GLEN EDWARDS & THE FLYING WING

Robert Cardenas, whose recollections of the Northrop YB-49 are posted here, has now told the story in a more ordered fashion in July's Air&Space/Smithsonian. Time hasn't softened his opinion of the 'Flying Wing': 'I leveled the YB-49 at 20,000 feet, pulled back on the throttles, and waited for it to stop flying. Because most of the shudder you get in a stall comes from the tail, not the wing, I knew I wouldn't get a big shudder. Sure enough, when the tailless airplane quit flying, instead of the normal shudder just before the nose drops, I experienced a violent pitch forward into a negative-G tumble, which pulled my rear end out of the seat. In a microsecond, I realized that I had no aerodynamic flow over any control surface that would allow me to recover. It was as if you took a nice, crisp, clean dollar bill out and let it go; it would go spinning around its center.'

Great moments in flying!

Glen Edwards's diaries have been donated by his family to the Edwards Air Force Base museum, presently located within the base but eventually to be housed in a new building outside the west gate, so it will be more accessible to the public. These are the originals of the daily record that went into Glen Edwards: Diary of a Bomber Pilot, published by Smithsonian Institution Press in 1998 and now available in digital form for Amazon's nifty Kindle e-book reader and also in Mobipocket format which can be read on any personal computer and many mobile devices. You can also get an autographed copy of the hardcover book from me. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford