Skunk Works

So all of us, myself especially, had to trust that Denys Overholser, with his boyish grin and quiet self-confidence, really knew what in hell he was talking about and could produce big-time results. Dick Cantrell, head of our aerodynamics group, suggested burning Denys at the stake as a heretic and then going on to conventional projects. Cantrell, normally as soft-spoken and calm as Gregory Peck, whom he vaguely resembled, nevertheless had the temperament of a fiery Savonarola when, as in this instance, basics of fundamental aerodynamics were tossed aside in deference to a new technology understood only by witches and mathematical gnomes. But after a couple of hours of listening to Overholser’s explanations of stealth, Dick dropped his lanky frame onto the chair across from my desk and heaved a big sigh. “Okay, Ben,” he muttered, “I surrender. If that flat plate concept is really as revolutionary as that kid claims in terms of radar cross section, I don’t care what in hell it looks like, I’ll get that ugly son-of-a-bitch to fly.”

We could get the Statue of Liberty to do barrel rolls with the onboard computers that achieved aerodynamic capability by executing thousands of tiny electrohydraulic adjustments every second to an airplane’s control surfaces. This computerized enhanced flight stability gave us latitude in designing small, stealthy wings and short tails and mini-wing flaps, and left the awesome problems of unstable pitch and yaw to the computers to straighten out. Without those onboard computers, which the pilots called “fly-by-wire,” since electric wiring now replaced conventional mechanical control rods, our diamond would have been hopeless indeed. But even with the powerful onboard computers, getting into the sky, as Kelly’s boot to my butt suggested, would be far from a cakewalk.

We had a very strong and innovative design organization of about a dozen truly brilliant engineers, working at their drawing boards in a big barnlike room on the second floor of our headquarters building, who simply could not be conned or browbeaten into doing anything they knew would not work. One day, Kelly called upstairs for an engineer named Bob Allen. “Bob Allen there?” he asked. Whoever answered the phone replied, “Yeah, he is.” And hung up. Kelly was livid, but deep down he appreciated the feisty independence of his best people. The designers were either structural specialists who planned the airframe or systems designers who detailed the fuel, hydraulics, electrical, avionics, and weapons systems. In many ways they comprised the heart and soul of the Skunk Works and also were the most challenged by the structural demands of the new stealth technology. Thanks to Ufimtsev’s breakthrough formula, they were being told to shape an airplane entirely with flat surfaces and then tilt the individual panels so that radar energy scattered away and not back to the source. The airplane would be so deficient in lift-drag ratio that it would probably need a computer the size of Delaware to get it stable and keep it flying.

Several of our aerodynamics experts, including Dick Cantrell, seriously thought that maybe we would do better trying to build an actual flying saucer. The shape itself was the ultimate in low observability. The problem was finding ways to make a saucer fly. Unlike our plates, it would have to be rotated and spun. But how? The Martians wouldn’t tell us.

During those early months of the Hopeless Diamond, I dug in my heels. I forced our in-house doubters to sit down with Denys and receive a crash course on Stealth 101. That helped to improve their confidence quotient somewhat, and although I acted as square-shouldered as Harry Truman challenging the Republican Congress, deep down I was suffering bouts of angst myself, wondering if Kelly and some of the other skeptics had it right while I was being delusional. I kept telling myself that the financial and personal risks in pursuing this project were minimal compared to its enormous military and financial potential. But the politics of the situation had me worried: stealth would have been a perfect third project for me, after two reassuring successes under my belt.

But if stealth failed, I could hear several of my corporate bosses grousing: “What’s with Rich? Is he some sort of flake? Kelly would never have undertaken such a dubious project. We need to take charge of that damned Skunk Works and make it practical and profitable again.”