Skunk Works

Soviet military operations were at a higher level of alert than we had seen in years. Increasing numbers of long-range transcontinental flights by Soviet Bear bombers, capable of dropping nuclear weapons, were being made nonstop from bases in southern Russia to Havana, Cuba. The Bear was their version of our B-52. The journey was about six thousand miles, with probably two air-to-air refuelings. The Soviets insisted that these were merely long-duration training exercises. But the gut-churning fact was that if the Soviet Bears could reach Havana, they sure as hell could reach New York or Washington or Chicago. That message was like a brick hurled through McNamara’s office window.

An even bigger worry was Soviet submarines with Polaris-type nuclear-tipped missiles on board that were brazenly operating in international waters off our major cities on both coasts. We figured that their primary target would be our SAC bases, which was why none of our bomber wings were located east of the Mississippi but were scattered throughout the Great Plains in central states like Nebraska and Montana. This location gave SAC a few extra minutes to get our B-52s safely into the air before enemy missiles hit. Every time a Soviet sub was spotted off our coast, our entire U.S.-based bomber fleet went on alert.

The first time Kelly met McNamara he found him haughty and cold. “That guy will never buy into a project that he hasn’t thought up himself,” Kelly remarked at a staff meeting soon after. “He’s petty, the kind who will throw out any project begun under Eisenhower. He just doesn’t believe that anyone else has his brains and he’d love to stick it to an old-timer like me just to show the entire aerospace industry who’s boss.”

Our contract to build the new Blackbird spy plane for the CIA was rock solid, even though our original budget estimate was now almost doubled by delays, expensive materials, and technical problems to $161 million. To compensate for these increased costs the agency had scaled back its original purchase order from twelve airplanes to ten. So it seemed unlikely that McNamara, nicknamed Mac the Knife in the corridors of the Pentagon for his slashing budget cuts, would want to put more money into a Blackbird supersonic bomber. The Air Force was already spending millions developing the North American B-70, a huge triangular-shaped monster, capable of Mach 2 speeds. The B-70 was the favorite project of Kennedy’s gruff Air Force chief of staff, General Curtis LeMay, who usually got his way simply because few civilian officials (or uniformed generals for that matter) found the courage to try to face him down. Kelly was one of the rare exceptions. He told LeMay flat out that from what he had seen of the plans the B-70 would be obsolete before it was even off the drawing board. LeMay was furious, but a lot of blue-suiters privately agreed with Kelly. The B-70 had six engines to the Blackbird’s two. Our airplane was nearly twice as fast, but LeMay told Kelly he didn’t know beans about bombers, to stick to spy planes and mind his own business.

But then Dick Bissell got into the act. Bissell briefed President Kennedy on the CIA Blackbird project and told him the spy version of the airplane would be operational in less than a year. When he learned how fast and how high it would fly, the new president was astonished. He asked Bissell, “Could Kelly Johnson convert your spy plane into a long-range bomber?”

Bissell replied that Kelly aimed to do precisely that. “Then why are we going ahead with the B-70 program?” Kennedy asked. Bissell shrugged. “Sir,” he replied, “that’s a question more properly addressed to General LeMay.”

The president nodded sheepishly. But Kelly was embarrassed by Bissell’s indiscretion. As he noted in his private journal, “Bissell recounted his conversation about a bomber version of the Blackbird with the President. It was not right. The President asked for our proposal for the bomber before the Air Force had even seen one and I felt obligated to rush to Washington and present it as quickly as possible to our Air Force friends and showed the proposal to Gen. Thomas White. Lt. Gen. Bernard Shriever was there and they were all very upset, as was Gen. LeMay, about losing B-70s to our airplane. But at least they fully understood that that was not my doing and they cannot control Dick Bissell’s approach to the President.”