The YF-23 So Smooth, Stealthy, Yet So Unwanted

by David Myhra

The YF-23 was an unconventional-looking aircraft, with diamond-shaped wings, a profile with substantial area-ruling to reduce drag at trans-sonic speeds, and an all-moving V-tail. The cockpit was placed high, near the nose of the aircraft for good visibility for the pilot. The aircraft featured a tricycle landing gear configuration with a nose landing gear and two main landing gear. The weapons bay was placed on the underside of the fuselage between the nose and main landing gear.The cockpit has a center stick and side throttle.

36 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 27, 2012

About the author

David Myhra is a US-based author and researcher, actively publishing from 1980 to the present; he has published more than 130+ books, and dozens of eBooks & articles on varied historical topics, from Soviet-era aircraft carriers and Japanese battleships to X-planes and World War II German flying machines. His primary focus was the later; most of his books cover individual aircraft types, both paper-projects and full production warplanes, and their designers - many he personally interviewed. Myhra was first to publish books on VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing) test aircraft. He interviewed dozens of aviation designers, gas turbine & rocket scientists all over the world. He traveled extensively to research and interview German scientists captured and taken to the Soviet Union, forced to work on their derivative projects after the war. He was involved in production of numerous "History Channel" documentaries and other historical programming, foremost being the National Geographic 2009 documentary “Hitler’s Stealth Fighter” which featured the building of a full-scale model of the Horten "Flying Wing" by the Northrop Grumman Corporation. This model was built to investigate the stealth characteristics and radar cross section of the original 1944 design.