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).

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.

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...

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 …

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.

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

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.

May 11, 2023 · The Northrop X-4 Bantam, a small, experimental twinjet aircraft, was developed in the late 1940s to explore the uncharted territory of tailless aircraft design. With its unique characteristics, the X-4 Bantam has left a lasting impact on …

The final Northrop flying wing design, although it could more accurately be described as a tailless aircraft, was the XS-4 Skylancer, a transonic research vehicle with two 726kg thrust Westinghouse turbojets.