Quote:
Originally Posted by Bicycle Bob
Flying wings are wonderfully elegant, but it turns out that their best niche is slow flight. A passenger compartment is of such low density that it works better as a streamlined pod with less surface area.
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Flying wings and blended wings in other words are "high lift" and well suited for heavy freight - then I would agree.
In addition they tend to heave up and down (
puke city) and tend to be unstable in the vertical (
oscillating pitch) unless controlled by a computer.
They have a future, they are going to be there one day - when we are ready.
Of course, that's been said before...................
PDF
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...hPAJJ5yBddfmkl
Quote:
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“Perhaps the day is not far distant when flying-wing types will dominate the entire field of military, commercial, and private flying,” The New York Times gushed in November 1941.
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PDF
same as above
Quote:
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Just before Northrop’s death, he was given special permission by the Air Force to enter the Northrop development facilities and see the ATB design, which eventually became the phenomenal B-2 stealth bomber. It had a wingspan of 172 feet, just like the YB-49. Northrop’s original Flying Wing was “30 years ahead of its time,” said E. T. Wooldridge when he was chairman of the Aeronautics Department at the National Air and Space Museum. Retired Brig. Gen. Robert L. Cardenas, who was the principal test pilot for the YB-49 in the 1940s, added that the airplane “had to wait for technology to catch up.
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There is an image in the PDF, a close up of the front landing gear in which the caption mentions the co-pilots downward observation window.