Northrop Corporation
3 types ยท 0 airframes
Pre-1950 Narrative
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Aircraft Types
Northrop A-17
A two-seat, single-engine monoplane attack aircraft developed from the Northrop Gamma and built by the Northrop Corporation for the U.S. Army Air Corps, for which it was the standard attack aircraft of the late 1930s. The Air Corps bought 110 fixed-gear A-17s and 129 retractable-gear A-17As, the latter delivered as Douglas took over Northrop and sold export versions as the Douglas Model 8. Declared surplus in 1940, most surviving A-17As passed to Britain and the Commonwealth as the Nomad and trained aircrew in Canada and South Africa, while export Model 8s fought briefly with the Netherlands, Peru and Iraq. A few aircraft survive in museums, among them a Canadian Nomad raised from Lake Muskoka in 2014.
Northrop Delta
The Northrop Delta was a single-engined, all-metal passenger transport built by the Northrop Corporation as the passenger companion to the Gamma mailplane, sharing the Gamma's wing under a wider fuselage seating eight. First flown in May 1933, it was shut out of its intended American market by October 1934 rules that stopped single-engined passenger flying at night and over rough terrain, and Northrop built only 13, as airliners, executive transports and one Coast Guard staff transport. The type's substantial career came in Canada: Canadian Vickers built 19 more under licence, the first all-metal stressed-skin aircraft built in Canada, for RCAF photographic survey work, an unsuccessful spell as float-equipped anti-submarine patrol aircraft in 1939, and instructional duties until late 1941. The fuselage of one Canadian aircraft survives at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa.
Northrop Gamma
A single-engined, all-metal, low-wing monoplane built by the Northrop Corporation in the 1930s and developed from the Northrop Alpha. About sixty were built, most of them one-off variants made for individual customers: mailplanes for Trans World Airlines, Frank Hawks's record-breaking Sky Chief, and Lincoln Ellsworth's Polar Star, which made the first trans-Antarctic flight in 1935. Howard Hughes set a transcontinental record in a borrowed Gamma in January 1936. Military versions fought with Chinese and Spanish Republican forces, and the design's military development became the Northrop A-17 attack aircraft. The Polar Star survives in the Smithsonian's collection.