The Only Man Who Flew Both The F-22 And The YF-23 On Why The YF-23 Lost - B-2 landing with the YF-23 in the foreground.jpg ...

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...the-yf-23-lost

In what may be my favorite installment in our ongoing series on Northrop's YF-23
Black Widow, we hear directly from famed test pilot Paul Metz. Metz started his
career as an F-105G Wild Weasel pilot in Vietnam and went on to become one of
America's preeminent test pilots. He flew Northrop's YF-23 on its first flight
during the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) competition that pitted the jet
against Lockheed's YF-22 and also went on to do the same for the F-22A. In the
video below, he describes what the ATF program was like from the inside and just
how good the YF-23 actually was. In addition, we get extra color on the
accelerated flight test program Northrop executed for the competition from test
pilot Jim Sandburg. Their testimony combined gives us an unprecedented look into
the YF-23 program and paints a clear picture that YF-23 was indeed equal if not
superior to its competition.

The lecture was put on at the Western Museum Of Flight—where one of the YF-23 is
on display—to a seniors group. This gem of historical reference has been largely
overlooked even as the YF-23 has risen to near legendary status, becoming one of
the most enigmatic and fascinating modern aircraft in history. What's so
important to underline is that Metz worked for both Northrop and Lockheed and is
not known for hyperbole. Yet even after flying the pre-production F-22, a far
more mature machine than the YF-23 ever was, he makes it quite clear that
Northrop's offering was on par with Lockheed's, if not superior.

The hardest hitting quote comes at the end of the lecture by the two test
pilots, where Metz states:

"Never hang your head in shame about what we did. We built a tremendous product
that would stand side-by-side with anything else, and in many cases exceed the
capabilities of anything else. And we can always be proud of that."


Sandberg and Metz also note that both aircraft met the ATF requirements and that
Lockheed was chosen because the Air Force had greater confidence they could
better manage the program.

Metz makes another incredibly valuable point about how Lockheed knew how to
present and market their airframe far better than Northrop did. He notes that
not everyone who would be in a position to select a fighter aircraft would be an
engineer and that they may not even be technically astute. So leaving 'lasting
impressions' on a conceptual level, even if they don't tell the whole story
technically, can give one side an advantage over the other.

Northrop's team was made up of brilliant engineers—Metz says they were beyond
compare—but they thought and spoke almost exclusively in engineering terms.
Meanwhile, Lockheed infused far more marketing, salesmanship, and
pizazz—'lasting impressions' as Metz eloquently puts it—into their YF-22 flight
demonstration program. They fundamentally understood how to sell their aircraft
and how 'showmanship' heavily impacts the acquisition decision-making process.
Northrop didn't and that fact may have proven fatal for the YF-23.

There is so much else in this video of importance to the Advanced Tactical
Fighter competition story. Sandburg talks about how the YF-23's massive
tailerons were so powerful that they largely mitigated the perceived advantages
of the YF-22's thrust vectoring. There are many other details about the genesis
of the ATF program overall, in-flight emergencies during the flight
demonstration phase, how the YF-23's radar cross-section helped influence its
unofficial Black Widow moniker, and even how that famous picture of the B-2
landing with the YF-23 in the foreground came to be.


https://youtu.be/Vpkv1ErWIf8

https://youtu.be/2EFHywoWzNQ

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