Goodbye Beautiful Wing

by Terrence O'Neill

Overview

First dedicated nuclear weapon delivery system started as Army Air Force competition for a 5000-mile-target capable trans-ocean bomber in the event Germany conquered England in 1940, and Japan after 1941; two companies awarded contracts were Northrop for the B-35 Wing, and Consolidated aka Convair, for the B-36. Army Air Force chief 'Hap' Arnold first ordered production of 200 Northrop Wings, but a mysterious note referred to as 'latest information' with incorrect performance data which resulted in the Air Force canceling the Wings, but continuing the R&D; the senior officer Generals did not like the radical northrop design. Meanwhile Convair B-36s were not ordered until the Secretary of War ordered Gen. Arnold to order them. Neither bomber was ready to fly when the new Atomic Bombs suddenly ended the war. Then the USSR announced it would conquer the world, so the trans-ocean bomber competition continued, adaptions for the Strategic Air Command's primary mission to be able to destroy an enemy war making ability which was Russia's secret war plants in the Ural Mountains, 4000 miles-target from the USA. The AF officers continued to drag and confuse development of the radical Wing, refusing the simple conversion of its bomb bays to carry two of the Mk. 3 'Fat Man' A-bombs, while at the same time ordering Convair to modify it's bomb bays... and more importantly, the AF failed to run engine-propeller compatability tests on the engines it was buying for Northrop, and when the engines began failing, refused to have Pratt & Whitney and Hamilton Standard Propeller fix the products, or fix them themselves. The same applied to Government Furnished Equipment electrical AC power supplies, limiting the Wing test flying to 15,000 ft., though the bomber was designed to operate at 40,000 ft. Also, when test flying started for the wing at Muroc Army Air base in California, Northrop pilots noted that the Air Force test pilots appeared to be very negative about how the bomber would perform, even before flying it, falsified reports about bombing tests, and used an improper bombsight to fly the tests. Two Northrop Wings were destroyed by Air Force test pilots, and other AF pilots refused to fly the Wing tests. So the AF hired a Northrop test pilot, who completed the controversial Stall Tests, even recovered the Wing from a Spin, and completed stability tests for installation of an auto-pilot. At this point the financial condition of Convair was near bankruptcy, and a multi-millionaire, Floyd Odlum, bought control of the corporation and had himself named CEO. He was a close personal friend of Howard Hughes, both being moguls in the movie-making business, and now both in the aircraft manufacturing business. Odlum's wife, Jackie Cochran, and aviatrix and owner of a cosmetics company, and personal friend of many top Air Force Generals, got involved in Air Force business, Cochran lobbying and raising money to help the Air Force pass legislation to get separated from the Army, and take the major part of the government's military budget with them. During this time Northrop seemed unable to get the Air Force to correct the AF's engine-propellers which failed 22 times or more in the first year of testing; and Northrop tried to find why or who was responsible for this 'soft' obstruction to Wing development.
The Air Force claimed the Wing airframe's performance (not the engines and props) was poor, so Northrop managed to get an okay to pull the engines and props out an one of the 13 ready airframes and install eight jet engines... and the Wing immediately soared to 40,000 ft. and went 520 mph in initial tests. There was nothing wrong with the Wing's performance.
Convair CEO Odlum was active behind the scenes, however, and had one of Convair's Directors appointed as Secretary of Defense after Forrestal's mysterious 'suicide' which some claimed was murder... and the newly separated Air Force's First Secretary, Stewart Symington, an ambitious bureaucrat, became the Air Force's champion for buying more Convair B-36s, needed to keep Convair solvent. The AF Generals, finally disgusted with the B-36, declared 'no more than 95', and ordered 30 Northrop Wings to be built alongside the B-36s in Fort Worth, to phase-in Wing production, immediately after a Wing was crashed by an AIr Force pilot. In the same month AF Sec'y Synington called Jack Northrop to a meeting in California and demanded that Northrop merge with Convair "...or be goddamned sorry!" Northrop refused. The new Wing contract was cancelled. In order to buy more B-36s the new SecDef cancelled a Navy super carrier and dozens of aircraft already on order, and charges of bribery by Odlum resulted in a Congressional Investigation...
and things went downhill from there. A Congressional Viewing AIr Show at Andrews AFB near Washington DC where the Northrop B-35 4000-mile-target competitor for the B-36 was left in California, the jet-Wing YB-49 was sabotaged.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940013881204
Publisher:	RedHand Publications
Publication date:	12/17/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	873,486
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

During the Korean War the Author changed from aero-engineering to journalism to graduate from Notre Dame in 1953 and join the Navy Air Force, flying Lockheed P2V patrol bombers in the Pacific until 1957. Then he worked as a newspaper reporter, technical writer, PR manager, until he bought and restored the last Waco light plane in 1963. Started a company to manufacture a six-seat lightplane and earned a Provisional Type Certificate, but the market crashed in 1969. While Admin Director for an engineering company he designed, built and test flew a bush plane; then modified and flew a Mitchell flying wing, and a tandem-wing Dragonfly. Currently he built and flies a Lancair which he and his spouse use to visit their six college-grad offspring.
Working on a new design in 1984, a BlendedWingBody, he studied the Northrop designs and was puzzled by the claims of instability and poor performance, which did not make aerodynamic sense, and resulted in him patenting (5,078,338) a stability device for any swept-wing aircraft, and writing this story of the B-35/B-36 competition.