Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed

by Ben R. Rich

Kelly was the shining light in the company’s six-man aviation department—the expert aerodynamicist, stress analyst, weight expert, wind tunnel and flight test engineer—and he did some test flying himself. He once said that unless he had the hell scared out of him once a year in a cockpit he wouldn’t have the proper perspective to design airplanes. Once that guy made up his mind to do something he was as relentless as a bowling ball heading toward a ten-pin strike. With his chili-pepper temperament, he was poison to any bureaucrat, a disaster to ass-coverers, excuse-makers, or fault-finders. Hall Hibbard, who was Kelly’s first boss at Lockheed, watched Kelly work for three days during the war to transform Lockheed’s Electra into a bomber for the British called the Hudson. The transformation was so successful that the RAF ordered three thousand airplanes, and Hibbard was so awestruck by Johnson’s design skills, he claimed “that damned Swede can actually see air.” Kelly later told me that Hibbard’s remark was the greatest compliment he had ever received.