A handful of good china prototype company pictures I located:
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center: Boeing B-29 Superfortress “Enola Gay” (front starboard view), with Grumman F6F-three Hellcat at back-proper, among other folks
Image by Chris Devers
See more pictures of this, and the Wikipedia report.
Particulars, quoting from Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: Steven F. Udvar-Hazy | Boeing B-29 Superfortress "Enola Gay":
Boeing’s B-29 Superfortress was the most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of World War II and the 1st bomber to home its crew in pressurized compartments. Though made to fight in the European theater, the B-29 discovered its niche on the other side of the globe. In the Pacific, B-29s delivered a variety of aerial weapons: traditional bombs, incendiary bombs, mines, and two nuclear weapons.
On August six, 1945, this Martin-constructed B-29-45-MO dropped the 1st atomic weapon utilized in combat on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, Bockscar (on display at the U.S. Air Force Museum near Dayton, Ohio) dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. Enola Gay flew as the advance climate reconnaissance aircraft that day. A third B-29, The Great Artiste, flew as an observation aircraft on both missions.
Transferred from the United States Air Force.
Manufacturer:
Boeing Aircraft Co.
Martin Co., Omaha, Nebr.
Date:
1945
Country of Origin:
United States of America
Dimensions:
General: 900 x 3020cm, 32580kg, 4300cm (29ft six five/16in. x 99ft 1in., 71825.9lb., 141ft 15/16in.)
Supplies:
Polished general aluminum finish
Physical Description:
Four-engine heavy bomber with semi-monoqoque fuselage and high-aspect ratio wings. Polished aluminum finish general, normal late-Globe War II Army Air Forces insignia on wings and aft fuselage and serial quantity on vertical fin 509th Composite Group markings painted in black "Enola Gay" in black, block letters on lower left nose.
• • • • •
Quoting Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum | Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat:
The Grumman F6F Hellcat was originally conceived as an advanced version of the U.S. Navy’s then present front-line fighter, the F4F Wildcat (see NASM collection). The Wildcat’s intended replacement, the Vought F4U Corsair (see NASM collection), first flown in 1940, was displaying excellent promise, but development was slowed by difficulties, such as the crash of the prototype.
The National Air and Space Museum’s F6F-three Hellcat, BuNo. 41834, was built at Grumman’s Bethpage, New York, factory in February 1944 under contract NOA-(S)846. It was delivered to the Navy on February 7, and arrived in San Diego, California, on the 18th. It was assigned to Fighter Squadron 15 (VF-15) on USS Hornet (CV12) bound for Hawaii. On arrival, it was assigned to VF-three exactly where it sustained harm in a wheels-up landing at NAS Barbers Point, Hawaii. After repair, it was assigned to VF-83 where it was used in a coaching role till February 21, 1945. Right after many transfers 41834 was converted to an F6F-3K target drone with the installation of sophisticated radio-handle gear. It was painted red with a pink tail that carried the quantity 14. Its mission was to be utilized in Operation Crossroads – the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. It flew on June 24, 1946, with a pilot, on a practice flight and was launched, unmanned, soon soon after the initial bomb test. Instrumentation on board and photographic plates taped to the handle stick obtained information on radioactivity. Three much more manned flights preceded the final unmanned flight on July 25, 1946, which evaluated the 1st underwater explosion. Records indicate that exposure of this aircraft to the radioactive cloud was minimal and residual radiation is negligible.
F6F-3K 41834 was transferred to NAS Norfolk and logged its final flight on March 25, 1947, with a total of 430.2 flying hours. It was assigned to the National Air Museum on November 3, 1948, and remained at Norfolk until October 4, 1960, when it was moved by barge to Washington and placed in storage. In 1976 this Hellcat was loaned to the USS Yorktown Museum at Charleston, South Carolina. A superficial restoration was performed at the museum, but simply because of the harsh environment and its poor condition the Hellcat was returned to NASM on March 16, 1982. In 1983, it was sent to Grumman Aerospace where a group of volunteers completely restored the aircraft. In 1985, it was shipped back to the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility in Suitland, Maryland, and put in storage. NASM’s F6F-3 Hellcat is scheduled to be displayed in the new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy center at Dulles International Airport in Virginia in 2004.
Transferred from the United States Navy.
Manufacturer:
Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation
Date:
1943
Nation of Origin:
United States of America
Dimensions:
All round: 338 x 1021cm, 4092kg, 1304cm (11ft 1 1/16in. x 33ft five 15/16in., 9021.2lb., 42ft 9 3/8in.)
Physical Description:
Heavy armor plate, reinforced empennage, R-2800-10W engine, spring tabs on the ailerons (elevated maneuverability), could carry rockets as well as bombs.
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center: Yellow Northrop N1M flying wing airplane, in front of Northrop P-61C Black Widow and tail of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress “Enola Gay”, et al
Image by Chris Devers
See a lot more pictures of this, and the Wikipedia article.
Details, quoting from Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: Steven F. Udvar-Hazy | Northrop N1M:
John K. "Jack" Northrop’s dream of a flying wing became a reality on July 3, 1940, when his N-1M (Northrop Model 1 Mockup) first flew. 1 of the world’s preeminent aircraft designers and creator of the Lockheed Vega and Northrop Alpha, Northrop had experimented with flying wings for over a decade, believing they would have much less drag and higher efficiency than traditional designs. His 1929 flying wing, while effective, had twin tail booms and a standard tail. In the N-1M he developed a correct flying wing.
Built of plywood about a tubular steel frame, the N-1M was powered by two 65-horsepower Lycoming engines, later replaced with two 120-horsepower Franklins. While its flying characteristics had been marginal, the N-1M led to other designs, including the Northrop XB-35 and YB-49 strategic bombers and in the end the B-two stealth bomber.
Transferred from the United States Air Force.
Manufacturer:
Northrop Aircraft Inc.
Date:
1940
Country of Origin:
United States of America
Dimensions:
Wingspan: 11.6 m (38 ft)
Length: five.2 m (17 ft)
Height: 1.5 m (five ft)
Weight, gross: 1,814 kg (four,000 lb)
Top speed: 322 km/h (200 mph)
Engine: two Franklin 6AC264F2, 120 hp
General: 72in. (182.9cm)
Other: 72 x 204 x 456in. (182.9 x 518.two x 1158.2cm)
Supplies:
General: Plywood
Physical Description:
Twin engine flying wing: Wood, painted yellow.
Extended Description:
The N-1M (Northrop Model 1 Mockup) Flying Wing was a natural outgrowth of John K. "Jack" Northrop’s lifelong concern for an aerodynamically clean design and style in which all unnecessary drag caused by protruding engine nacelles, fuselage, and vertical and horizontal tail surfaces would be eliminated. Created in 1939 and 1940, the N-1lM was the 1st pure all-wing airplane to be created in the United States. Its design was the forerunner of the larger all-wing XB-35 and YB-49 bomber! reconnaissance prototypes that Northrop hoped would win Air Force production contracts and eventually change the shape of modern aircraft.
After serving apprenticeships with the Lockheed brothers and Donald Douglas in the early 1920s and designing the hugely productive and revolutionary Lockheed Vega in 1927, Northrop in the late 192Os turned his focus to all-wing aircraft. In 1928, he left the employ of Lockheed and organized the Avion Corporation a year later he developed his initial flying wing, which incorporated such revolutionary features as all-metal, multicellular wing and stressed-skin building. Though the 1929 flying wing was not a correct all-wing design due to the fact it produced use of external manage surfaces and outrigger tail booms, it paved the way for the later N-1 M, which proved the fundamental soundness of Northrop’s thought for an all-wing aircraft. At the time, nevertheless, Northrop did not have the cash to continue building the all-wing thought.
In 1939, Northrop formed his personal aircraft business, Northrop Aircraft, Inc., and as a result was in a position to finance research and development of the N-1M. For help in designing the aircraft, Northrop enlisted the not aerodynamicist Dr. Theodore von Karman, who was at the time Director of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute Technology, and von Karman’s assistant, Dr. William R. Sears. Walter J. Cerny, Northrop’s assistant design chief, became the general supervisor for the project. To establish the flight characteristics of an all-wing design and style, Northrop Cerny conducted substantial wind tunnel tests or flying wing models. Eventually, the design of the N-1 M benefited from the new low-drag, increase stability NACA airfoils as nicely as enhanced flaps spoilers, and other aerodynamic devices.
Soon after a period of a year, the N-1M, nicknamed the "Jeep," emerged in July 1940 as a boomerang-shaped flying scale mockup constructed 01 wood and tubular steel with a wingspan of 38 feet a length of 17 feet, and a height of five feet. Pitch and roll manage was accomplished by signifies of elevons on the trailing edge of the wing, which served the function of both elevator and aileron the place of the standard rudder was a split flap device on the wing suggestions these have been initially drooped downward for what was believed to be far better directional stability but later straightened.
Controlled by rudder pedals, the split flaps, or "clamshells," could be opened to enhance the angle of glide or decrease airspeed and thus act as air brakes. The center of gravity, wing sweep, arrangement of manage surfaces, and dihedral have been adjustable on the ground. To decrease drag, the aircraft’s two 65-hp Lycoming -145 4-cylinder engines had been buried within the fuselage. These had been later found to be lacking in sufficient power to sustain lift and were replaced by two 120-hp six-cylinder 6AC264F2 air-cooled Franklin engines.
The N-1M produced its 1st test flight on July three, 1940, at Baker Dry Lake, California, with Vance Breese at the controls. Breese’s inaugural flight in the N-1 M was inauspicious. Throughout a higher-speed taxi run, the aircraft hit a rough spot in the dry lake bed, bounced into the air and accidentally became airborne for a couple of hundred yards. In the initial stages of flight testing, Breese reported that the aircraft could fly no higher than five feet off the ground and that flight could only be sustained by maintaining a precise angle of attack. Von Karman was called in and he solved the difficulty by generating adjustments to the trailing edges of the elevons.
When Vance Breese left the N-1 M system to test-fly the North American B-25, Moye Stephens, the Northrop company secretary, took more than testing of the aircraft. By November 1941, following possessing produced some 28 flights, Stephens reported that when attempting to move the N-1M about its vertical axis, the aircraft had a tendency to oscillate in what is referred to as a Dutch roll. That is, the aircraft’s wings alternately rose and fell tracing a circular path in a plane that lies amongst the horizontal and the vertical. Although Stephens was fearful that the oscillations might not be controllable, he discovered that adjustments to the aircraft’s configuration cleared up the dilemma. In Might 1942, Stephens was replaced by John Myers, who served as test pilot on the project for around six months.
Although the exact period of flight testing for the N-1M is difficult to determine due to the fact both Northrop and Army Air Forces records have been lost, we do know that soon after its initial test flight at Baker Dry Lake, the aircraft was flown at Muroc and Rosamond Dry Lake, and at Hawthorne, California, and that late in the testing plan (probably soon after January 1943) it was towed by a C-47 from Muroc to Hawthorne on its final flight with Myers as the pilot.
From its inception, the N-1M was plagued by poor efficiency because it was each overweight and chronically underpowered. In spite of these issues, Northrop convinced General H. H. Hap" Arnold that the N-1 M was profitable sufficient to serve as the forerunner of much more advanced flying wing concepts, and the aircraft did type the basis for Northrop’s subsequent improvement of the N-M9 and of the bigger and longer-ranged XB-35 and YB-49 flying wings.
In 1945, Northrop turned the N-1M more than to the Army Air Forces in the hope that it would someday be placed on exhibit. On July 12, 1946, the aircraft was delivered to Freeman Field, Indiana. A little over a month later, the N-1M was provided to the National Air Museum and placed in storage at Park Ridge, Illinois. On Might 1,1949, the aircraft was placed in the Museum’s collection, and a handful of years later moved in packing crates to the Museum’s Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility in Suitland, Maryland. In 1979, the restoration of the N-1M began, and by early 1983, some four decades after it had made its final flight, the aircraft had been returned to its original situation.
• • • • •
Quoting Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum | Northrop P-61C Black Widow:
The P-61 Black Widow was the initial U.S. aircraft developed to find and destroy enemy aircraft at evening and in negative climate, a feat produced feasible by the use of on-board radar. The prototype 1st flew in 1942. P-61 combat operations started just after D-Day, June 6, 1944, when Black Widows flew deep into German airspace, bombing and strafing trains and road site visitors. Operations in the Pacific began at about the identical time. By the finish of Planet War II, Black Widows had noticed combat in every theater and had destroyed 127 enemy aircraft and 18 German V-1 buzz bombs.
The Museum’s Black Widow, a P-61C-1-NO, was delivered to the Army Air Forces in July 1945. It participated in cold-weather tests, high-altitude drop tests, and in the National Thunderstorm Project, for which the prime turret was removed to make room for thunderstorm monitoring gear.
Transferred from the United States Air Force.
Manufacturer:
Northrop Aircraft Inc.
Date:
1943
Country of Origin:
United States of America
Dimensions:
Overall: 450 x 1500cm, 10637kg, 2000cm (14ft 9 3/16in. x 49ft two 9/16in., 23450.3lb., 65ft 7 three/8in.)
• • • • •
Quoting Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum | Boeing B-29 Superfortress "Enola Gay":
Boeing’s B-29 Superfortress was the most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of Globe War II and the first bomber to property its crew in pressurized compartments. Though developed to fight in the European theater, the B-29 identified its niche on the other side of the globe. In the Pacific, B-29s delivered a variety of aerial weapons: conventional bombs, incendiary bombs, mines, and two nuclear weapons.
On August 6, 1945, this Martin-built B-29-45-MO dropped the 1st atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan. 3 days later, Bockscar (on show at the U.S. Air Force Museum near Dayton, Ohio) dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. Enola Gay flew as the advance weather reconnaissance aircraft that day. A third B-29, The Wonderful Artiste, flew as an observation aircraft on both missions.
Transferred from the United States Air Force.
Manufacturer:
Boeing Aircraft Co.
Martin Co., Omaha, Nebr.
Date:
1945
Country of Origin:
United States of America
Dimensions:
General: 900 x 3020cm, 32580kg, 4300cm (29ft six 5/16in. x 99ft 1in., 71825.9lb., 141ft 15/16in.)
Components:
Polished general aluminum finish
Physical Description:
4-engine heavy bomber with semi-monoqoque fuselage and higher-aspect ratio wings. Polished aluminum finish general, standard late-World War II Army Air Forces insignia on wings and aft fuselage and serial quantity on vertical fin 509th Composite Group markings painted in black "Enola Gay" in black, block letters on decrease left nose.