Jack Northrop

American industrialist and designerWikipedia

14

MENTIONS

4

EPISODES

3

PODCASTS

Oct 21, 2026

Unknown podcast

The Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing, the October Twenty-First First Flight of Nineteen Forty-Seven, and the Political Cancellation That Could Not Kill Jack Northrop's Dream

Oct 21 · 4 Mentions

Tail DraggerHOST

1:29

That name, spelled L-O-U-G-H-E-A, eventually got simplified into something the public could actually say, Lockheed.

Tail DraggerHOST

1:36

Jack Northrop was there at the start, learning aircraft design in a shop where the whole industry was inventing the rules as it went.

Tail DraggerHOST

1:42

He went on to work for Donald Douglas, then helped reorganize the old Lughead operation into what we now know as Lockheed Aircraft Company.

Tail DraggerHOST

1:49

He was a man who kept moving from shop to shop, not because he couldn't hold a job, but because he had ideas that outran every organization he worked for.

5 MINS LATER

Tail DraggerHOST

6:59

The following year, the Army renamed Muroc Army Airfield.

Tail DraggerHOST

7:03

It became Edwards Air Force Base.

Tail DraggerHOST

7:05

The most famous flight test facility in the world carries the name of a young man who died asking whether Jack Northrop's wing would hold together.

Tail DraggerHOST

7:12

The answer, as it turned out, was almost.

Unknown podcast

The Northrop N-9M Flying Wing, Jack Northrop's Subscale Dream at Planes of Fame, and the Fifty-Year Road from Muroc Dry Lake to the B-2 Spirit

Oct 18 · 2 Mentions

Tail DraggerHOST

9:26

Now, here's where it gets interesting.

Tail DraggerHOST

9:28

Jack Northrop was not alive to see the restoration.

Tail DraggerHOST

9:31

He was not alive to see the B-2 Spirit.

Tail DraggerHOST

9:33

He died in February of 1981.

Tail DraggerHOST

10:11

By the accounts of those who were present that day, when Northrop left that briefing, he said that he now understood why God had kept him alive long enough to see it.

Tail DraggerHOST

10:19

He died less than a year later.

Tail DraggerHOST

10:22

The B-2 Spirit has a wingspan of 172 feet, the same span that Jack Northrop drew for the XB-35 in 1942.

Tail DraggerHOST

10:30

40 years of flight control computers, fly-by-wire technology, and material science had finally solved the stability problems that killed the YB-49.

Unknown podcast

The Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing, the Contract That Was Killed Before It Could Fly, and the Moment Jack Northrop Learned His Design Had Lived On as the B-2 Spirit

Oct 4 · 7 Mentions

TowerHOST

1:36

More lift per pound of fuel, more range per gallon, lower drag, better cruise performance at altitude.

TowerHOST

1:42

Jack Northrop understood this by the late 1920s.

TowerHOST

1:45

He had been working in aviation since before most Americans had ever seen an airplane fly.

TowerHOST

1:49

He built his first tailless aircraft in 1929, started a company called Northrop Aircraft by 1939, operating out of Hawthorne, California, and the one thing that consumed him, the one design he kept returning to, was a flying wing.

TowerHOST

5:58

The YB-49 was not.

TowerHOST

6:00

This is where the story gets complicated.

TowerHOST

6:02

Jack Northrop believed and stated publicly and under oath that the program was not canceled purely on technical grounds.

TowerHOST

6:08

His account was this.

Podcast it, Donut!

Podcast it, Donut!

A Fart and Run Strategy

Sep 29 · 1 Mention

SethHOST

43:56

The type of specimen recovered in 1971 from the Javelina Formation of Texas, United States, consists of several wing fragments and was described as Quetzalcoatlus nothropi in 1975 by Douglas Lawson.

SethHOST

44:10

The generic name refers to the Aztec serpent of the sky god, Quezalcoatl, while the specific name honors Jack Northrop.

AradiaHOST

44:16

Not Mayan.

AradiaHOST

44:17

Aztec.