Northrop Corporation was an American

aircraft An aircraft ( aircraft) is a vehicle that is able to flight, fly by gaining support from the Atmosphere of Earth, air. It counters the force of gravity by using either Buoyancy, static lift or the Lift (force), dynamic lift of an airfoil, or, i ...

manufacturer from its formation in 1939 until its 1994 merger with

Grumman The Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, later Grumman Aerospace Corporation, was a 20th century American producer of military and civilian aircraft. Founded on December 6, 1929, by Leroy Grumman and his business partners, it merged in 19 ...

to form

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational Aerospace manufacturer, aerospace and Arms industry, defense company. With 97,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $40 billion, it is one of the world's largest Arms industry ...

. The company is known for its development of the flying wing design, most successfully the

B-2 Spirit The Northrop B-2 Spirit, also known as the Stealth Bomber, is an American Heavy bomber, heavy strategic bomber, featuring low-observable stealth aircraft, stealth technology designed to penetrator (aircraft), penetrate dense anti-aircraft war ...

stealth bomber.Parker, Dana T. ''Building Victory: Aircraft Manufacturing in the Los Angeles Area in World War II,'' pp. 93-106, Cypress, CA, 2013. . F-5E Tiger II of the Swiss Air Force arrives Fairford 7Jul2016 arp

F-5E Tiger II of the Swiss Air Force arrives Fairford 7Jul2016 arp

History

Jack Northrop founded three companies using his name. The first was the Avion Corporation in 1928, which was absorbed in 1929 by the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation as a subsidiary named "Northrop Aircraft Corporation" (and later became part of

Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

). The parent company moved its operations to

Kansas Kansas ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named a ...

in 1931, and so Northrop, along with Donald Douglas, established a "Northrop Corporation" located in

El Segundo, California El Segundo ( , ; ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Located on Santa Monica Bay, it was incorporated on January 18, 1917, and is part of the South Bay Cities Council of Governments. The population was 17,272 as of t ...

, which produced several successful designs, including the Northrop Gamma and Northrop Delta. However, labor difficulties led to the dissolution of the corporation by Douglas in 1937, and the plant became the El Segundo Division of Douglas Aircraft. Northrop still sought his own company, and so in 1939 he established the "Northrop Corporation" in nearby

Hawthorne, California Hawthorne is a city in southwestern Los Angeles County, California. It is part of a seventeen-city subregion of the Los Angeles metropolitan area commonly known as the South Bay (Los Angeles County), South Bay. As of the 2020 United States cens ...

, a site located by co-founder Moye Stephens. The corporation ranked 100th among United States corporations in the value of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

military production contracts. It was there that the P-61 Black Widow

night fighter A night fighter (later known as all-weather fighter or all-weather interceptor post-Second World War) is a largely historical term for a fighter aircraft, fighter or interceptor aircraft adapted or designed for effective use at night, during pe ...

, the B-35 and YB-49 experimental flying wing bombers, the F-89 Scorpion

interceptor Interceptor may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''The Interceptor'', a British drama series on BBC One * Interceptor (game show), ''Interceptor'' (game show), a British television game show that ran during 1989 * Interc ...

, the SM-62 Snark intercontinental

cruise missile A cruise missile is an unmanned self-propelled guided missile that sustains flight through aerodynamic lift for most of its flight path. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large payload over long distances with high precision. Modern cru ...

, and the F-5 Freedom Fighter economical jet fighter (and its derivative, the successful T-38 Talon trainer) were developed and built. 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 the N-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 the P-530 with even larger engines, this time featuring a small amount of "bypass" (

turbofan A turbofan or fanjet is a type of airbreathing jet engine that is widely used in aircraft engine, aircraft propulsion. The word "turbofan" is a combination of references to the preceding generation engine technology of the turbojet and the add ...

) 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 the Light Weight Fighter program was announced, the P-530 was stripped of much of its equipment to become the P-600, and eventually the YF-17 Cobra, which lost the competition to the

General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is an American single-engine supersonic Multirole combat aircraft, multirole fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force (USAF). Designed as an air superio ...

. Nevertheless, the YF-17 Cobra was modified with help from

McDonnell Douglas McDonnell Douglas Corporation was a major American Aerospace manufacturer, aerospace manufacturing corporation and defense contractor, formed by the merger of McDonnell Aircraft and the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1967. Between then and its own ...

to become the

McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet is an all-weather supersonic, twinjet, twin-engine, carrier-based aircraft, carrier-capable, Multirole combat aircraft, multirole combat aircraft, designed as both a Fighter aircraft, fighter and attack airc ...

in order to fill a similar lightweight design competition for the

US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

. 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 the F-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. Based on the experimentation with flying wings the company developed the

stealth bomber of the 1990s. In 1994, partly due to the loss of the Advanced Tactical Fighter contract to

Lockheed Corporation The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace manufacturer. Lockheed was founded in 1926 and merged in 1995 with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin. Its founder, Allan Lockheed, had earlier founded the similarly named but otherwise-u ...

and the removal of their proposal from consideration for the Joint Strike Fighter competition, the company bought

to form

Aircraft

Projects

* Northrop N-1 (USAAC flying wing bomber) *Northrop N-4 (USAAF pursuit) *Northrop N-5 (USAAF pursuit) *Northrop N-6 (Navy fighter design) *Northrop N-15 (2-engine cargo plane) *Northrop N-31 (flying wing bomber project) *Northrop N-34 (nuclear-powered flying wing bomber design) *Northrop N-55 (patrol aircraft) *Northrop N-59 (carrier-based bomber) *Northrop N-60 (ASW aircraft; lost to Grumman S-2 Tracker) *Northrop N-63 (rival tailsitting VTOL design to Lockheed XFV-1 and Convair XFY-1)Zichek, J., 2015. ''Northrop N-63 Convoy Fighter: The Naval VTOL Turboprop Tailsitter Project of 1950.'' Retromechanix Productions. *Northrop N-65 (interceptor for WS-201 program) *Northrop N-74 (tactical transport) *Northrop N-94 (Navy fighter competitor design to Vought F8U Crusader) * Northrop N-102 Fang *Northrop N-103 (all-weather interceptor) *Northrop N-132 (strategic fighter) *Northrop N-144 (long-range interceptor) *Northrop N-155 (target-towing aircraft) *Northrop N-285 (USN advanced jet trainer; lost to T-45 Goshawk) *Northrop N-321/P610 (Light-Weight Fighter)

Unmanned aerial vehicles

* Northrop AQM-35 * Northrop AQM-38 * Northrop BQM-74 Chukar

Missiles

* GAM-67 Crossbow * Northrop JB-1 Bat * SM-62 Snark

References