Flying Wings/Tailless Aircraft

from the Virginia Tech Aircraft Design Information Sources pages

For the most part, the papers are about flying wing aircraft like the B-2. However, recall that there are also plenty of delta flying wings, with the F-106 being just one example. Recently, a plane without a vertical tail has been called a tailless airplane, so be careful (X-36). The papers on the Douglas-Liebeck Blended-Wing-Body Concept are covered in a separate section.

There is a web site specifically for tailless aircraft, known as The Wing is the Thing. This is worth looking at. It also includes a link to information on the Boeing Blended Wing Body. Another favorite is the Vulcan, which has several sites. And we even have a picture of Mason inside the XH558 at Bruntingthorpe.

R.T. Jones, “Notes on the Stability and Control of Tailless Airplanes,” NACA TN 837, Dec. 1941. This is an excellent tutorial by the master.

J.K. Northrop, “The Development of the All-Wing Aircraft,” 35th Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture, The Royal Aeronautical Society Journal, Vol. 51, pp. 481-510, 1947. This is still the best paper on aerodynamics of flying wing aircraft.

Leo J. Kohn, The Flying Wings of Northrop, Aviation Publications, Milwaukee, 1974. Includes the Pilot’s Handbook for the Model YB-49 Airplane.

W.R. Sears, “Flying-Wing Airplanes: The XB-35/YB-49 Program,” AIAA Paper 80-3036, March 1980.

E.T. Wooldridge, Winged Wonders, The Story of the Flying Wings, Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington, 1983. Covers the entire history of flying wings, not just the Northrop designs.

David Myhra, Horten 229, Monogram Close-up 12, Boylston, MA, 1983.

Lee Begin, “The Northrop Flying Wing Prototypes,” AIAA Dayton-Cincinnati Section Aircraft Prototype and Technology Demonstrator Symposium, March 1983.

William R. Sears, “Flying wing could stealthily reappear,” Aerospace America, July 1987, pp. 16-19. Sears provides a good overview, and again shows how relaxed static stability and flying wings are synergistic.

Edward T. Maloney, Nothrop Flying Wings, World War II Publications, Corona del Mar, Re. Ed., 1988.

“USAF, Northrop Unveil B-2 Next-Generation Bomber,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, Nov. 28, 1988, pp. 20-27.

T. Coleman, Jack Northrop and the Flying Wing, Paragon House, New York, 1988.

-, Air International, Feb. 1989, pg. 104.

Irving L. Ashkenas and David H. Klyde, “Tailless Aircraft Performance Improvements with Relaxed Static Stability,” NASA CR 181806 (N89-20999), March 1989. This is a report covering the effect of RSS on a flying wing. The first author was a key player in the original YB-49 work, and this is a report of significant technical depth.

Richard Sanders Allen, The Northrop Story: 1929-1939, Orion Books, New York, 1990.

H.W. Grellmann, “B-2 Aerodynamic Design,” AIAA Paper 90-1802, AIAA Aerospace Engineering Confereence and Exhibit, Los Angeles, Feb., 1990. This is a good general description of the design approach, the aero issues, including testing.

Jay Miller, Northrop B-2 Stealth Bomber, Aerofax Extra 4, Specialty Press, Stillwater, 1991.

H.P. Dabrowski, The Horten Flying Wing in World War II, The History and Development of the Ho 229, Translated from the German by David Johnston, Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 1469 Morstein Road, West Chester, PA 19380, 1991.

Irving T. Waaland, “Technology in the Lives of an Aircraft Designer,” AIAA Wright Brothers Lecture, Sept. 23, 1991, Baltimore, MD. Although this paper is much broader, it presented the first public and detailed description of the B-2 design history. Written by one of the main designers of the aircraft, his description has been widely used in all the books on the B-2 written since this paper was presented.

Bill Sweetman, Northrop B-2 Stealth Bomber, Motorbooks Int’l. Publishers and Wholesalers, Osceola, WI, 1992.

Ilan Kroo, “Tailless Aircraft Design - Recent Experiences,” Symposium on Aerodynamics & Aeroacoustics, Tucson, AZ, March 1-2, 1993. published in Advanced Series on Fluid Mechanics, by World Scientific, River Edge, NJ, 1994, pp. 207-229. This is a very good technical explanation of the issues, comparing stable and unstable approaches to flying wing airplane design.

David Baker, “Northrop's big wing-The B-2,” Air International, Part 1, Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1993, pg. 287-294. The most detailed review to date, includes cutaway, Part 2, Vol. 45, No. 1, July 1993, pg. 35-43.

Garry R. Pape with Jon M. Campbell and Donna Campbell, The Flying Wings of Jack Northrop, Shiffer Military/Aviation History, Atglen, PA, 1994.

Karl Nickel and Michael Wohfahrt, Tailless Aircraft in Theory and Practice, AIAA, Washington, 1994. From a 1990 German book, and translated by Eric M. Brown. This book is good, the presentation is unusual. It covers stable configurations, and thus does not cover the issues for advanced technology aircraft. It builds on the development of the Horton Brothers flying wing. They developed their design approach outside of the main German establishment in the 1930s and 40s. The first author worked with the Hortons and was actually a brother -in-law. The authors fly tailless sailplanes.

David M. North, “Control System Key to B-2 Flight Qualities”, (Aviation Week Pilot Report), Av. Wk & Space Tech, April 17, 1995, pp.46-55. The usual Av Wk report on the actual flying of the airplane. Related articles include the flight simulator training.

Garry R. Pape with John M. Campbell, Northrop Flying Wings, Schiffer Publishing, Atglen, PA, 1995. This is an encyclopedic collection on the history of Northrop flying wings, including the B-2. This book contains details on the flying problems of the early airplanes, and concludes with comments by Irv Wallen that were made after he presented the Wright Brothers talk in 1991. Appendices include a chronology from 1939-1953, when the last YRB-49A was scrapped. It also has basic data on all the flying wings except the B-2, and other details and a bibliography. I resisted purchasing it for several years because of the price, but it has been worth it. It includes lots of high quality pictures (many in color), and Northrop drawings and sketches.

Bill Sweetman, Inside the Stealth Bomber, MBI Publishing, Osceola, WI, 1999, This is a completely updated story on the B-2. Very good.

Steve Pace, B-2 Spirit, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2000. This is a Walter J. Boyne Military Aircraft Series book from Aviation Week. It is not printed on high quality glossy paper, and as a result, the photos are not nearly as crisp as the ones in the latest book by Sweetman, cited above, except for a relatively small insert of glossy color. The book covers a lot of the same material as the book by Sweetman. I’d give Sweetman the edge on development details, while Pace has more on the manufacturing and the latest details on the B-2s use in Kosovo. This book also has an extensive chronology and lists each specific aircraft (a much shorter list than the designers had hoped for).

A.L. Bolsunovsky, N.P. Buzoverya, B.I. Gurevich, V.E. Denisov, A.I. Dunaevsky, L.M. Shkadov, O.V. Sonin, A.J. Udzhuhu, J.P. Zhurihin, “Flying wing - problems and decisions,” Aircraft Design, Vol. 4, No. 4, December 2001, pp. 193-219.

B. Mialon, T. Fol, and C. Bonnaud, “Aerodynamic Optimization of Subsonic Flying Wing Configurations,” AIAA Paper 2002-2931, June 2002.

The controversy

Is a flying wing the best configuration? Sears and Ashkenas wrote an appendix to a secret government report showing that a flying wing is best. The report, Toward New Horizons, was eventually issued in a commemorative edition in 1992. However, the appendix was not included. I have not yet seen the appendix. Foa studied the appendix and claimed that although Sears and Ashkenas had found the result for a slope of zero, they missed a sign on the second derivative and actually proved that the flying wing was the worst! Foa demanded that Sears and Ashkenas issue a revision. The result was a paper by Ashkenas which contains another analysis. Foa claimed that this paper was inadequate, and, with the emergence of the B-2, the controversy arose again when Foa contacted Wayne Biddle. Essentially, the question was where to distribute volume. As such, the actual size of the required volume changes the answer. Sometimes it’s best to put the volume in a distinct fuselage, sometimes not. Thus this has become an interesting configuration issue. As I see it, none of the papers to date have provided the answer in a simple, easy to understand analysis.

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direct comments and suggestions to W.H. Mason, whmason@vt.edu