“was obsolescent by the time it became operational”
But that didn’t stop Stuart Symington from shutting down the technically superior YB-49 program at Northrop to make sure the money went to his buddies at Convair.
Had he not done that, we would have had operational stealth bombers (a feature of the YB-49) in the 1950s, instead of the massive kludge that had to be parked at Davis-Monthan after not much more then a decade of use.
And destroyed the existing flying wing airframes. What a waste and a shame! I saw the smaller N9-M fly at Planes of Fame in Chino. Another flying wing lost forever.