Northrop, John

Northrop, John – Jack Northrop

“John Knudsen Northrop (November 10, 1895 – February 18, 1981) was an American aircraft industrialist and designer who founded the Northrop Corporation in 1939.

His career began in 1916 as a draftsman for Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company (founded 1912). He joined the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1923 and worked on the Douglas World Cruiser, where in time he became a project engineer. In 1927 he joined the Lockheed Corporation, where he was a chief engineer on the Lockheed Vega transport. He left in 1929 to found Avion Corporation, which he sold in 1930. Two years later, he founded the Northrop Corporation. This firm became a subsidiary of Douglas Aircraft in 1939, so he co-founded a second company named Northrop.”

– Wikipedia

Northrop Grumman co-founder John Northrop in a 1974 interview talks believing in the reality of UFOs – Eyes On Cinema

Producer / interviewer Nancy Dale gave EOC permission to show this 1974 interview with John Northrop on their channel. John “Jack” Northrop talks about chief test pilot Max R. Stanley and “two very knowledgeable observers” saw a UFO Order the documentary The Illusive U.F.O. (1974) here: https://www.nancydalephd.com/ufo-vault/ (via archive.org)

YouTube Transcript:

well my interest began about

uh oh 23 years

ago when I was active in the air

Aerospace

industry our chief test pilot Max

Stanley who had had a tremendous amount

of previous aircraft experience was

making a trip back from from Albuquerque

to Los Angeles to Hawthorne to our plant

there and he and two very

knowledgeable observers saw a

UFO which could not be explained by any

of the techniques that we knew then or

know now they were able to keep this

object under observation for a period of

about 20 minutes and of course with

people of that character the chance of

any hoax or any misleading statements or

anything of this sort just simply

doesn’t exist these were top technicians

who had the opportunity firsthand

personally I have never seen a UFO or

had any contact with anyone who has

other than Mr Stanley but I had complete

and have complete confidence in him and

I know what he reported was actually

there well starting with that interest

then it became a natural thing to read

up on what I could here and there and

the other place and my belief in the

fact that there are UFOs so-called has

been reinfored through the years by what

I’ve read a great incentive to believe

uh which occurred in 1950 so that’s

about the size of it well you know it

really seems like these UFOs move in

very strange patterns they’re able to

hover almost standing still and then

zoom off it seems as if they must be

utilizing some other form of energy that

perhaps we don’t know about now in terms

of our present you know aerodynamic

technology do you feel that we’re

utiliz all that we can aircraft are

Thoroughly Modern and up to dat based on

our present knowledge but there is

absolutely no question in the world but

what there is not only a source of power

of which we’re not AED but there is also

a source of propulsion which we’re not

acquainted because the UFO seem to have

unlimited power which perhaps could we

might obtain if we develop uh uh fusion

fusion power is more or less goes on

forever fishing that we’re using now

utilizes the the elements to a certain

extent but Fusion recreates the material

that’s us use and perhaps a fuse a small

fusion power plant would give you the

power necessary but the the propulsion

of these UFOs is unique their ability to

hover their ability to accelerate very

rapidly their ability to to move at very

high speeds very much higher than

anything that we have achieved even with

our supersonic

aircraft all of these things things and

particularly interestingly without Sonic

booms and the things that we don’t like

about our supersonic aircraft all of

these things indicate a type of

propulsion which is unique different

than anything we know anything about and

which would be of tremendous value if we

could develop it and use it and that’s

the reason I feel with a number of

others who have studied it that it is a

subject which deserves the highest type

of scientific study and at an early date

the advantages to be gained are

perfectly enormous well since you have

designed a number of aircraft since the

early days and throughout the war such

as the Flying Wing would you say that

flying saucers are aerodynamically

sound I don’t believe they are

aerodynamically powered I don’t think

that there is any

aerodynamic uh particular value to their

shapes they come in a number different

shapes all the way from a flatten sort

of pumpkin shape flattened sphere like a

pumpkin to elongated sort of cigar

shapes to the well-known Flying Saucer

shape which consists of a saucer with

another inverted on the top of it and uh

this type counts for about 50% but the

flight characteristics of all of the

different shapes are similar in other in

other words they’ve all been seen to

accelerate rapidly to be able to stop to

be able to turn rapidly to be able to

hover at will anywhere they want to go

so that the type of sustention

propulsion whatever it is that enabl

them to behave in the fashion they do is

something that we simply have no

technical background for at the present

time Mr Northrop how do you feel about

the general ridicule that people are

accorded that are into the study or

believe in UFOs

well there’s great there has been a

great deal of ridicule directed to the

subject of

UFOs and probably rightly so to a

certain extent because probably 85 to

90% of the sightings of UFOs are not

really unidentified flying objects in

other

words there is an answer to

approximately 90% of the sightings that

are made which correspond to the present

techniques that we have remains a 10% to

15% number which cannot be explained by

any of our present science so that

there’s a natural reason to a certain

extent for ridicule and don’t forget

that the right brothers and uh Fulton

and everybody the man who invented the

first steam engine all were ridiculed

didn’t want to leave the horses or the

buggies or anything of that sort so it’s

a natural thing for humans to ridicule

something that they don’t understand but

the subject of UFO

has

has pulled in the serious study of many

highly competent technical people many

doctors of science have studied and

fully believe in UFOs and the number of

these is sufficiently great and their

reputation is sufficiently high so that

they’re really in my humble estimation

there’s no room left for ridicule it

just doesn’t belong in this subject if

we’re talking about genuine

UFOs and how long do you feel it will be

before we are flying in

UFOs well this probably is A $64

question without a question of a doubt I

think it depends a great deal on how

rapidly we take them seriously and how

soon we really set up

scientific a scientific study team to

work on the subject we

have uh records of thousands and

thousands of sightings and those could

be correlated and arranged in a suitable

fashion by the use of modern computers

so that we could probably learn a great

deal that we don’t understand now simply

by that type of a study

whether that would lead us to a solution

of what the power is and what the

propulsion method is I simply don’t know

it can be anywhere from 10 years to

10,000 as far as I can see right now but

I do believe that it’s something that is

realistic something that is tremendously

value something that we ought to study

as soon and as rigorously as it can

possibly be arranged for

Alternate backup copy of interview above, originally posted separately in November 2023 by UFOB but since deleted, is embedded in this reupload below…