Quote:
Originally Posted by Stephan Wilkinson
Ed (and Nick), Northrop ... got an hour of TV time under the guise of National Geographic and ran a "documentary" film that we're still talking about.
That is not "time wasted," that is an enormous PR coup.
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Perhaps not from Northrop's point of view but, I found the programme a total waste of time in terms of the standard of argument and evidence it presented. Surely, the fundamental question of the 229's effectiveness must be "was it airworthy?" and in one important respect it appears that it wasn't. Its stability/controllability problems seem to be a characteristic of a pure all-wing design. The Northrop YB-49 added vertical surfaces but still experienced similar problems, I think.
Computerised means to make inherently unstable aircraft flyable exist now but they didn't in 1945 and we'd need an engineer or aerodynamicist to tell us whether a fix could have been achieved with the technology then available. It doesn't matter how stealthy your plane is if it crashes before it comes near the enemy.