Learning Center Our Enshrinees

John Knudsen Northrop

• Co-invented a process for making monoplane fuselages and helped design the F-1 flying boat in 1916 while working for the Loughead Aircraft Company (later renamed Lockheed).
• Assumed the role of Chief Engineer at Lockheed in 1927 and built the Vega monoplane.
• Owned the Avion Company which he later sold and renamed the Northrop Aircraft Corporation.
• Designed the first flying wing and the Alpha and Beta monoplanes.
• Formed his own corporation again in 1932 as a subsidiary of Douglas and built the Gamma, Delta transport, and the Dauntless dive-bomber.
• Formed Northrop Aircraft, Inc. in 1939 where he built the first successful N-1M flying wing and the XP-56 flying wing fighter.
• Created the first US rocket-powered aircraft, the JB-10 flying bomb, the P-61 Black Widow night fighter and the XP-79 flying wing fighter.
• Founded the Northrop Institute of Technology after World War II and completed the XB-35 flying wing bomber. He later built the jet-propelled XB-49 flying wing bomber and the Snark, America’s first inertial-guided intercontinental ballistic missile.
• ​​Built the X-4 research plane that NASA and the Air Force’s famed Chuck Yeager (enshrined 1973) used to investigate near-sonic flight.