Skunk Works

On that day British and West German intelligence finished tunneling into East Berlin to eavesdrop on Soviet and East German military headquarters. Allen Dulles visited the Oval Office and made his report personally to President Eisenhower: “I’ve come to tell you about two successes today—one very high and the other very low.”

7 OVERFLYING RUSSIA

A MONTH after the first U-2 flight, the Skunk Works’ test pilots were soaring 70,000 feet above the desert, breaking all existing altitude records in secret. After a few months, our pilots had logged 1,000 hours of flight time, had been to 74,500 feet, and had flown ten-hour 5,000-mile missions on one tank of gas.

Kelly was delighted by the airplane’s performance even though our pilots experienced frequent engine stall-outs at these extreme altitudes, forcing Pratt & Whitney’s engineers to log huge overtime adjusting their high-altitude engine to become more efficient.

With its enormous wingspan, designed to provide quick lift, the U-2 was able to glide for 250 miles from 70,000 feet, taking more than an hour to do so. Pilots couldn’t restart their engine unless they descended to the more oxygen-rich altitude of 35,000 feet or lower. Meanwhile, that damned engine caused another big headache by spraying oil onto the cockpit windshield via the compressor that ran the cockpit air-conditioning. That was my domain. The airplane held sixty-four quarts of oil, and we often had to replace twenty lost quarts after a flight. Our pilots breathed potentially volatile pure oxygen inside their sealed helmets, while their windshield dripped potentially volatile hot oil. I tried all kinds of solutions, but in desperation I heeded a suggestion made by one of our veteran mechanics: “Why don’t we just stuff Kotex around the oil filter and absorb the mess before it hits the windshield.”

With great hesitation I approached the boss. Those steely eyes narrowed and he studied me hard. I saw my brief career at his side evaporate in one explosive bellow: “Rich, you’re out of here!”

Kelly silently heard my sanitary napkin suggestion, then raised his eyebrows, shrugged, and said, “What the hell, give it a shot.” I called the crew out at the facility and told them to stand by for a delivery of industrial-size cartons of sanitary napkins being airlifted their way immediately. And, by God, it worked!

But then a mysterious problem suddenly developed that held potentially disastrous consequences. The ground crews began reporting broken rubber seals inside engine valves and leaking pressure seals around the cockpit. The rubber had badly oxidized in only a few weeks, leaving all of us scratching our heads. We replaced the seals, but a few weeks later the seals leaked again. As it turned out, the answer to the mysterious malady was revealed one day on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, just beneath the fold. The article reported how European-made automobile tires were proving to be totally unacceptable for Los Angeles motorists. Because of our smog, the article reported, the rubber was badly oxidizing and causing “tire fatigue,” leading to flats and rapid deterioration. The villain was ozone, a key component of our noxious smog. U.S. tire manufacturers, aware of the smog problem, added silicone to the rubber for their tires shipped to Southern California in order to avoid this oxidation problem. Reading that story, I almost jumped out of my chair. The U-2 was flying at the top of the troposphere, which was heavily laden with ozone. I mentioned the article to Dick Boehme, the U-2 program manager, who took it directly to Kelly. The fix was made quickly. All our seals were replaced with silicone and the problem vanished.

Despite the dreadful hours and the problems they caused in family life, the Skunk Works was for me far more splendid than a misery. Each day I found myself stretching on tiptoes to keep pace with my colleagues. Working with that crew was invigorating and fun. One of my favorites was our hydraulics guru, Dave Robertson, who in his spare time built toy square shells for a toy square cannon he invented, just to prove it could work. One Sunday I went over to his house and we lit the powder charge on the front lawn. Boom! The square projectile shot in a high arc across the street and blasted through the neighbor’s upstairs window. “Wow,” Dave grinned, “that little sucker really works!”