Clipped Wings: The Death of Jack Northrop's Flying Wing Bombers

Acquisition Review Quarterly, Fall, 2001 by Dr. Bud Baker

It had other shortcomings.... Minor problems of this sort are usual in a radically new design and undoubtedly could be overcome in time, but they were sufficient to...recommend postponing development. (Testimony, 1949a, p. 75)

THE THIRD STRIKE: BUDGETARY LIMITS

In 1947, Air Force strength had stood at 48 combat groups. By late 1948 that number had grown to 59, with an ultimate goal of 70 combat units. The RB-49 contract had been geared toward supporting that 70-group force (Testimony, 1949a, p. 79-82).

But President Truman refused to support the Joint Chiefs of Staff budget proposal for fiscal year 1950. The services had asked for $23.8 billion, and that was pared down by Secretary of Defense Forrestal to $16.9 billion. President Truman, though, set a ceiling of $14.4 billion (Millis, 1951, pp. 498, 503, 536), as part of his "pay as you go" budget approach:

As county judge, senator, and President, I consistently kept in mind the same sort of tax philosophy. It was a pay-as-you-go program, except in emergency conditions.... There is nothing sacred about the pay-as-you-go idea as far as I am concerned, except that it represents the soundest principle of financing that I know. (Truman, 1956, p. 41)

"Pay as you go" meant one thing for the Air Force: there would be no growth to 70 combat groups as planned, nor could even the current 59 groups be sustained. The Air Force would have to retrench, cutting all the way back to 48 groups (Millis, 1951, p. 538; Testimony, 1949a, p. 83). To recommend exactly where adjustments should be made, a group of four senior Air Force generals was convened in December 1948. It was called the Senior Officers Board.

THE FINAL BLOWS

The first meeting of the Senior Officers Board began on December 29, 1948. There were to be only four voting members: General Muir S. Fairchild, General Joseph McNarney, Lieutenant General Howard Craig, and Lieutenant General Lauris Norstad. General Fairchild became ill, so General McNarney chaired the meeting (Testimony, 1949a, p. 83).

Their star witness was the new SAC commander, General LeMay. At the meeting he asked for the ability to restructure his force, canceling some aircraft orders to fund others. First on his shopping list: 39 more B36s, some as bombers and some as reconnaissance variants. They would cost about $270 million, and that money had to come from cancellations.

In Mr. Northrop's PBS interview, the viewer gets the clear impression that Northrop was singled out in the cancellation of the Flying Wings. But that is simply false. To raise the $269,761,000 General LeMay asked for, the Board canceled six separate weapon systems from four corporations. Not only was Northrop not singled out, it was not even the most severely damaged (see Table 1) (Testimony, 1949b, p. 455). (4)

A telegram from Air Materiel Command on January 11, 1949, formally told Northrop the bad news: "the contractor is directed to stop all work authorized... with the exception of the engineering, fabrication, and flight test applicable to the YRB-49A airplane" (Air Materiel Command, 1949).