Comments: Hardcover, 276 pages, 70 color photos, 369 black-and-white photos
ISBN: 978-1-58007-229-8.
Price: $44.95
Publisher: Specialty Press
From the publisher: John K. "Jack" Northrop and the company he founded in 1939, Northrop Aircraft, Inc., will be forever linked with the giant futuristic Flying Wings of the 1940s. But those iconic designs were not the only ideas to spring from the mind of this pioneering visionary and the innovative engineers who followed him. Many piston-powered and turbojet concepts, both conventional and radical in shape and purpose, were proposed and developed over the company's proud fifty-five year history.
This book unveils Northrop's once-secret radical designs, many for the first time, with never-before-published drawings, models, and photos of such novel concepts as a ship-based vertical takeoff and landing fighter, a supersonic intercontinental cruise missile, a rocket-boosted jet space plane trainer, and a radical combination truck/aircraft/boat cargo vehicle. Much of this material has only recently been declassified.
Here for the first time is the untold story of Northrop's rare, unique, and formerly super-secret aircraft and spacecraft of the future. Featuring stunning original factory artwork, technical drawings, and never-before-seen photographs, this book shows an amazing array of radical high-performance aircraft concepts from Jack Northrop and his team of brilliant and innovative engineers.
FSM says: Chong shines light on some of the forgotten corners of America's aerospace industry, revealing much about Northrop’s planned and proposed aircraft. The book tracks them in chronological order starting in World War II and ending with the company’s evolution to Northrop Grumman in the mid-1990s. Some, like the F-5 and B-2, are well known successes. Many though are proposals and plans that never moved beyond concept. Chong covers them all with drawings, artist’s impressions, and company models. It’s not a book for a lot of info about any one aircraft, but the insight it gives of Northrop’s aircraft and history is fascinating. Recommended for anyone interested in that story.