Jack Northrop - Later Years

Later Years

Northrop dabbled in real estate and lost much of his personal fortune. In 1976, with his health failing, he felt compelled to communicate to NASA his belief in the low drag high lift concept inherent in the flying wing. NASA replied that the idea had technological merit comforting Northrop that his flying wing concepts hadn't been completely abandoned. By the late 1970s a variety of illnesses had left him unable to walk or speak. Shortly before his death in 1981, he was given clearance to see designs and hold a scale model of the B-2 Spirit which shared many of the design features of his YB-35 and YB-49 designs. Northrop was reported to have written on a sheet of paper "Now I know why God has kept me alive for 25 years". In the Wing Will Fly documentary, B-2 project designer John Cashen says

"As he held this model in his shaking hands, it was as if you could see his entire history with the flying wing passing through his mind"

Jack Northrop died 10 months later knowing his life's passion would be incorporated in the country's most technologically advanced Cold War weapon system.

Northrop's passion for tailless flight was honored by the naming of a giant tailless pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus northropi.