Skunk Works

My input was far less dramatic working on America’s first supersonic jet fighter, the F-104 Starfighter, nicknamed by the press “the missile with the man in it” in tribute to its blazing Mach 2 speed. I helped design the inlet ducts on that, as well as on our first military jet transport, the C-130, and on the F-90. The latter was a stainless-steel jet fighter, capable of pulling twelve-g loads during incredible dives and turns, but was woefully underpowered since the engine originally designed for it was canceled by the Air Force for budgetary reasons. So the F-90 wound up serving the country by being shipped to Ground Zero at the Nevada atomic test site at a mock military base specially constructed to determine how various structures and military equipment would withstand an A-bomb explosion. The short answer was everything was either vaporized or blown to pieces except for the F-90. Its windshield was vaporized, its paint sand-blasted, but otherwise our steel airplane survived in one piece. That sucker was built.

The projects at Lockheed were all big-ticket items, and workrooms as big as convention halls were crammed with endless rows of white-shirted draftsmen, working elbow to elbow, at drafting tables. We engineers sat elbow to elbow, too, but in smaller rooms and a slightly less regimented atmosphere. We were the analytical experts, the elite of the plant, who decreed sizes and shapes and told the draftsmen what to draw. All of us were well aware that we worked for Chief Engineer Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, the living legend who had designed Lockheed’s Electra and Lockheed’s Constellation, the two most famous commercial airliners in the world. All of us had seen him rushing around in his untucked shirt, a paunchy, middle-aged guy with a comical duck’s waddle, slicked-down white hair, and a belligerent jaw. He had a thick, round nose and reminded me a lot of W. C. Fields, but without the humor. Definitely without that. Johnson was all business and had the reputation of an ogre who ate young, tender engineers for between-meal snacks. We peons viewed him with the knee-knocking dread and awe of the almighty best described in the Old Testament. The guy would just as soon fire you as have to chew on you for some goof-up. Right or not, that was the lowdown on Kelly Johnson. One day, in my second year on the job, I looked up from my desk and found myself staring right into the face of the chief engineer. I turned pale, then crimson. Kelly was holding a drawing of an inlet I had designed. He was neither angry nor unkind while handing it back to me. “It will be way too draggy, Rich, the way you designed this. It’s about twenty percent too big. Refigure it.” Then he was gone. I spent the rest of the day refiguring and discovered that the inlet was eighteen percent too big. Kelly had figured it out in his head—by intuition or maybe just experience? Either way, I was damned impressed.

In those days Kelly wore his chief engineer’s hat until around two in the afternoon, then drove off to the Skunk Works, which was about half a mile down the road tucked away inside the Lockheed complex, and spent the final two hours of his workday doing his secret design and development work. There were always plenty of rumors about what Kelly was up to—designing atomic-powered bombers or rocket-driven supersonic fighters. Supposedly, he had a dozen engineers working for him, and we in the main plant pitied those guys who were under that brutal thumb.

Still, the truth was I welcomed the chance to get out of the main plant for a while. Lockheed was very regimented and bureaucratic, and by my fourth year on the payroll I felt stymied and creatively frustrated. I had a wife and a new baby son to support, and my father-in-law, who admired my moxie, was pushing me to take over his bakery-delicatessen, which earned the family a very comfortable living. I had actually given notice to Lockheed, but at the last moment changed my mind: I loved building airplanes a lot more than baking bagels or curing corned beef.

So I was eager to experience Kelly’s Skunk Works, even if I was only on loan to him for a few weeks. It never occurred to me that I had any chance at all to stay there permanently. I was well trained in my engineering specialty and actually had taught thermodynamics at UCLA before joining Lockheed. I was also a naturalized American citizen and intensely patriotic, and welcomed the chance to work on secret projects designed to defeat the Russians. I had plenty of self-assurance and figured that as long as I did a good job, Kelly Johnson would behave himself.