Northrop XP-56

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Northrop XP-56 Black Bullet
Northrop XP-56 Balck Bullet
Type: Fighter plane
Design country:

United States 48United States United States

Manufacturer:

Northrop Corporation

First flight:

September 3, 1943

Number of pieces:

2

The Northrop XP-56 Black Bullet was an experimental aircraft for testing the pusher propeller concept for fighter aircraft .

development

Northrop XP-56

In November 1939, shortly after it was founded by Jack Northrop , the Northrop Corporation took part in a tender by the United States Army Air Forces for a new fighter aircraft. In addition to Northrop, Vultee Aircraft presented their own new concepts with the XP-54 and Curtiss with the XP-55 .

Northrop's design provided for a brushless fighter powered by two counter-rotating pusher propellers, which was to be powered by the Pratt & Whitney X-1800 -A3G liquid-cooled engine, which was under development at the time .

The order for the production of a prototype was placed on August 22, 1940, in the following time various changes were necessary as part of the construction through wind tunnel tests on a 1: 1 model that was being created at the same time.

Since work on the X-1800 engine was discontinued, an air-cooled P&W R-2800-29 had to be installed instead, which however required a change in the hull and increased the weight of the machine by 1000 kg. This delayed the work by five months. After viewing the model by members of the Army Air Forces, changes were made to the landing gear, the cockpit and the armament. On February 13, 1942, the order to manufacture a second prototype was given to Northrop.

The first engine test runs took place in March 1943, then the machine was taken to the Muroc flight test site (now Edwards Air Force Base ), where the 1.6 km long first flight took place on September 6 at a height of just 1.2 m. This also showed insufficient stability around the vertical axis, which should be compensated for by increasing the rudder.

During high-speed taxi attempts in autumn 1943, a tire burst and the aircraft was completely destroyed in the subsequent rollover. However, the pilot was almost uninjured.

As a consequence of this accident, the landing gear of the second prototype was revised, but the first test flight could not take place until March 23, 1944 due to bad weather. The subsequent test flights and wind tunnel tests showed that the machine was still unstable and could not reach the planned top speed due to its higher weight.

The testing was later discontinued as advances in the development of jet aircraft made the concept obsolete.

For Jack Northrop, however, the project provided important insights that he was later able to use in his YB-35 and YB-49 low-wing bombers.

The second prototype still exists today; it is in storage at the National Air and Space Museum in Silver Hill, Maryland.

Technical specifications

Parameter Data
crew 1
length 8.38 m
span 12.98 m
height 2.97 m
Wing area 28.44 m²
Empty mass 4475 kg
Max. Takeoff mass 5514 kg
Top speed 749 km / h
Service ceiling 10,061 m
Range 1063 km
Engines 1 × Pratt & Whitney R-2800-29 with 1492 kW
Armament 4 × M2 machine guns with 400 rounds each
2 × 20 mm machine guns with 100 rounds each

See also

Web links

Commons : Northrop XP-56  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files