Jack Northrop

John Knudsen Northrop was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1895 and was largely self-taught in aeronautical engineering, having studied European technical literature while working as a draftsman and designer at early California aircraft companies including Douglas Aircraft and Lockheed. His obsession with the flying wing concept, an aircraft with no fuselage or tail, generating lift across the entire airframe, drove his entire professional career. He founded Northrop Aircraft in 1939 and spent the following decade pursuing the YB-35 and YB-49 flying wing bombers before the programs were cancelled by the Air Force in 1949 under circumstances that Northrop attributed to political interference. He died in 1981, one year after being shown a classified rendering of the B-2 Spirit, his vindication.

Jack Northrop (1895-1981) was a largely self-taught aircraft designer who worked at Douglas and Lockheed before founding Northrop Aircraft in Hawthorne, California, in 1939. He built the P-61 Black Widow night fighter in World War II and devoted much of his career to the flying wing, flying the YB-35 and YB-49 bombers before the Air Force cancelled them in 1949. In 1980, shortly before his death, he was shown a model of the then-classified B-2, the tailless stealth bomber that vindicated his design ideas. His company merged with Grumman in 1994 to form Northrop Grumman.