Pentagon Unveils the Stealth Bomber
Despite the sensational rumors accompanying the recently revealed stealth B-2 bomber aircraft, a far more intriguing, perhaps epic, story is involved. Current accounts state that the rollout of this unconventional aircraft is the culmination of a decade of effort on the part of the Northrop Aircraft Corp. Multiply this by five to get closer to the truth!
In 1942, at age 19, I worked at the Northrop plant in Hawthorne. At that time the “secret” projects were the all-black painted P-61 Black Widow night fighter (equipped with enemy-finding radar) and the Northrop B-35 Flying Wing bomber.
I imagine some aircraft historians have greeted the stealth with a yawning “ho-hum” for here was an almost likeness of the old B-35 brought out of the hangar again after almost a half-century had passed. But during that 50 years some things have changed. The short-range radar of the Black Widow has expanded to global coverage, an atomic bomb was created and new materials have been developed to far surpass the capabilities of the bent sheets of aluminum I riveted together. War covered the earth, changed the maps and drastically altered old political balances.
These changes brought about a shift in the significance of the B-35- cum -stealth B-2. The same configuration but constructed of new materials is said to help elude radar detection and to have “aerodynamic advantages” over a conventional aircraft such as the troubled B-1. While there are no doubt other unrevealed technical aspects of the stealth concept, the aerodynamic advantages are more or less the same as those which were true so long ago.
Why did it take all this time, not the decade reported, but the actual 50 years to realize the advantages of the flying-wing concept? The answer is a story, one quite well known, of Machiavellian intrigue within the “military-industrial complex” and top levels of government of which Eisenhower warned us.
Like Galileo, flying-wing pioneer Jack Northrup was made to recant. Sad that he was not here to greet the B-2 stealth aircraft, his old B-35.
FREDERICK A. USHER
Santa Barbara
