Arguably one of the most talented and innovative aircraft developers of his time, John Knudsen Northrop had long sought an aircraft design that could start a revolution… a craft with minimum drag and a level of lift unachievable in any other form. Jack, as John Northrop was usually known, pursued his dream of building a pure flying wing strategic bomber that would exceed the capabilities of anything else his less imaginative competitors were designing.

The gliders of Otto Lilienthal

The Armstrong Whitworth AW-52

The Avion/Northrop Experimental No1 pusher 

The remains of a Horton flying wing

The Northrop N1M

Nortons XB35

The XP-79 fighter

The XB-49

The YB-35s being broken up at the cancelation of the project

The final successful B-2 Spirit

Images shown under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the USAF, the Library of Congress, Northrop, National Museum of the Air Force, Michael.katzmann, the IWM, Sanjay Acharya, the National Archive and NASA.