Specialty Press' Flying Wings and Radical Things

Some of you may know that Northrop was one of those aviation companies that was founded, went away and then was revived. This book covers the history of Northrop's projects from its revival in 1939 until its incorporation into one of the big aviation conglomerations that we have today. In other words, until 1994 when it became Northrop-Grumman during the frenzy of mergers during the 1990s.

Northrop generally gave its designs 'N' numbers, starting with the N1M, which was one of their small scale wing aircraft used to determine the feasibility of Northrop's flying wing projects. Not all the Northrop N numbers were able to make the transition to actual aircraft and in fact, most of these were pure paper projects. These proposals were produced in response to requirements from the US military and, for what ever reason, were not chosen. Some were in-house proposals that had no extant requirement and yet others were designed for non-US customers. Few realize that the CASA C.101 and derivatives such as the AT-3 were basically Northrop designed aircraft. 

Then again, some of these N numbered planes were upgrades of current types produced by Northrop. The F-5 series of planes had quite a few of these sorts of project numbers, some of which went into production and some of which did not (such as the F-5G/F-20).

The author has provided as much information as he was able to pull from the Northrop archives to give us a look at these various aircraft and there are some pretty interesting and fanciful designs that have come to light in this book. I have to say that there were quite a few designs of which I had no inkling existed and it is information like this that makes books like this so interesting. In addition to all these designs, the book includes an appendix which puts them all in one place. It makes for a fascinating look into one of the more interesting aviation companies. A great read and book I can highly recommend to you.