Reader comments - Northrop

Blacktail

The secret history of the US military's ire toward Northrop is a long one... and an ugly one at that.

It pretty much started with the YB-49, which was developed to a similar requirement to the Convair B-36, at around the same time. Both were in development for the USAAF, but they began to marginalize the YB-49 as soon as the USAF became an independent branch.

As it happens, the first Secretary of the Air Force was Stuart S. Symington, who had immediately beforehand retired from Convair --- he was that company's Vice President. The YB-49's potential was obvious, so Symington wanted the USAF to have it. I also wanted Jack Northrop to hand it over for free to Convair, along with most of the profits. When Northrop refused, Symington not only terminated the YB-49 immediately, but even made an example of Northrop by sending the USAF in to seize every single document, model, and prototype of every Flying Wing aircraft Northrop had ever developed for the military (which is to say, nearly every one of them). The USAF even parked a portable smelter in front of the factory, so every employee in the company could watch their work be hauled out in front of their own workplace, crushed by bulldozers, and melted into ingots. Symington never got in trouble for this, beginning a long tradition of no high-ranking USAF officer or official ever being cou rt-martialed.

What became the F-5 started out as a design intended to reverse the dreaded Cost-Size-Complexity Spiral, that was slowly overrunning US warplane development trends. The resulting NA-156 did so, and then some, but the US military's response was basically a yawn; it wasn't overflowing with useless computers and BVR radar, and couldn't quite make Mach 2.

But as it happens, the USAF's first-ever Mach 2 fighter (the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter) was proving to be extremely dangerous to fly --- too much so to even qualify pilots for supersonic flight in a 2 -seat version. An entire additional aircraft had to be procured to prepare pilots for the F-104, because existing jet trainers like the T-33 Shooting Star weren't going to cut it. Northrop re-purposed the NA-156 as a 2-seat trainer, and it was so far developed by that point that none of the competing aircraft stood a chance. The result was the T-38 Talon, which holds the distinction of being the first US military jet aircraft that never suffered a single mishap during it's development. It was delivered ahead of schedule, below budget, and met or exceeded every retirement.

Northrop then got too brave for their own good, and developed the N-156 into the N-156F. They trimmed-out a few things that could be spared, resulting in a supersonic fighter that weighed only 9800lbs at empty weight. There was a special reason for that.

Under the 1948 Key West Agreement, the US Army was forbidden by the USAF from operating any armed fixed-wing aircraft weighing more than 10000lbs. The USAF read the design trends of jet aircraft and predicted that the Army would not only balk at developing propeller-driven fixed-wing combatants (whether fighters or attackers), but also that as jet propulsion technology evolved, any example that would be effective would weigh too much for the Army to use under the agreement. Thus, the USAF had duped the Army into being unable to operate a practical air arm of their own... or so they thought.

That said, Northrop immediately offered the N-156F to the US Army, not the USAF. Northrop had done what the USAF thought impossible, and actually *built* an extremely formidable supersonic fighter that was Army-allowable under the Key West Agreement. The USAF (br)asshats freaked-out so hard over this, that the Army deferred, fearing the inter-service political war the F-156F would have triggered. Northrop had little choice but to pack-away the N-156F into a warehouse and be done with it.

That is, until the rest of NATO started complaining that virtually every warplane offered by the US was either too old, too weak, or too expensive to be of any use, and they demanded a high-performance w arplane at a low cost. This made the USAF and Northrop unlikely bedfellows, as the N-156F was just the thing. It was put into production as the F-5 "Freedom Fighter", especially for export. The USAF bought a handful as well, expressly for marketing the F-5, and training foreign personnel on it.

As the F-5 was now fully-integrated into the USAF inventory, there were naturally proposals that it be procured in much larger numbers for actual combat use. After all, the F-5 was not only a superior performer to the F-100 Super Sabre it was proposed as a replacement for --- it was actually cheaper as well. The USAF ignored all of this as best they could, and proceeded with business as usual.

One prospective F-5 buyer wasn't convinced. They not only specifically wanted the F-5, but they also insisted that the USAF themselves fly in operational service in Southeast Asia. That nation was South Vietnam, and to accommodate these demands, the F-5C and F-5D were developed, manufactured, and deployed into the Vietnam War, under project "Skoshi Tiger" (read-up on it for yourself --- Skoshi Tiger was even more successful than anyone had anticipated). Not only was the VNAF impressed by the result, but so were the Philippines, who bought an additional order of the F-5C/D. Despite having validated the F-5 by *using it in combat themselves*, the USAF still opposed any acquisition of F-5s for combat use.

This is also around the time that the USAF's Fighter Weapon School ("Red Flag") and the US Navy's Naval Fighter Weapon School ("Top Gun") began using F-5s as aggressors. They simulated hostile Mig-21s during training exercises, during which USAF/USN/USMC pilots faced comparable weapons ant tactics to those most commonly used by the Eastern Bloc. Now there were MANY F-5s in the US inventory, not only for training foreign F-5 customers, but also for training US pilots as well --- but the US military still opposed using F-5s in any over capacity.

If I went any further past the F-5C/D, this post would turn into an encyclopaedia. ;-)