 | |
| Industry | Aerospace |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1939; 86 years ago (1939) |
| Founders | Jack Northrop |
| Defunct | 1994 (1994) |
| Fate | Merged withGrumman |
| Successor | Northrop Grumman |
| Headquarters | , United States of America |
Key people | |
| Products | Aircraft |
| Subsidiaries | Radioplane Company |
Northrop Corporation was an Americanaircraft manufacturer from its formation in 1939 until its 1994 merger withGrumman to formNorthrop Grumman. The company is known for its development of theflying wing design, most successfully theB-2 Spirit stealth bomber.[1]
Jack Northrop founded three companies using his name. The first was theAvion Corporation in 1928, which was absorbed in 1929 by theUnited Aircraft and Transport Corporation[2] as a subsidiary named "Northrop Aircraft Corporation" (and later became part ofBoeing).[3] The parent company moved its operations toKansas in 1931, and so Northrop, along withDonald Douglas, established a "Northrop Corporation" located inEl Segundo, California, which produced several successful designs, including theNorthrop Gamma andNorthrop Delta. However, labor difficulties led to the dissolution of the corporation by Douglas in 1937, and the plant became the El Segundo Division ofDouglas Aircraft.[4]
Northrop still sought his own company, and so in 1939 he established the "Northrop Corporation" in nearbyHawthorne, California, a site located by co-founderMoye Stephens. The corporation ranked 100th among United States corporations in the value ofWorld War II military production contracts.[5] It was there that theP-61 Black Widownight fighter, theB-35 andYB-49 experimentalflying wing bombers, theF-89 Scorpioninterceptor, theSM-62 Snark intercontinentalcruise missile, and theF-5 Freedom Fighter economical jet fighter (and its derivative, the successfulT-38 Talon trainer) were developed and built.[1]
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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 theN-300, which featured much more powerful engines and moved the wing to a higher position to allow for increased ordnance that the higher power allowed. The N-300 was further developed into theP-530 with even larger engines, this time featuring a small amount of "bypass" (turbofan) to improve cooling and allow the engine bay to be lighter, as well as much more wing surface. The P-530 also included radar and other systems considered necessary on modern aircraft. When theLight Weight Fighter program was announced, the P-530 was stripped of much of its equipment to become the P-600, and eventually theYF-17 Cobra, which lost the competition to theGeneral Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon.
Nevertheless, the YF-17 Cobra was modified with help fromMcDonnell Douglas to become theMcDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet in order to fill a similar lightweight design competition for theUS 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 theF-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 withflying wings the company developed theB-2 Spirit stealth bomber of the 1990s.[7][8]
In 1994, partly due to the loss of theAdvanced Tactical Fighter contract toLockheed Corporation and the removal of their proposal from consideration for theJoint Strike Fighter competition, the company boughtGrumman to formNorthrop Grumman.
| 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 byCanadian 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 |
