Northrop Grumman’s B-2 has the wingspan of the flying wing the Air Force scrapped.
By 1950 the Air Force had canceled Jack Northrop’s flying wing bombers and scrapped those left, and he retired bitter in 1952. In April 1980 his company showed him a model of its secret B-2, a flying wing with the 172-foot span of his YB-49. Unable to speak, he reportedly wrote, “Now I know why God has kept me alive for 25 years.”
Northrop Grumman on Brandseum