this magazine's issue for March 2008; main article: Wings of Northrop (16 pgs... mag NOT online)
Close-up Flying Wing airliner
Top View
Gazing out the front window
I still can't believe that it's safe for you to be back here behind the bar when you're supposed to be flying this thing!!
- side profile
OK, my blindfold is off... HEY, where's the FISH?? You said you were taking me to the Aquarium!
from http://www.warbirdforum.com/paxwing.htm :
“As early as 1948, Jack Northrop hoped to adapt his Flying Wing bomber as the world’s sleekest airliner. Remember that in those days the concept of mass air transportation was some years in the future: everyone figured that only the rich or highly valued employees would be traveling by air. So the concept of an 80-passenger transport wasn’t as far-fetched as it would seem today.
The big sell was the “window seating” with passengers lined up as if at a theater…”
Another good overview article at: http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/1994/3/1994_3_54.shtml
NOW, if you thought that the above commercial version of the Flying Wing rocked, Northrop was a little late at this game and conservative on overall size. The real Granddaddy of this concept was Norman Bel Geddes, whose Airliner #4 of 1929 set the true precedent.
the original drawing
More about Bel Geddes and his various designs, including those for cars and buses, is out on the web in greater detail, including this site:
http://home.att.net/~dannysoar/BelGeddes.htm
a revised model against an ocean background
Well… of course it was only a Blue Sky exercise by this noted industrial designer but it captured the public’s imagination and fueled further progress into the concept of flying wings and airliners in general.
funny how these diagrams look a lot like the "blueprints" available for the Starship Enterprise...
Another, even earlier effort on a flying wing was from Hugo Junkers, who changed to building planes after finding he couldn’t sell cars because people didn’t like the name for some reason. From Wikipedia:
“Hugo Junkers patented a wing-only air transport concept in 1910. He saw it as a natural solution to the problem of building an airliner large enough to carry a reasonable passenger load and enough fuel to cross the Atlantic in regular service. He believed that flying wing’s potentially large internal volume and low drag made it “a natural” for this role, In 1919 he started work on his “Giant” JG1 design, intended to seat passengers within thick wings, but two years later the Allied Aeronautical Commission of Control ordered the incomplete JG1 destroyed for exceeding post-war size limits on German aircraft. Junkers conceived futuristic flying wings for up to 1,000 passengers…”
More on yet another early wing Hatched from the mind of a man named Horton (that ultimately laid an Egg): http://www.nurflugel.com/Nurflugel/Horten_Nurflugels/horten_nurflugels.html (observant readers got all the hidden references, right?)
And a final acknowledgement: this page was motivated by a post by Terrence O’Neill who feels strongly about why the original military Flying Wing was dropped and who may have implied to prior posters on the Modern Mechanix tribute site http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/05/30/inside-the-flying-wing/ that there weren’t no Flyin’ Wing Airliner!
Terry also posted the following at http://nfttu.blogspot.com/2005/12/whoosh-northrop-flying-wing-exhibit.html that I’ve proofread and reprinted here (he seems to have a recurring spelling problem):
“Puzzled my aeronautically-incorrect statement about the Northrop B-35/49 Wings, I did 20 years of research through government microfilms, Freedom Of Information Act (inquiries) and biographies of persons involved in the competition to manufacture the first dedicated atomic bomber… and found/exposed a cover-up, lies, sabotage, and corruption of first Air Force Secretary Symington by his friend Floyd Odlum, CEO of Convair, which was almost bankrupt… resulting in trashing of a squadron of Wing airframes which, I believe, could have prevented the Korean War and tamed the Cold War and saved us taxpayers many billions. It’s all in my 2008 book at www.redhandpublications.com.”
And, as a final postscript on something that’s not quite a wing and definitely not a plane, from a company with the offbeat-sounding name United Federation of Planets. Seems they put official-looking markings on it to disguise it like Detroit does with its roadable prototypes to foil spy photographer Jim Dunne…
the company says something about Impulse Drive (drivers...?) in their literature, plus something about Warp (maybe the drivers of them are warped)
