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Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center: Yellow Northrop N1M flying wing airplane, in front of Northrop P-61C Black Widow and tail of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress “Enola Gay”, et al
Image by Chris Devers
See more pictures of this, and the Wikipedia write-up.
Information, quoting from Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: Steven F. Udvar-Hazy | Northrop N1M:
John K. "Jack" Northrop’s dream of a flying wing became a reality on July 3, 1940, when his N-1M (Northrop Model 1 Mockup) initial flew. One of the world’s preeminent aircraft designers and creator of the Lockheed Vega and Northrop Alpha, Northrop had experimented with flying wings for more than a decade, believing they would have significantly less drag and higher efficiency than standard styles. His 1929 flying wing, even though profitable, had twin tail booms and a conventional tail. In the N-1M he produced a true flying wing.
Built of plywood about a tubular steel frame, the N-1M was powered by two 65-horsepower Lycoming engines, later replaced with two 120-horsepower Franklins. Although its flying characteristics have been marginal, the N-1M led to other designs, like the Northrop XB-35 and YB-49 strategic bombers and eventually the B-2 stealth bomber.
Transferred from the United States Air Force.
Manufacturer:
Northrop Aircraft Inc.
Date:
1940
Country of Origin:
United States of America
Dimensions:
Wingspan: 11.six m (38 ft)
Length: 5.2 m (17 ft)
Height: 1.5 m (five ft)
Weight, gross: 1,814 kg (four,000 lb)
Prime speed: 322 km/h (200 mph)
Engine: two Franklin 6AC264F2, 120 hp
Overall: 72in. (182.9cm)
Other: 72 x 204 x 456in. (182.9 x 518.two x 1158.2cm)
Supplies:
All round: Plywood
Physical Description:
Twin engine flying wing: Wood, painted yellow.
Lengthy Description:
The N-1M (Northrop Model 1 Mockup) Flying Wing was a organic outgrowth of John K. "Jack" Northrop’s lifelong concern for an aerodynamically clean style in which all unnecessary drag brought on by protruding engine nacelles, fuselage, and vertical and horizontal tail surfaces would be eliminated. Created in 1939 and 1940, the N-1lM was the first pure all-wing airplane to be created in the United States. Its design was the forerunner of the larger all-wing XB-35 and YB-49 bomber! reconnaissance prototypes that Northrop hoped would win Air Force production contracts and at some point adjust the shape of modern day aircraft.
Soon after serving apprenticeships with the Lockheed brothers and Donald Douglas in the early 1920s and designing the extremely effective and innovative Lockheed Vega in 1927, Northrop in the late 192Os turned his interest to all-wing aircraft. In 1928, he left the employ of Lockheed and organized the Avion Corporation a year later he produced his first flying wing, which incorporated such revolutionary attributes as all-metal, multicellular wing and stressed-skin building. Though the 1929 flying wing was not a correct all-wing design and style because it made use of external control surfaces and outrigger tail booms, it paved the way for the later N-1 M, which proved the standard soundness of Northrop’s concept for an all-wing aircraft. At the time, nonetheless, Northrop did not have the money to continue establishing the all-wing notion.
In 1939, Northrop formed his personal aircraft business, Northrop Aircraft, Inc., and as a outcome was in a position to finance study and improvement of the N-1M. For help in designing the aircraft, Northrop enlisted the not aerodynamicist Dr. Theodore von Karman, who was at the time Director of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute Technologies, and von Karman’s assistant, Dr. William R. Sears. Walter J. Cerny, Northrop’s assistant style chief, became the all round supervisor for the project. To establish the flight qualities of an all-wing design, Northrop Cerny carried out extensive wind tunnel tests or flying wing models. Ultimately, the design of the N-1 M benefited from the new low-drag, enhance stability NACA airfoils as nicely as improved flaps spoilers, and other aerodynamic devices.
After a period of a year, the N-1M, nicknamed the "Jeep," emerged in July 1940 as a boomerang-shaped flying scale mockup built 01 wood and tubular steel with a wingspan of 38 feet a length of 17 feet, and a height of 5 feet. Pitch and roll handle was accomplished by implies of elevons on the trailing edge of the wing, which served the function of each elevator and aileron the place of the traditional rudder was a split flap device on the wing tips these had been originally drooped downward for what was thought to be far better directional stability but later straightened.
Controlled by rudder pedals, the split flaps, or "clamshells," could be opened to enhance the angle of glide or reduce airspeed and thus act as air brakes. The center of gravity, wing sweep, arrangement of manage surfaces, and dihedral had been adjustable on the ground. To decrease drag, the aircraft’s two 65-hp Lycoming -145 4-cylinder engines had been buried inside the fuselage. These were later discovered to be lacking in enough power to sustain lift and were replaced by two 120-hp six-cylinder 6AC264F2 air-cooled Franklin engines.
The N-1M made its initial test flight on July 3, 1940, at Baker Dry Lake, California, with Vance Breese at the controls. Breese’s inaugural flight in the N-1 M was inauspicious. During a high-speed taxi run, the aircraft hit a rough spot in the dry lake bed, bounced into the air and accidentally became airborne for a couple of hundred yards. In the initial stages of flight testing, Breese reported that the aircraft could fly no larger than 5 feet off the ground and that flight could only be sustained by maintaining a precise angle of attack. Von Karman was known as in and he solved the difficulty by creating adjustments to the trailing edges of the elevons.
When Vance Breese left the N-1 M system to test-fly the North American B-25, Moye Stephens, the Northrop firm secretary, took over testing of the aircraft. By November 1941, right after having produced some 28 flights, Stephens reported that when attempting to move the N-1M about its vertical axis, the aircraft had a tendency to oscillate in what is referred to as a Dutch roll. That is, the aircraft’s wings alternately rose and fell tracing a circular path in a plane that lies between the horizontal and the vertical. Though Stephens was fearful that the oscillations may well not be controllable, he found that adjustments to the aircraft’s configuration cleared up the difficulty. In Could 1942, Stephens was replaced by John Myers, who served as test pilot on the project for approximately six months.
Although the precise period of flight testing for the N-1M is challenging to decide due to the fact both Northrop and Army Air Forces records have been lost, we do know that following its initial test flight at Baker Dry Lake, the aircraft was flown at Muroc and Rosamond Dry Lake, and at Hawthorne, California, and that late in the testing system (most likely following January 1943) it was towed by a C-47 from Muroc to Hawthorne on its last flight with Myers as the pilot.
From its inception, the N-1M was plagued by poor efficiency because it was both overweight and chronically underpowered. In spite of these difficulties, Northrop convinced Basic H. H. Hap" Arnold that the N-1 M was profitable sufficient to serve as the forerunner of more advanced flying wing ideas, and the aircraft did type the basis for Northrop’s subsequent improvement of the N-M9 and of the bigger and longer-ranged XB-35 and YB-49 flying wings.
In 1945, Northrop turned the N-1M over to the Army Air Forces in the hope that it would someday be placed on exhibit. On July 12, 1946, the aircraft was delivered to Freeman Field, Indiana. A small more than a month later, the N-1M was given to the National Air Museum and placed in storage at Park Ridge, Illinois. On May 1,1949, the aircraft was placed in the Museum’s collection, and a handful of years later moved in packing crates to the Museum’s Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility in Suitland, Maryland. In 1979, the restoration of the N-1M began, and by early 1983, some 4 decades right after it had created its final flight, the aircraft had been returned to its original condition.
• • • • •
Quoting Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum | Northrop P-61C Black Widow:
The P-61 Black Widow was the very first U.S. aircraft designed to locate and destroy enemy aircraft at night and in undesirable weather, a feat made feasible by the use of on-board radar. The prototype first flew in 1942. P-61 combat operations began just soon after D-Day, June 6, 1944, when Black Widows flew deep into German airspace, bombing and strafing trains and road targeted traffic. Operations in the Pacific started at about the exact same time. By the finish of Planet War II, Black Widows had noticed combat in each and every theater and had destroyed 127 enemy aircraft and 18 German V-1 buzz bombs.
The Museum’s Black Widow, a P-61C-1-NO, was delivered to the Army Air Forces in July 1945. It participated in cold-climate tests, higher-altitude drop tests, and in the National Thunderstorm Project, for which the leading turret was removed to make area for thunderstorm monitoring gear.
Transferred from the United States Air Force.
Manufacturer:
Northrop Aircraft Inc.
Date:
1943
Nation of Origin:
United States of America
Dimensions:
General: 450 x 1500cm, 10637kg, 2000cm (14ft 9 three/16in. x 49ft 2 9/16in., 23450.3lb., 65ft 7 3/8in.)
• • • • •
Quoting Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum | Boeing B-29 Superfortress "Enola Gay":
Boeing’s B-29 Superfortress was the most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of Planet War II and the first bomber to residence its crew in pressurized compartments. Even though made to fight in the European theater, the B-29 discovered its niche on the other side of the globe. In the Pacific, B-29s delivered a selection of aerial weapons: conventional bombs, incendiary bombs, mines, and two nuclear weapons.
On August six, 1945, this Martin-built B-29-45-MO dropped the first atomic weapon utilised in combat on Hiroshima, Japan. 3 days later, Bockscar (on show at the U.S. Air Force Museum close to Dayton, Ohio) dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. Enola Gay flew as the advance weather reconnaissance aircraft that day. A third B-29, The Fantastic Artiste, flew as an observation aircraft on both missions.
Transferred from the United States Air Force.
Manufacturer:
Boeing Aircraft Co.
Martin Co., Omaha, Nebr.
Date:
1945
Nation of Origin:
United States of America
Dimensions:
All round: 900 x 3020cm, 32580kg, 4300cm (29ft six 5/16in. x 99ft 1in., 71825.9lb., 141ft 15/16in.)
Components:
Polished all round aluminum finish
Physical Description:
4-engine heavy bomber with semi-monoqoque fuselage and higher-aspect ratio wings. Polished aluminum finish general, common late-Planet War II Army Air Forces insignia on wings and aft fuselage and serial number on vertical fin 509th Composite Group markings painted in black "Enola Gay" in black, block letters on reduce left nose.