warner@orca.UUCP (Ken Warner) (06/25/85)
I got a story I just gotta tell. When I was a kid my dad worked for Northrop and we lived about 2 blocks from the plant. This was when they were building the F-89 Scorpion and the YB-49 Flying Wing. In the early fifties. One day they had an open house of sorts and one of the day's events was a fly by of the Flying Wing. I'd seen one or two of them take off from the airport next to the plant. Well, this day the Wing had an F-86 SaberJet as a chase plane for the fly by. The pilot of the Wing must have been one hot pilot. He first flew by from east to west with the F-86 on his right wing. Over the runway at about 1000 ft.. Maybe doing 250 knots. When both planes reached the west end of the strip, the Wing pilot did a wing over to the left with about a 110 degree bank. To me at the time it looked like changed direction 180 degrees in about a two wing spans radius turn. It was a fantastic sight to see the whole top of the wing from the ground as it nearly pivoted on its left wing tip. The pilot then flew right back over the field again and accelerated out of sight to the east. The jock in the F-86 put his craft into a near vertical bank turn. By the time he had finished his 180 he was about a mile south of the field and had his nose down trying to get back into formation with the Wing. He flew back by us about half a minute behind the Wing. I guess the crux of this story is that big ol' Flying Wing plain outflew that day's state of the art fighter plane. And it was a real amazing sight that is still vivid in my mind after over 30 years.
hhs@hou2h.UUCP (H.SHARP) (06/29/85)
Does anyone know the story behind why the Flying Wing was not used?