The antenna mounted to the windshield bow was interesting. Just
another out there engineering feature to go along with all magnesium
construction. It was originally intended to use one of the so called
hyper engines, the Pratt and Whitney X-1800. In the even the X-1800
project failed and the R-2800 had to be substituted. It was much
larger and heavier than the X-1800 and caused a lot of delay for redesign.
Although the Northrop N1M, which was developed as a lightweight and low
cost test bed for the XP-56 had good stability characteristics, the XP-56
did not and only flew a small number of test flights.
Some of Northrop's engineers as a part of this project invented the
heliarc torch for welding magnesium as well as aluminum.
