Skunk Works

Our manufacturing group consisted of the machine shop people, sheet metal fabrication and assemblers, planners, tool designers, and builders. Each airplane required its own special tools and parts, and in projects like Have Blue, where only two prototypes were involved, we designed and used wooden tools to save time and money. When the project ended, we just threw them away.

The shop manufactured and assembled the airplane, and the inspection and quality assurance branch checked the product at all stages of development. That was also unique with us, I think. In most companies quality control reported to the head of the shop. At the Skunk Works quality control reported directly to me. They were a check and balance on the work of the shop. Our inspectors stayed right on the floor with the machinists and fabricators, and quality control inspections occurred almost daily, instead of once, at the end of a procedure. Constant inspection forced our workers to be supercritical of their work before passing it on. Self-checking was a Skunk Works concept now in wide use in Japanese industry and called by them Total Quality Management.

Our workers were all specialists in specific sections of the airplane: fuselage, tail, wings, control surfaces, and power plant. Each section was built separately then brought together and assembled like a giant Tinkertoy. We used about eighty shop people on this project, and because we were in a rush and the airplane was small, we stood it on its tail and assembled it vertically. That way, the assemblers could work on the flat, plated structural frame, front and back, asses to elbows, simultaneously. I kept Alan Brown, our stealth engineer, on the floor all the time to answer workers’ questions.

Flat plates, we discovered, were much harder to tool than the usual rounded surfaces. The plates had to be absolutely perfect to fit precisely. We also had nagging technical headaches applying the special radar-absorbing coatings to the surfaces. Each workday the problems piled higher and I sat behind Kelly’s old desk reaching for my industrial-size bottle of headache tablets. Meanwhile, the Navy came to us to test the feasibility for a stealthy weapons system and set up their own top secret security system that was twice as stringent as the Air Force’s. We had to install special alarm systems that cost us a fortune in the section of our headquarters building devoted to the naval work. And we were also doing some prototype work for the Army on stealthy munitions.

In the midst of all this interservice rivalry, security, and hustle and bustle, Major General Bobby Bond, who was in charge of tactical air warfare, came thundering into the Skunk Works with blood in his eye on a boiling September morning. The Santa Ana winds were howling and half of L.A. was under a thick pall of smoke from giant brush fires, mostly started by maniacs with matches. My asthma was acting up and I had a lousy headache and I was in no mood for a visit from the good general, even though I had a special regard for the guy. But General Bond was a brooder and a worrier, who drove me and everyone else absolutely bonkers at times. He always thought he was being shortchanged or victimized in some way. He pounded on my desk and accused me of taking some of my best workers off his Have Blue airplane to work on some rumored secret Navy project. I did my best to look hurt and appeased Bobby by even raising my right hand in a solemn oath. I told myself, So, it’s a little white lie. What else can I do? The Navy project is top secret and Bond has no need to know. We could both go to jail if I told him what was really up.

Unfortunately, on the way out to lunch, the general spotted a special lock and alarm system above an unmarked door which he knew from prowling the rings of the Pentagon was used only by the Navy on its top secret projects. Bond squeezed my arm. “What’s going on inside that door?” he demanded to know. Before I could think up another lie, he commanded me to open up that door. I told him I couldn’t; he wasn’t cleared to peek inside. “Rich, you devious bastard, I’m giving you a direct order, open up that goddam door this instant or I’ll smash it down myself with a goddam fire ax.” The guy meant every word. He began pounding on the door until it finally opened a crack, and he forced his way in. There sat a few startled Navy commanders.

“Bobby, it isn’t what you think,” I lied in vain.

“The hell it isn’t you lying SOB,” he fumed.

I surrendered, but not gracefully. I said, “Okay, you got me. But before we go to lunch you’re going to have to sign an inadvertent disclosure form or security will have both our asses.” The Navy, of course, was outraged at both of us. An Air Force general seeing their secret project was as bad as giving a blueprint to the Russians.