a friend of mine worked at lockheed and did minor work on the b2 bomber,i asked about your question and he said"LOL LOL we won the war,we can print anything we want and MAKE it true,do you really think WE came up with the idea for a flying wing too? i asked him to explain, and he cited variables that are not in the books we read..such as temperature,humidity,weather the sun was shining directly on test aircraft,etc etc. he said those old test were so out of whack that they instituted a new std of tests at lockheed. when designing aircraft parts are now put in the "waterfall" a static test that pours water over the surface and than those numbers are converted as to what air will do and then actually backed up in a real test flight when assy is finished.and so goes the process today. back in the 40's other factors also contributed to test number results....one was contracts. you could fuge the results slightly by running a little light on fuel,or ommitting certain equip....like o2 bottles for low tests etc. on paper these results became fact and were then quoted over and over.politicians made the final call without ever having seen the aircraft. so i then asked,well how much can stats be off? and he said between 2-4% and thats coming from a lockhead engineer.
