVY bomber.

[@Orczekk]

Horten from Germany he he

[@MENDNZ]

The aborigines of Australia invented the flying wing..30,000 years ago...way before any yank or German...it is called a "boomerang"!!!!!

[@michaelpielorz9710]

True,but the aborigines soon found out that the boomerang was very difficult to fly with.The testcrew started vomiting one second after takeoff.

[@CoM-cf2yq]

So was it the Germans or the Americans that had the first flying prototype

[@FiveCentsPlease]

+Co M It depends. Multiple researchers experimented with flying wings in the US, Russia, France and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. The Hortens were building a smaller bomber first but their large bomber idea was just an idea. Northrop began on the large bomber design starting in 1941. The Hortens started their medium bomber program in late 1943. The Hortens were the first to fly a wing with jet power but for only two hours before a crash. No more of their prototypes flew. Meanwhile the YB-35/YB-49 designs flew and were cancelled for political reasons. The Horten "Amerika" bomber trans-Atlantic design was never realized.

[@bojanu7212]

The flying wing in this form and for this purpose was first designed by German brothers Reimar and Walter Horten before II World War and developed during the II WW. The Germans did also first flights of that plane with code name HO-229. How Mr. Northrop got this secret project after the II WW and started the adventure with that design remains a mystery. Why in this movie the HO-229 was not mentioned is another mystery. See here about story of Horten-229: kzbin.info/www/bejne/g6LKl52Olq-rjJo here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fZu7o2itaLJno8U and here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jHyqiHiKpJuGntE

[@joshnj214]

+Bo Janu Northrop worked on this since the 30s

[@junktex]

+soaringtractor Wrong bubba.r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0SO8yIAkzhXASUAt0lXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEyZTFpZ2pmBGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDQjE5MTBfMQRzZWMDc3I-/RV=2/RE=1463354240/RO=10/RU=http%3a%2f%2fwww.century-of-flight.net%2fnew%2520site%2fframes%2fhorten%2520frame.htm/RK=0/RS=zJy.mBC595eNT2Gnp.2ss7svqTk-

[@mabarbe9545]

Ho228 actualy flew, just not on OP

[@erikhertzer8434]

Bo Janu ...and who designed the P-51 with its laminar wing...a German born and educated engineer by the name of Alfred Schmued.

[@douglasito463]

There's also the Burgess Dunne D.8, a flying wing from 1912

[@brandonware9096]

Funny how they never mention how the plane stalls.

[@atomicskull6405]

Every aircraft has a "never do this" list. For example the UH-1 should never be put into a decent fast enough to unload the rotor or it can cause a "mast bump". This is where the teeter hub strikes the rotor mast, and when that happens it can cause the rotor hub to separate from the helicopter.

[@GPski]

Odd that a russian version of the wing never became reality, as so many other aircraft were copied. Maybe destroying the prototypes did have some logic ..

[@selfdo]

There were issues with stability in a bomb run which weren't solvable 70 years ago but once computers were compact, light, and fast enough, were indeed solved. The Russians didn't want to invest their rubles figuring it out

[@donthaveonedonthaveone5901]

14:44 THE USED THE SAME IDEA FOR HEAT SIGNATURES ON THE TARMAC IN CASE OF ANY ENEMY SPY SATELLITE FLYING OVERHEAD! (-_+) (REDACTED) bla, bla, E.S.P thumb :193 (0_+) (...Redacted...) Let the silly humans try!!

[@juniorjohnson9509]

Spy satellites in 1949? Me thinks you need to review space history a bit.

[@zanenobbs352]

People credit the Germans with swept wing aircraft during the 1930s and 1940s as with the Horten Brothers flying wings such as the Horten Ho-229, H.XVIII; and Willi Messerschmitt with the Me-262, Me-163, and Me-263, but Jack Northop was also onto the swept wing prior to and during WWII. In 1937 he designed the Northrop N.1, then the N.9 of 1942, the MX-324 in 1944 (rocket powered), and XP-79 (jet powered) of 1945. These were all independent of data from Germany. Britain too was on this path with the Armstrong-Whitworth AW.50 or 1943 devloped into the AW.52 of 1947.

[@MesCaLiN21]

Busemann discovered the benefits of the swept wing for aircraft at high speeds, presenting a paper on the topic at the Volta Conference in Rome in 1935. Guess 1935 is prior to 1937...

[@zanenobbs352]

@@MesCaLiN21 So the Axis, Allies, and everyone else knew of this concept well before the war. Even more evidence that the Germans were not the only ones with a clue!

[@rhyoliteaquacade]

Pfft flying wings? Korg say aeroplanes need wheels, stone wheels....

[@AdamosDad]

I saw the "Flying Wing" fly over Cincinnati when I was young in the Fifties.

[@AvengerII]

That couldn't have happened. The flying wings were tested out West at what we call Edwards Air Force Base today. The only time they went East that I'm aware of was in February 1949 when one YB-49 was flown to Washington, DC. There are photos of it flying over the Capitol Building and (in formation with a B-36) the White House. On the return to the West coast, that YB-49 DID stop at Wright-Patterson AFB to refuel and have its oil replenished. The ground crew at Wright-Patt screwed up and failed to replenish the turbine engine oil and almost wrecked the plane -- the plane had to make an emergency landing in Arizona when four (of eight) jet engines caught fire. [There are Northrop people convinced someone ordered the ground crew to sabotage the YB-49; there were political shenanigans going on as always and they later tried to force Jack Northrop to merge his company with Convair, a competitor building the B-36 bomber, a competing project to the YB-49. I think it's more likely the ground crew screwed up and just weren't familiar with the YB-49.] It's possible that in its overflight West that it DID fly over Cincinnati but I don't know -- I wasn't born until over 20 years later! They GROUNDED the bomber version of the flying wing in March 1950 and no YB-49 flew after March 14, 1950. The recon version, YRB-49A, flew from May 1950 to April 1951. All the surviving planes NOT destroyed in test were scrapped by 1953 but none of them were flying after April 1951. The only time they were seen flying again was in War of the Worlds (1953)! You're not the first guy I ran across who claimed to see a flying wing in the air between 1953 and 1988. I had a coworker tell me he was convinced he saw an operational flying wing in the 1960s or 1970s and he's from Ohio, too. Unless they were testing these things in secret, you saw aliens because there were no operational flying wings flying anywhere or doing tests outside of Area 51! I don't think they had any operational flying wings until at least the early 1980s (possibly subscale tech demonstrators for the B-2 program but again, NOT officially acknowledged) and they've never confirmed that. The USAF claimed a new Wing (the B-2) didn't fly until 1989 at the earliest.

[@rodfirefighter8341]

@@AvengerII I heard they had a crash in the late 70's with a general flying it. The big stink was why did a general have to fly an experiential A/C?

[@AvengerII]

@@rodfirefighter8341 Never heard of that. The closest to an experimental plane crash involving a flag rank captain was the fatal crash of Gen Bond (yes, his name WAS Bond!) in a MiG-23 that was based at one of the locations in Nevada (Tonopah or Area 51?). That crash happened around 1983. Anyway, the rules DIDN'T prohibit from flying the plane but he was new to it and that plane, an export MiG-23 had a reputation for being a widowmaker. The MiG-23 service and reliability record was so bad that the type was virtually retired IMMEDIATELY after the Cold War ended. There are not a lot of MiG-23s left flying. They're regarded as lemons and most of the export models were hazardous. They had a horrible record with them in the Middle East and the Arab air forces hated the plane. They've largely been replaced by MiG-21s or MiG-29s if not Western planes. After Bond's death, they passed a rule that no flag rank officer was allowed to fly "clandestinely acquired" planes solo anymore. Bond was a crucial figure in the F-117 community and in other programs. He might have been appointed to the Joint Chiefs or other high position later in the 1980s I read a book by a retired Colonel who knew him and he was very impressed by the general. He had honor and integrity unlike some other flag rank officers that could be mentioned....

[@vincentmondello2052]

Let the 57th comment be "My, aren't some you all full of yourselves, with half truths, copy and paste info, and conjecture! Thanks Zeno, for the vid and thank all of you armchair aircraft engineers for your input! LMAO

[@anthonycurr3161]

A flight of these, before they got scrapped for political reasons, is what Kenneth Arnold saw in 1947 Forget the "flying saucer" BS

[@wilfredmay5231]

No mention is made of the Horten brothers. Shame.

[@FiveCentsPlease]

+Wilfred May Because Northrop did his own work without any contribution from the Hortens. The Horten brothers contribution to flying wing design were aerodynamic and flight control improvements and they were first to power one with jet engines. Other designers had been experimenting with wing design back to the 1920s. Northrop took flying wing design to the next level with a long-range precision bomber platform (with some flaws) until the idea was killed by the Sec. of the Air Force.

[@kimberlywilliams7543]

IT WAS ROBERT NORTHROPP OF THE USA THAT BUILT THE FIRST FLYING WING 1929 16 YEARS BEFORE GERMANY THE AMERICAN BUILT THE FIRST FLYING 1929 kzbin.info/www/bejne/h2XJc4l7iK6qpc0 NORTHROP WW2 FLYING WING BOMBER kzbin.info/www/bejne/bXXJm2aJmrJ8Y9U THE AMERICANS BUILD THE FLYING WING BOMBER kzbin.info/www/bejne/jJ7TpmeVeMeZe9E MBER AMERICAN ENGINEERS ARE WORLDS BEST AMERICA FIRST IN FLIGHT LEADS THE WORLD TODAY YOU ALL HAVE THE RESPECT TO BOB BORTHROPP WHO BUILT THE FIRST FLYING AND GERMANS ARE CHEAP COPY CATS!

[@dougball328]

The N9MB in the video first flew in 1942. The original that you are referring to had twin tail booms. All still novel to say the least.

[@gerardfrederick5504]

the flying wing concept was German. Visit the internet site ¨luft46¨-

[@ZenosWarbirds]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/mZCsfn6Yipahms0

[@nadnavlis240]

A product of the Horton brothers and the Nazis. Give credit where it is due.

[@ZenosWarbirds]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/mZCsfn6Yipahms0

[@peterson7082]

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