Flying Wing History
Travels with Dad: Almost the Right Stuff
How my father almost made aviation history
At the end of World War II, my father was hired to test experimental aircraft without a fuselage, only wing and engine. Northrup Aviation and the Air Force were working toward making a four-engine wing, seeking to improve stability, increase speed and capacity to carry heavy loads.
Dad would flight test some early attempts constructed of plywood, leading up to the YB-35 and YB-49, the Flying Wing. These tests and many more attempts eventually yielded results that led to the Air Force B-2 Stealth Bomber decades later.
The test program for which my father was hired was at Muroc Air Force Base in California. Northrup had built four plywood two-engine wings designated N-9MB. After completing the flight testing, these early prototypes were damaged and discarded.
Before the testing began on the YB-49, Dad accepted a job as a test pilot at MIT Lincoln Labs. He left the Northrup project to engage in their advanced aviation technologies for national security.
History shows that Northrup continued to work on the flying wing concept with the YB-35, and then the YB-49, commonly known as the Flying Wing. Flight testing was done by two Air Force pilots, Major Daniel Hugh Forbes and Captain Glen Walter Edwards, a pilot who was also a good friend of my father’s and someone with whom he had flown.
Edwards and Forbes flew the YB-49 many times, trying to work out problems with stability. The final test mission resulted in a fatal crash, and sadly all the crew of five were killed.
Dad would have been flying that day with Captain Edwards if he had stayed.
Often I heard my father tell this tale and end it by saying, “I sure am glad I don’t have an Air Force base named after me.”
Both Major Forbes and Captain Edwards eventually had Air Force bases named after them in honor of their part in the bomber jet of the future, the Stealth Bomber. Edwards Air Force Base replaced the name of Muroc Air Force Base where they had done the testing. Forbes Air Force Base is in Topeka, Kansas.
I am hereby putting my father, Captain Carl O. Bostrom, into the history that he was fortunate to have escaped.
My father also skirted aviation history when he was stationed at Wright Field, where he chatted at times with then Captain Charles E. (Chuck) Yeager in the cafeteria. Chuck Yeager was the famous flying ace pilot who was the first to fly faster than the speed of sound, at Mach 1 in the Bel X-1.
Captain Yeager eventually wrote a book called, “The Right Stuff,” about his many interesting flight tests and life accomplishments. Years later Dad started to write his own book of war and test pilot stories but never finished it. It was going to be called, “ALMOST the Right Stuff.”
During World War II, my father was sent to Italy to pilot a B-24 Liberator after Italy united with the Western Allies against Germany. He returned home safely with all of his crew after completing their required missions. Annually, Dad would get together his bombardier group to tell lies and swap stories.
A Blast from the Past - One day my brother Mitch flew his private plane with Dad to Chino Airport in California. There they found that the Chino Planes of Fame Flight Museum had successfully resurrected the one remaining two-engine experimental flying wing N-9MB. My father was able to confirm from the serial number that it was the exact one he had flown.
He was invited to get in the seat and let the memories fly him back some fifty years. The restored plane was flown to many airshows and events around the country. Tragically, it also crashed shortly after takeoff from Chino onto the property of a prison next to the airport.
Another wing bites the dust.
More on Captain Edwards - Another coincidental story happened when Dad was in his 80s. He was living in Carson City, Nevada, in a house he shared with my other brother, Carl, also an Air Force veteran. The two Carls went to an air show one weekend in Reno. They happened to meet a man who was writing a biography of Captain Glen Edwards.
The biographer invited him to stay at Edwards Air Force Base for a couple of days so he could audio tape seven hours of stories for the history. A bonus for the biographer was that Dad gave him a diary that Glen Edwards wrote and contributed greatly to the story.
More history of Edwards’ diary:
Find more of my stories about aviation, family, and just life at: https://medium.com/@klyn864.
