Some quotes from Northrop executives :

Yu Ping Liu (Northrop’s Chief Scientist), after
news arrived that the YF-22 had been selected :

“Tom Rooney (the YF-23 program manager) came out. I saw his face, I knew it was over. So, I did not even receive the word. I just left. I was crushed, because we knew the numbers. We knew the RCS numbers they accomplished compared to ours, and there’s no reason why we would lose.”

Thomas V. Jones (Northrop’s CEO):

“Absolute disappointment. To this day I think they made the wrong decision. If the criterion was the best airplane possible for the mission. That’s what I believe.”

Here are some comments from another blog :

” The YF-23 was always the better plane, even during the fighter competition. It was faster, more stealthy, and could suppress its infra-red signature. It could do all this and carry more weapons much farther than the F-22 without refueling.

It was unthinkable that the F-22 was chosen over the 23, but this was a competition full of the unthinkable. I remember when the General in charge of the then ATF program mandated that no canard equipped aircraft would be allowed to compete. He didn’t have any reason for his edict other than he didn’t like the look of canards.

Instantly Grumman was excluded from the ATF competition, because a forward swept wing doesn’t work without the canard, just look at the X-29. Your tax dollars at work.

Now we are stuck with an aerodynamic barn door as our next generation fighter. The F-15 mafia won and the US citizen lost. They got their dogfighter, at $200M+ a copy. What sense does it make to have a stealth dogfighter that needs to shoot down enemy planes at a rate of at least 10 to 1?

Here’s a hint for the USAF, if the plane is in a dogfight, it’s not stealthy. Everyone knows where it is ever since this invention called radio was added to airplanes. And if it is in a dogfight, it is as vulnerable as an F-15 to the most deadly air-to-air missile, the heat seeker.

If I were flying in combat outnumbered 10 to 1, I’d want to have the highest stealth possible and would want to be able to hit and run other fighters, not jump into a fur ball with them. A hit and run requires speed, and you can’t be sucking on a highly observable tanker all the time too.

There is a lot we’ll never know about the YF-23, like why its top speed in supercruise is still classified, or what the canard equipped version looked like. It’s a good design though. Much more aerodynamically advanced than the 22. Maybe it will finally get it’s chance.”

This copy of Northrop’s reply to my letter (virtually ten
years ago), may be of interest.

Sorry about the print, my mailbox had been soaked in
rainwater when their envelope came, and wrecked some
very lovely photos of both Black Widow/Gray Ghost
prototypes which they had enclosed. Some of these same
photos can be found on the net.

One of them, together with another superb shot of the
F-20 Tigershark (sent by Northrop too), hangs on my
office wall. I’ve kept the YF-23 decal too all these years.

P-40F

The only P-40 which was engined with the
Merlin was the P-40F in 1941. This had
the 1,300 hp Packard V-1650-1, which was the
Merlin 28, roughly similar to the Merlin XX
powering the Hurricane IIC.

I think the early Allison V-1710 engines which
powered the P-40E and before that did not have
an automatic manifold boost pump unlike the
Merlin, which explained why these earlier P-40s
had such a hard time against Axis fighters.
(I remember reading about this in an old issue
of Warbirds).

Here’s something on the P-40F:

http://home.att.net/~jbaugher1/p40_9.html

Note the superb range with the larger drop tank.,
unmatched by any other Allied fighter at that
time, other than the P-51 which came much later
of course. Fitted with similar external tanks,
the P-40 far outranged the P-38 and P-47. Even
when these two latter fighters were available
for escort in 1943, they could only make it
halfway inside Germany with tanks, having to
turn back and leave the bombers to make it on
their own deeper in. It’s quite likely the P-40
would have made it to Berlin with external fuel.

Had someone thought of fitting the Merlin 61
(the Mustang’s Packard V-1650-3) to the P-40
much earlier on, or at least the 1,440 hp Merlin 45
(Spitfire V engine) it would have easily matched
the Bf-109G and FW-190A-8, not to mention the
range to carry the fight to them.

And even with the basic Allison V-1710-81, the
USAAf didn’t realize they already had an escort
fighter, albeit somewhat outclassed, to save
a lot of B-17s/B-24s’ crews lives in 1942/3.