Max R. Stanley; Test Pilot for Northrop’s Early Flying Wings

Max R. Stanley, a pioneer test pilot who flew the experimental Flying Wing 40 years before development of its modern counterpart, the B-2 Stealth bomber, has died. He was 89.

Stanley, considered the dean of Northrop test pilots, died Saturday in his Brentwood home, said his wife, Judie Scott Stanley.

On June 25, 1946, Stanley piloted the first Flying Wing, the B-35, which was a four-engine 172-foot-long, boomerang-shaped craft, from Northrop’s Hawthorne Airport to what was then the Muroc Army airfield east of Palmdale.

Emerging from the cockpit after the 55-minute flight, Stanley told The Times: “She handled beautifully.”

But taxiing along the rabbit-infested Hawthorne runway, he had had momentary doubts, he conceded 50 years later: “I looked out and I was not gaining speed on this rabbit. I thought, either something’s wrong or that’s one hell of a fast rabbit.”

Designed by John K. Northrop, about a dozen versions of the Flying Wing were built between 1942 and 1949, ranging from two-seat N-9s used to train pilots for the fuselage-free aircraft to the three-man B-35 piston-engine plane to a 15-man, eight-jet B-49. Eventually, the Northrop plane lost out to the Convair B-36 as the bomber of choice for America’s Strategic Air Command. And, ironically, the name of Muroc was changed to Edwards Air Force Base in honor of Capt. Glenn W. Edwards, a pilot killed in June 1948, when his jet-powered Flying Wing went out of control and crashed.

Nevertheless, the Flying Wing remained Stanley’s favorite of all the aircraft he flew from the 1930s until his retirement from Northrop in 1972. Although the plane was criticized by some for fuel inefficiency and lack of safety, Stanley steadfastly defended it.

“In my opinion, the best airplanes I ever flew are the Flying Wings, the most spectacular of the many designs which have come from the sure hand of John K. Northrop, president of the Northrop Co.,” Stanley wrote in The Times in 1950. “In the modern Flying Wing type they have produced a very useful and efficient airplane. . . . This airplane is flying faster than any plane of its size has ever flown. It has flown farther than any jet airplane has ever gone unrefueled. It will carry a bigger load than any other plane of its size and weight. It is easy to fly. And it is adaptable for passengers, cargo or a variety of military uses.”

He recalled decades later that radar tests proved that the earliest Flying Wings were undetectable by radar facilities “even when they knew we were coming in,” but added ruefully that invisibility “apparently didn’t impress anyone at the time.”

When Northrop contracted to build the secrecy-shrouded, controversial and costly Stealth bomber in the late 1980s, Stanley defended that, too, once commenting to The Times: “In my opinion, it’s a very good flying airplane. I have a great deal of confidence in the B-2.”

A native of Santa Monica, Stanley was educated at Stanford University. He began flying in the 1930s and, in 1941, before the United States entered World War II, ferried U.S. planes to the British via South America and Africa.

He was a founding member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots and chairman of its scholarship committee. He was also a founding member of the Aviation Country Club of Southern California and a member of the Quiet Birdmen.

In addition to his wife of 20 years, he is survived by his children, Dinah Jane, Paul and Jeffrey, and nine grandchildren.