Northrop Corporation was an American

aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines ...

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 1994 ...

to form

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense technology company. With 90,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $30 billion, it is one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers and military techn ...

. The company is known for its development of the

flying wing A flying wing is a tailless fixed-wing aircraft that has no definite fuselage, with its crew, payload, fuel, and equipment housed inside the main wing structure. A flying wing may have various small protuberances such as pods, nacelles, blis ...

design, most successfully the

B-2 Spirit The Northrop (later Northrop Grumman) B-2 Spirit, also known as the Stealth Bomber, is an American heavy strategic bomber, featuring low-observable stealth technology designed to penetrate dense anti-aircraft defenses. A subsonic flying ...

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 John Knudsen Northrop (November 10, 1895 – February 18, 1981) was an American aircraft industrialist and designer who founded the Northrop Corporation in 1939. His career began in 1916 as a draftsman for Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Com ...

founded 3 companies using his name. The first was the Avion Corporation in 1928, which was absorbed in 1929 by the

United Aircraft and Transport Corporation The United Aircraft and Transport Corporation was formed in 1929, when William Boeing of Boeing Airplane & Transport Corporation teamed up with Frederick Rentschler of Pratt & Whitney to form a large, vertically-integrated, amalgamated firm, un ...

as a subsidiary named "Northrop Aircraft Corporation" (and later became part of

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

). The parent company moved its operations to

Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the ...

in 1931, and so Jack, 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 16,731 as of th ...

, which produced several successful designs, including the

Northrop Gamma The Northrop Gamma was a single-engine all-metal monoplane cargo aircraft used in the 1930s. Towards the end of its service life, it was developed into the A-17 light bomber. Design and development The Gamma was a further development of the su ...

and

Northrop Delta The Northrop Delta was an American single-engined passenger transport aircraft of the 1930s. Closely related to Northrop's Gamma mail plane, 13 were produced by the Northrop Corporation, followed by 19 aircraft built under license by Canadian Vi ...

. 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 The Douglas Aircraft Company was an American aerospace manufacturer based in Southern California. It was founded in 1921 by Donald Wills Douglas Sr. and later merged with McDonnell Aircraft in 1967 to form McDonnell Douglas; it then operated as ...

. Northrop still sought his own company, and so in 1939 he established the "Northrop Corporation" in nearby

Hawthorne, California Hawthorne is a city in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, located in southwestern Los Angeles County, California. It is part of a seventeen-city region commonly called the South Bay. As of the 2020 US census, Hawthorne had a population of 88,0 ...

, a site located by co-founder

Moye Stephens Moye Wicks Stephens (February 21, 1906 – 1995) was an American aviator and businessman. He was a pioneer in aviation, circumnavigating the globe with adventure writer Richard Halliburton in 1931, and co-founding Northrop Aircraft, Inc. Family ...

. The corporation ranked 100th among United States corporations in the value of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

military production contracts. It was there that the

P-61 Black Widow The Northrop P-61 Black Widow is a twin-engine United States Army Air Forces fighter aircraft of World War II. It was the first operational U.S. warplane designed as a night fighter, and the first aircraft designed specifically as a night fight ...

night fighter A night fighter (also known as all-weather fighter or all-weather interceptor for a period of time after the Second World War) is a fighter aircraft adapted for use at night or in other times of bad visibility. Night fighters began to be used i ...

, the B-35 and

YB-49 The Northrop YB-49 was an American prototype jet-powered heavy bomber developed by Northrop Corporation shortly after World War II for service with the United States Air Force. The YB-49 featured a flying wing design and was a turbojet-powered d ...

experimental

bombers, the

F-89 Scorpion The Northrop F-89 Scorpion was an American all-weather, twin-engined interceptor aircraft built during the 1950s, the first jet-powered aircraft designed for that role from the outset to enter service. Though its straight wings limited its per ...

interceptor Interceptor may refer to: Vehicles * Interceptor aircraft (or simply "interceptor"), a type of point defense fighter aircraft designed specifically to intercept and destroy enemy aircraft * Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor, a police car * ...

, the

SM-62 Snark The Northrop SM-62 Snark is an early-model intercontinental range ground-launched cruise missile that could carry a W39 thermonuclear warhead. The Snark was deployed by the United States Air Force's Strategic Air Command from 1958 through 1961 ...

intercontinental

cruise missile A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial or naval targets that remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhe ...

, and the

F-5 Freedom Fighter The Northrop F-5 is a family of supersonic light fighter aircraft initially designed as a privately funded project in the late 1950s by Northrop Corporation. There are two main models, the original F-5A and F-5B Freedom Fighter variants and the ...

economical jet fighter (and its derivative, the successful

T-38 Talon The Northrop T-38 Talon is a two-seat, twinjet supersonic jet trainer. It was the world's first, and the most produced, supersonic trainer. The T-38 remains in service in several air forces. The United States Air Force (USAF) operates the most ...

trainer) were developed and built. Northrop wordmark (1960–1994)

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 The turbofan or fanjet is a type of airbreathing jet engine that is widely used in aircraft engine, aircraft propulsion. The word "turbofan" is a portmanteau of "turbine" and "fan": the ''turbo'' portion refers to a gas turbine engine which ac ...

) 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 The Lightweight Fighter (LWF) program was a United States Air Force technology evaluation program initiated in the late 1960s by a group of officers and defense analysts known as the "Fighter Mafia". It was spurred by then-Major John Boyd's 'e ...

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 a single-engine Multirole combat aircraft, multirole fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force (USAF). Designed as an air superiority day fighter, it ...

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

McDonnell Douglas McDonnell Douglas was a major American 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 merger with Boeing in 1997, it produ ...

to become the

McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet is an all-weather, twin-engine, supersonic, carrier-capable, multirole combat aircraft, designed as both a fighter and attack aircraft (hence the F/A designation). Designed by McDonnell Douglas (now p ...

in order to fill a similar lightweight design competition for the

US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of ...

. 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 The Northrop F-20 Tigershark (initially F-5G) is a light fighter, designed and built by Northrop. Its development began in 1975 as a further evolution of Northrop's F-5E Tiger II, featuring a new engine that greatly improved overall performa ...

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 The domain name .com is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. Added at the beginning of 1985, its name is derived from the word ''commercial'', indicating its original intended purpose for domains registere ...

domain created. Based on the experimentation with

s the company developed the

stealth bomber of the 1990s. In 1994, partly due to the loss of the

Advanced Tactical Fighter The Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) was a demonstration and validation program undertaken by the United States Air Force to develop a next-generation air superiority fighter to counter emerging worldwide threats, including Soviet Sukhoi Su-27 ...

contract to

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

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 The Grumman S-2 Tracker (S2F prior to 1962) was the first purpose-built, single airframe anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft to enter service with the United States Navy. Designed and initially built by Grumman, the Tracker was of conventiona ...

) *Northrop N-63 (rival tailsitting VTOL design to

Lockheed XFV-1 The Lockheed XFV (sometimes referred to as the "Salmon") was an American experimental tailsitter prototype aircraft built by Lockheed in the early 1950s to demonstrate the operation of a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) fighter for protecti ...

and

Convair XFY-1 The Convair XFY Pogo was an experiment in vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) tail-sitter. The Pogo had delta wings and three-bladed contra-rotating propellers powered by a turboprop engine. It was intended to be a high-performance fighter airc ...

)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 The Northrop N-102 Fang was a fighter aircraft design created by Northrop Corporation and proposed to the United States Air Force in 1953. Design and development In the early 1950s, concerns grew in the United States about the growing weight, co ...

*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 The AQM-35 was a supersonic target drone produced by the Northrop Corporation. Overview The AQM-35 program began life in 1953 as the Model RP-61 supersonic target drone. In June 1954 the United States Air Force awarded Northrop a contract for d ...

Northrop AQM-38 The AQM-38 was an American target drone, developed during the 1950s by the Radioplane Division of the Northrop Corporation, Newbury Park, California, and manufactured by its Ventura Division at Van Nuys, California.Northrop BQM-74 Chukar The BQM-74 Chukar is a series of aerial target drones produced by Northrop. The Chukar has gone through three major revisions, including the initial MQM-74A Chukar I, the MQM-74C Chukar II, and the BQM-74C Chukar III. They are recoverable, re ...

Missiles

GAM-67 Crossbow The GAM-67 Crossbow was a turbojet-powered anti-radar missile built by Northrop's Ventura Division, the successor to the Radioplane Company who developed the Crossbow's predecessor, the Q-1 target drone. Development In the late 1940s, the Rad ...

Northrop JB-1 Bat The Northrop JB-1A "Bat" or "Thunderbug" was a United States surface-to-surface cruise missile that was a jet-powered flying wing. The United States Army Air Forces Jet Bomb program had its origins in August 1942 when a crashed Fi-103 better kno ...

References