The Northrop X-4 Bantam is a prototype small twinjet aircraft manufactured by Northrop Corporation in 1948. It had no horizontal tail surfaces, depending instead on combined elevator and aileron control surfaces (called elevons ) for control in pitch and roll attitudes, almost exactly in the manner of the similar-format, rocket-powered ...

Northrop X-4 Bantam During World War II, engineers in the U.S. and UK studied semi-tailless aircraft, and the German Luftwaffe fielded the semi-tailless Me 163 (one of which is on display in the museum’s World War II Gallery).

Jan 22, 2024 · Unlike her avian namesake, the X-4 Bantam could fly high, far, and fast. She actually drew her inspiration from a former WWII nemesis, namely Nazi Germany’s Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet, which was...

Feb 28, 2014 · In this 1950 straight-on view of the NACA High-Speed Flight Research Station’s (now NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center’s) X-4 research aircraft, the horizontal tailless design is quite evident. The X-4 was designed to test a semi-tailless wing configuration at transonic speeds.

When it appeared at the flight test facility at California’s Muroc Air Force Base in 1948, the Northrop X-4 Bantam was the 98-pound weakling of research airplanes.

Dec 15, 2024 · It was the Northrop X-4 Bantam, the fourth aircraft in the famous X-Planes series of experimental aircraft tested at Edwards Air Force Base, whose distance from major population centers and dry lakebed presented among the most ideal conditions for …

The X-4 Bantam, a single-place, swept-wing, semi-tailless aircraft, was designed and built by the Northrop Aircraft Company for the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, or NACA.

Jan 25, 2022 · The X-4 Bantam was an experimental small twin-jet aircraft manufactured in 1948. It had no horizontal tail surfaces, depending instead on combined elevator and aileron control surfaces (called elevons) for control in pitch and roll attitude.

Sep 13, 2022 · The semi-tailless Northrop X-4 Bantam’s design helped iron out the problems of transonic flight.

The X-4 Bantam Was Small and Humble. The twin-engine X-4 was uniquely small. Measuring only 23 feet long and 14 feet high, the X-4 was in fact smaller than the Cessna 152 two-seater so...