Skunk Works

11. Funding a program must be timely so that the contractor doesn’t have to keep running to the bank to support government projects.

12. There must be absolute trust between the military project organization and the contractor with very close cooperation and liaison on a day-to-day basis. This cuts down misunderstanding and correspondence to an absolute minimum.

13. Access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled.

14. Because only a few people will be used in engineering and most other areas, ways must be provided to reward good performance by pay not based on the number of personnel supervised.

Although most of our cherished rules were now in tatters, my guys managed to finish their work on Have Blue in mid-November, nearly three weeks before the flight test target date of December 1, 1977. “Rich,” Bob Murphy teased, “you’d never have made your deadline by using regular workers. You had the cream of the crop in management delivering the goods for you.” The airplane was loaded onto a C-5 cargo plane at two in the morning and roared away to our remote test site, leaving behind several complaints to the FAA from irate citizens whose sleep was disturbed by this violation of late-night takeoffs from the Burbank Airport. Frankly, it was such a relief to get Have Blue out of assembly that I would have gladly paid a fine.

The plane was now in the hands of our flight test crews, who would spend the next couple of weeks performing flight control, engine, and taxi tests. Even though the test site was in a remote location, our airplane was kept under wraps inside its hangar most of the time. Soviet satellites made regular passes, and every time our airplane was rolled out everyone on the base who wasn’t cleared for Have Blue had to go into the windowless mess hall and have a cup of coffee until we took off.

Seventy-two hours before the first test flight, the airplane began to seriously overheat near the tail during engine test runs. The engine was removed, and Bob Murphy and a helper decided to improvise by building a heat shield. They noticed a six-foot steel shop tool cabinet. “Steel is steel,” Murphy said to his assistant. “We’ll send Ben Rich the bill for a new cabinet.” They began cutting up the cabinet to make the heat shield panels between Have Blue’s surface and its engine. And it worked perfectly. Only in the Skunk Works…

It’s the first of December, 1977, just after sunup, the best time for test pilots to take off. Winds are usually calmest then, but this morning the wind chill blasts through my topcoat like it’s tissue paper. I’m wondering how I can be so damned cold while I’m sweating bullets over this test flight—probably the most critical test of my career. This flight will be every bit as important to the nation’s future and the future of the Skunk Works as the first test flight of the U-2 spy plane, which took place at this very same highly secret sand pile more than a quarter century ago.

Back then, I was a Skunk Works rookie and this base, which we built for the CIA, was just a tiny outpost of windswept quonset huts and trailers, guarded by rookie CIA agents with tommy guns. Kelly had jokingly nicknamed this godforsaken place Paradise Ranch, hoping to lure young and innocent flight crews to work on a dry lake bed where quarter-inch rocks blew around most afternoons. It is now a sprawling facility, bigger than some municipal airports, a test range for sensitive aviation projects. No one nowadays gains access without special clearances that include a polygraph test. Such paranoia has kept our most guarded national defense secrets secret.