Skunk Works

Other Voices

Keith Beswick

I began working for the Skunk Works in flight-test operations on the U-2 out at Edwards Air Force Base in October 1958. By the 1960s I was put in charge of flight testing for the Blackbirds. We were working on the cutting edge, forced to improvise a dozen times a day. We would rig up some of the damndest tests ever seen. I remember when Ben Rich and his cohorts decided to test their cockpit air-conditioning system, they put one of our test pilots inside a broiler big enough to roast an ox medium rare, to see if their cooling system really worked well enough. The guy sat inside a cylinder cooled to 75 degrees by Ben’s air-conditioning system while the outer skin of the cylinder cooked to about 600 degrees. I asked Ben, “What would you do if the system failed?” He laughed. “Get out of town in a hurry.”

During the test phase of the Blackbird, we pumped air pressure into the fuel tanks up to one and a half times greater than the design limits. We did this late at night, inside Building 82, when there were very few people around, because if you’re pumping up that much titanium and if there should be a major failure and the thing blows—that’s an awful lot of energy bursting like a balloon. It would blow out windows in downtown Burbank, so we filled the fuselage with several million Ping-Pong balls to dampen any explosive impact and hid behind a thick steel shield with a heavy glass window, watching the airplane getting all this high-pressure air pumped into its tanks. We were pumping up to twelve inches of mercury and got to about ten when suddenly, Kaboom! The drag chute compartment in the rear blew out. Henry Combs, our structural engineer, took a look at the damage and went back to the drawing board and made the fixes. A few nights later we were back behind the protective shield in Building 82. This time we got up to ten and a half inches of mercury when the drag chute forward bulkhead ruptured with a loud bang. Henry took notes and went back to the drawing board. Three nights later we were all back for more testing. The pumping began and we heard the airplane crickling and crackling as the pressure mounted. It was really tense behind that shield as the mercury rose. We got up to eleven and a half inches of mercury and heard the airplane go crick, crack, crick. And Henry shouted, “Okay, stop. That’s close enough.”

In January 1962 we were ready to cart the Blackbird out to the test site. The airplane was disassembled into large pieces and would be trucked out in a heavily guarded wideload trailer, 105 feet long and 35 feet wide. Dorsey Kammerer, head of the flight-test shop at that time, came up with the idea of driving the entire route ahead of time using a pickup truck with two bamboo poles up on top. One pole was as wide as the load would be going along the edge of the series of freeways and underpasses. The second pole was exactly as high as the load. They drove the entire route, and any traffic or speed signs that hit against the pole, they pulled over and used a hacksaw to cut the sign off. Then they fit the pieces back with a brace and bolt and marked the sign. On the day we moved the airplane under wraps the lead security car stopped at all the marked signs, undid the bolts to take down the sign while the truck passed, then the rear security car bolted the signs back in place and the convoy moved on. But not even that kind of efficiency could overcome the unexpected disaster. Midway into the trip, a Greyhound bus passed us too closely and was scraped. Our security guys flagged him over, haggled for a while with the driver, and paid him $3,500 cash in damages right on the spot—to keep any official insurance or accident report from being filed involving the most top secret truck caravan in America.

We were scheduled to fly the airplane for the first time only thirteen days after we got it out to the test site. The J-58 engines weren’t ready, however, but Kelly didn’t want to wait, so in typical Skunk Works fashion, we reengineered the insides of the engine mounts to put in lesser-powered J-75s. The fuel, JP-7, has a kerosene base and such an extremely high flash point that the only way to ignite it was by using a chemical additive called tetraethyl borane, injected during the start procedure.

The first time we tried to test the engines, nothing happened. They wouldn’t start. So we rigged up two big 425-cubic-inch Buick Wildcat race car engines, an estimated 500 horse-power each, to turn the massive starter shafts and those suckers did the trick. The hangar sounded like the damned stock car races, but starting those huge engines was tough. The engine oil, formulated for high temperatures, was practically a solid at temperatures below 86 degrees. Before each flight, the oil had to be heated and it took an hour to heat it 10 degrees. But once those engines roared to life, it was a sight to behold. Twenty seconds into takeoff, the Blackbird achieved 200 mph in forward speed.

Every time I saw that Blackbird on a runway I got goosebumps. It was the epitome of grace and power, the most beautiful flying machine I’ve ever seen. I was up in the control tower for the April 25th high-speed taxi test. Our test pilot, Lou Schalk, headed down the runway and over-rotated the engines slightly so that the airplane became airborne for a few seconds, wobbling back and forth. I thought Lou would stay airborne and circle around and land, but instead he put it back down right then and there in a big cloud of dust on the lake bed. For a moment, my heart stopped. I couldn’t tell whether or not he crashed. And it seemed an eternity before the nose of the airplane appeared out of a cloud of dust and dirt, and I heard Kelly’s angry voice over the radio, “What in hell, Lou?”