Industry History | Northrop Grumman — The Factory Next to the Dirt Strip in Hawthorne
· 1939-9
Unreviewed contributionBy kevin · · updated · Report an issue
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Industry History | Northrop Grumman — The Factory Next to the Dirt Strip in Hawthorne
kevin
People treat Northrop Grumman as a Falls Church contractor that always built stealth bombers.
The company that still carries Jack Northrop's name began as a factory beside a dirt strip in Hawthorne.
In the summer of 1939 Northrop left Douglas, where his earlier El Segundo firm had become a subsidiary, and met engineers at the Hotel Hawthorne to form an independent company.
They broke ground on a 122,000-square-foot plant on 30 September 1939. The city had laid a one-mile landing strip between Prairie and Crenshaw so finished aircraft could roll off the line and fly to Muroc for testing.
Northrop Aircraft moved into the new rooms in February 1940. Headcount rose from six people to 109 within a few months.
The first aircraft off the Hawthorne floor was the N-3PB patrol bomber in 1940. After the United States entered the war the Army took the field, and the plant worked under camouflage netting that still showed in 1946 aerial photographs.
The later flying-wing experiments that led to the B-2 were designed in this same Hawthorne complex. The 1994 purchase of Grumman added the Bethpage fighter book to the name.
The mechanism was a municipal runway as a factory tool. Northrop needed the strip more than a downtown office, because the product had to leave the building under its own power.
The airstrip is now Hawthorne Municipal Airport, also called Jack Northrop Field. The plant street still bears his name.
Photo: Hawthorne and Jack Northrop Field files, via Wikimedia Commons
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