Northrop Corporation
Industry | Aerospace |
---|---|
Founded | 1939 |
Founders | Jack Northrop |
Defunct | 1994 |
Fate | Merged with Grumman |
Successor | Northrop Grumman |
Headquarters | , United States of America |
Key people | |
Products | Aircraft |
Subsidiaries | Radioplane Company |
Northrop Corporation was an American
B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.[1]
History
Douglas Aircraft.[4]
Northrop still sought his own company, and so in 1939 he established the "Northrop Corporation" in nearby
Moye Stephens. The corporation ranked 100th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.[5] 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.[1]
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
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
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
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-engine transport |
Northrop C-19 Alpha | 1930 | 3 | Single-engine transport |
Northrop Beta | 1931 | 2 | Single-engine sport airplane |
Northrop Gamma | 1932 | 60 | Single-engine transport |
Northrop Delta | 1933 | 13 | Single-engine transport, 19 additional aircraft built by Canadian Vickers |
Northrop XFT | 1933 | 1 | Prototype naval fighter |
Northrop YA-13 | 1933 | 1 | Prototype attack aircraft |
Northrop A-17/Nomad | 1935 | 411 | Attack/light bomber |
Northrop BT | 1935 | 55 | Dive bomber |
Northrop N-1M | 1940 | 1 | Experimental flying wing |
Northrop N-3PB
|
1940 | 24 | Floatplane patrol bomber |
Northrop P-61 Black Widow | 1942 | 706 | Night fighter |
Northrop N-9M | 1942 | 4 | Experimental scale flying wing proof of concept for B-35 |
Northrop XP-56 Black Bullet | 1943 | 2 | Prototype tailless fighter |
Northrop F-15 Reporter | 1945 | 36 | Reconnaissance aircraft based on P-61 |
Northrop XP-79 | 1945 | 1 | Prototype jet flying wing fighter |
Northrop YB-35 | 1946 | 2 | Prototype strategic bomber |
Northrop Pioneer | 1946 | 1 | Trimotor transport |
Northrop YB-49 | 1947 | 6 | Prototype eight-jet-engine strategic bomber |
Northrop F-89 Scorpion | 1948 | 1,052 | Interceptor |
Northrop X-4 Bantam | 1948 | 2 | Experimental trans-sonic tailless aircraft |
Northrop YC-125 Raider | 1949 | 23 | Trimotor transport |
Northrop F-5 | 1959 | 2,246 | Lightweight fighter |
Northrop T-38 Talon | 1959 | 1,146 | Advanced trainer |
Northrop X-21 | 1963 | 2 | Experimental boundary layer control aircraft |
Northrop M2-F2 | 1966 | 1 | Experimental rocket powered lifting body |
Northrop HL-10 | 1966 | 1 | Experimental rocket lifting body |
Northrop M2-F3 | 1970 | 1 | Experimental rocket lifting body |
Northrop YA-9 | 1972 | 2 | Prototype attack aircraft |
Northrop YF-17 | 1974 | 2 | Prototype fighter, led to F/A-18 |
Northrop Tacit Blue | 1982 | 1 | Experimental stealth aircraft |
Northrop F-20 Tigershark | 1982 | 3 | Prototype lightweight fighter derived from F-5 |
Northrop B-2 Spirit
|
1989 | 21 | Strategic stealth bomber |
Northrop YF-23 | 1990 | 2 | Prototype stealth fighter |
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 Convair 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; lost to T-45 Goshawk)
- Northrop N-321/P610 (Light-Weight Fighter)
Unmanned aerial vehicles
Missiles
See also
References
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Northrop.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-9897906-0-4.
- ^ "John Knudsen Northrup". Encyclopedia Britannica. 1998. Retrieved 16 November 2017.
- ^ "Northrop Grumman Corporation | American company". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 21 December 2020.
- 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
- ^ "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.
- ISBN 978-1-85780-331-0.
- ^ Zichek, J., 2015. Northrop N-63 Convoy Fighter: The Naval VTOL Turboprop Tailsitter Project of 1950. Retromechanix Productions.