John Knudsen Northrop

John Knudsen "Jack" Northrop (November 10, 1895 – February 18, 1981) was an American aircraft industrialist. He co-founded the Lockheed Corporation in 1927. He was the founder and eponym of the Northrop Corporation in 1939.

Entering aviation

Northrop's first job in aviation was in working for Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company (later Lockheed Corporation) in 1916. In 1923, Northrop joined Douglas Aircraft Company. He became chief engineer, but later rejoined Loughhead — now renamed Lockheed. During his second tenure there, he worked on the Lockheed Vega, the civilian transport flown by Amelia Earhart.^[1]

Company founding

In 1928, Northrop struck out on his own, founding the Avion Corporation, which Northrop was forced to sell to United Aircraft and Transport Corporation in 1930. In 1932, Northrop, backed by Donald Douglas of Douglas Aircraft, founded another company, the Northrop Corporation, in El Segundo, California. This company built two highly successful monoplanes, the Northrop Gamma and Northrop Delta.^[2]

By 1939, the Northrop Corporation had become a subsidiary of Douglas, so Northrop founded another completely independent company of the same name in Hawthorne, California, a site located by Moye Stephens, one of the co-founders. While working at this company, Northrop focused on the flying wing design, which he was convinced was the next major step in aircraft design. He produced a number of flying wings, including the Northrop N-1M, Northrop N-9M, Northrop YB-35, and Northrop YB-49. The flying wing and the pursuit of low drag high lift designs were Northrop's passion. The failure of the Flying Wing to be selected as the next generation bomber platform after World War II and the subsequent destruction of all prototypes and incomplete YB-49s as ordered by the federal government was a blow from which Jack Northrop never recovered. His association with the Northrop Aviation Corporation was almost non-existent for the next 30 years. In an interview for The Discovery Channel's documentary "The Wing Will Fly", his son, John Northrop Jr recounted his father's devastation and life long suspicion that his flying wing project had been sabotaged by political influence and back room dealing between Convair and high ranking officials in the Air Force. Northrop dabbled in and lost much of his personal fortune in real estate. By the late 1970, a variety of illnesses had left him wheelchair bound and unable to speak. Shortly before his death in 1981 he was given clearance to see designs and a scale model of the B-2 Spirit which shared many of the design features as his YB-35 and YB-49 designs. Popular legend, propagated through the years somewhat by John Cashen, chief architect on the B-2 Spirit program, has Northrop holding the scale model of the bomber saying "Now I know why God has kept me alive for 25 years" but Northrop's physical and mental condition would have made that reaction impossible. His son believed that his father realized and appreciated what happened that day but the dramatic story of his tearful declaration is untrue.

His passion for tailless flight was honored by the naming of a giant tailless pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus northropi.

Awards

In 1947 he received the Spirit of St. Louis Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers for "meritorious service in the advancement of aeronautics."^[3] Investiture in the International Aerospace Hall of Fame came in 1972 and in the Aviation Hall of Fame in 1974. The B-2 Spirit stealth bomber has the same wingspan as Jack Northrop's jet-powered flying wing, the YB-49.^[4]

References

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