Northrop Corporation
Northrop Corporation was a leading United States aircraft manufacturer from its formation in 1939 until its 1994 merger with Grumman to form Northrop Grumman. The company is known for its development of the flying wing design, most successfully the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.[1]
 | |
| Industry | Aerospace |
|---|---|
| Fate | Merged with Grumman Corporation |
| Successor | Northrop Grumman |
| Founded | 1939 |
| Founders | Jack Northrop |
| Defunct | 1994 |
| Headquarters | , United States of America |
Key people | |
| Products | Aircraft |
History
Jack Northrop founded 3 companies using his name. The first was the Avion Corporation in 1928, which was absorbed in 1929 by the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation[2] as a subsidiary named "Northrop Aviation Corporation" (and later acquired by Boeing). The parent company moved its operations to Kansas in 1931, and so Jack, along with Donald Douglas, established a "Northrop Corporation" located in El Segundo, California, which produced several successful designs, including the Northrop Gamma and Northrop Delta. However, labor difficulties led to the dissolution of the corporation by Douglas in 1937, and the plant became the El Segundo Division of Douglas Aircraft.[3]
Northrop still sought his own company, and so in 1939 he established the "Northrop Corporation" in nearby Hawthorne, California, a site located by co-founder Moye Stephens. The corporation ranked 100th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.[4] It was there that the P-61 Black Widow night fighter, the B-35 and YB-49 experimental flying wing bombers, the F-89 Scorpion interceptor, the SM-62 Snark intercontinental cruise missile, and the F-5 Freedom Fighter economical jet fighter (and its derivative, the successful T-38 Talon trainer) were developed and built.[5]
The F-5 was so successful that Northrop spent much of the 1970s and 1980s attempting to duplicate its success with similar lightweight designs. Their first attempt to improve the F-5 was the N-300, which featured much more powerful engines and moved the wing to a higher position to allow for increased ordnance that the higher power allowed. The N-300 was further developed into the P-530 with even larger engines, this time featuring a small amount of "bypass" (turbofan) to improve cooling and allow the engine bay to be lighter, as well as much more wing surface. The P-530 also included radar and other systems considered necessary on modern aircraft. When the Light Weight Fighter program was announced, the P-530 was stripped of much of its equipment to become the P-600, and eventually the YF-17 Cobra, which lost the competition to the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon.
Nevertheless, the YF-17 Cobra was modified with help from McDonnell Douglas to become the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet in order to fill a similar lightweight design competition for the US Navy. Northrop intended to sell a de-navalized version as the F-18L, but the basic F-18A continued to outsell it, leading to a long and fruitless lawsuit between the two companies. Northrop continued to build much of the F-18 fuselage and other systems after this period, but also returned to the original F-5 design with yet another new engine to produce the F-20 Tigershark as a low-cost aircraft. This garnered little interest in the market, and the project was dropped.
In 1985, Northrop bought northrop.com, the sixth .com domain created.[6]
Based on the experimentation with flying wings the company developed the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber of the 1990s.[7][8]
In 1994, partly due to the loss of the Advanced Tactical Fighter contract to Lockheed Martin and the removal of their proposal from consideration for the Joint Strike Fighter competition, the company bought Grumman to form Northrop Grumman.
Aircraft
| Model name | First flight | Number built | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Northrop Alpha | 1930 | 17 | Single piston engine transport |
| Northrop Beta | 1931 | 2 | Single piston engine sport airplane |
| Northrop Delta | 1933 | 32 | Single piston engine transport |
| Northrop XFT | 1933 | 1 | Prototype single piston engine fighter |
| Northrop BT | 1935 | 55 | Single piston engine dive bomber |
| Northrop N-1M | 1940 | 1 | Experimental twin piston engine flying wing |
| Northrop N-3PB | 1940 | 24 | Single piston engine floatplane patrol bomber |
| Northrop P-61 Black Widow | 1942 | 706 | Twin piston engine night fighter |
| Northrop N-9M | 1942 | 4 | Experimental twin piston engine flying wing |
| Northrop XP-56 Black Bullet | 1943 | 2 | Prototype single piston engine fighter |
| Northrop F-15 Reporter | 1945 | 36 | Twin piston engine reconnaissance airplane |
| Northrop XP-79 | 1945 | 1 | Prototype twin jet engine flying wing fighter |
| Northrop YB-35 | 1946 | 2 | Prototype four piston engine strategic bomber |
| Northrop YB-49 | 1947 | 6 | Prototype eight jet engine strategic bomber |
| Northrop F-89 Scorpion | 1948 | 1,052 | Twin jet engine interceptor fighter |
| Northrop X-4 Bantam | 1948 | 2 | Experimental twin jet engine aircraft |
| Northrop YC-125 Raider | 1949 | 23 | Three piston engine transport |
| Northrop T-38 Talon | 1959 | 1,146 | Twin jet engine advanced trainer |
| Northrop F-5 | 1959 | 2,246 | Twin jet engine light fighter |
| Northrop X-21 | 1963 | 2 | Experimental twin jet engine aircraft |
| Northrop M2-F2 | 1966 | 1 | Experimental single rocket engine lifting body aircraft |
| Northrop HL-10 | 1966 | 1 | Experimental single rocket engine lifting body aircraft |
| Northrop M2-F3 | 1970 | 1 | Experimental single rocket engine lifting body aircraft |
| Northrop YA-9 | 1972 | 2 | Prototype twin jet engine attack airplane |
| Northrop YF-17 | 1974 | 2 | Prototype twin jet engine fighter |
| Northrop Tacit Blue | 1982 | 1 | Experimental twin jet engine aircraft |
| Northrop F-20 Tigershark | 1982 | 3 | Prototype single jet engine fighter |
| Northrop B-2 Spirit | 1989 | 21 | Twin jet engine strategic bomber |
| Northrop YF-23 | 1990 | 2 | Prototype twin jet engine fighter |
| Northrop YA-13 | 1 | Prototype single piston engine attack airplane | |
| Northrop A-17 | 411 | Single piston engine attack airplane | |
| Northrop Gamma | 60 | Single piston engine transport | |
| Northrop C-19 Alpha | 3 | Single piston engine transport | |
Projects
- Northrop N-1 (USAAC flying wing bomber)
- Northrop N-4 (USAAF pursuit)
- Northrop N-5 (USAAF pursuit)
- Northrop N-6 (Navy fighter design)
- Northrop N-15 (2-engine cargo plane)
- Northrop N-31 (flying wing bomber project)
- Northrop N-34 (nuclear-powered flying wing bomber design)
- Northrop N-55 (patrol aircraft)
- Northrop N-59 (carrier-based bomber)
- Northrop N-60 (ASW aircraft; lost to Grumman S-2 Tracker)[9]
- Northrop N-63 (rival tailsitting VTOL design to XFV-1 and XFY-1)[10]
- Northrop N-65 (interceptor for WS-201 program)
- Northrop N-74 (tactical transport)
- Northrop N-94 (Navy fighter competitor design to Vought F8U Crusader)
- Northrop N-102 Fang
- Northrop N-103 (all-weather interceptor)
- Northrop N-132 (strategic fighter)
- Northrop N-144 (long-range interceptor)
- Northrop N-155 (target-towing aircraft)
- Northrop N-285 (USN advanced jet trainer design; lost to T-45 Goshawk)
- Northrop N-321/P610 (LWF design)
Unmanned aerial vehicles
Missiles
References
- Parker, Dana T. Building Victory: Aircraft Manufacturing in the Los Angeles Area in World War II, pp. 93-106, Cypress, CA, 2013. ISBN 978-0-9897906-0-4.
- "John Knudsen Northrup". Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica. 1998. Retrieved 16 November 2017.
- Parker, Dana T. Building Victory: Aircraft Manufacturing in the Los Angeles Area in World War II, pp. 25, 93, Cypress, CA, 2013. ISBN 978-0-9897906-0-4.
- Peck, Merton J. & Scherer, Frederic M. The Weapons Acquisition Process: An Economic Analysis (1962) Harvard Business School p.619
- Parker, Dana T. Building Victory: Aircraft Manufacturing in the Los Angeles Area in World War II, pp. 93-106, Cypress, CA, 2013. ISBN 978-0-9897906-0-4.
- "100 oldest .com domains". iWhois.com. Archived from the original on October 14, 2013. Retrieved 2012-03-10.
- Ioanes, Ellen. "The legendary B-2 stealth bomber made its first flight 30 years ago today — here's why it's still one of the world's most feared warplanes". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-08-06.
- "B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber, United States of America". Airforce Technology. Retrieved 2020-08-06.
- Buttler, Tony (2010). American Secret Projects: Bombers, Attack and Anti-Submarine Aircraft 1945 to 1974. Hinckley, England: Midland Publishing. ISBN 978-1-85780-331-0.
- Zichek, J., 2015. Northrop N-63 Convoy Fighter: The Naval VTOL Turboprop Tailsitter Project of 1950. Retromechanix Productions.