Skunk Works

I’ve been here many times over the years on many Skunk Works test flights, usually accompanying Kelly Johnson. Today, the Have Blue prototype that will soon be rolling down this runway is the first built under my regime after Johnson’s retirement three years earlier. But we really aren’t one hundred percent certain that this sucker can actually get off the ground. It is the most unstable and weirdest-looking airplane since Northrop’s Flying Wing, built on a whim back in the late 1940s.

I watch nervously as Have Blue emerges from the guarded cavity inside its hangar and is rolled out. It is a flying black wedge, carved out of flat, two-dimensional angles. Head on, with its black paint and highly swept wings, it looks like a giant Darth Vader—the first airplane that has not one rounded surface.

Bill Park, our chief test pilot, complained that it was the ugliest airplane he’d ever strapped himself into. Bill claimed that flying such a mess earned him the right to double hazard pay. I agreed. He’s getting a $25,000 bonus for this series of Have Blue test flights. To Bill, even the opaque triangular cockpit is ominous, especially if he has to punch out. But the specially coated glass will keep radar beams from picking up his helmeted head. The real beauty of Have Blue is that Bill’s head is a hundred times more observable on radar than the airplane he will be flying.

The sharp edges and extreme angular shape of our small prototype create whirling tornadoes and make the airplane a flying vortex generator. To be able to fly at all, the airplane’s fly-by-wire system must operate perfectly, otherwise Have Blue will tumble out of control.

I check my watch. Nearly 0700. I give the thumbs-up sign to Bill Park in the cockpit, who’s preoccupied with last-minute preflight checks. Kelly Johnson is standing at my side, looking stoic. He’s still skeptical about whether or not this prototype will prove way too draggy to get off the ground. But Kelly brought along a case of champagne on the Jetstar from Burbank to celebrate after Park’s flight. Over the years at the Skunk Works we’ve never failed to celebrate a successful maiden test flight of anything we’ve ever built. We always polished off a hard-earned success with a boisterous party where Kelly challenged all comers to an arm-wrestling contest. He’s an old man now, ailing, but I still wouldn’t take him on.