Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed

by Ben R. Rich

But airplanes are like people. They tend to gain weight as they get older. The first time the U-2 took off to overfly Russia back in 1955, it was a svelte youngster at 17,000 pounds. Now it had ballooned in middle age to 40 percent over the original model and bent the scales at 40,000 pounds.

Each triangle had three separate points and required individual calculations for each point by utilizing Ufimtsev’s calculations. The result we called “faceting”—creating a three-dimensional airplane design out of a collection of flat sheets or panels, similar to cutting a diamond into sharp-edged slices.

The electronics will move the surfaces the way the pilot commands, but often the system will automatically override him and do whatever it has to do to keep the system on track and stable without the pilot even being aware of it. Our airplane was a triumph of computer technology. Without it, we could not even taxi straight.

Engineering designed and developed the Have Blue aircraft and turned it over to the shop to build. Our engineers were expected on the shop floor the moment their blueprints were approved. Designers lived with their designs through fabrication, assembly, and testing. Engineers couldn’t just throw their drawings at the shop people on a take-it-or-leave-it basis and walk away.

Our inspectors stayed right on the floor with the machinists and fabricators, and quality control inspections occurred almost daily, instead of once, at the end of a procedure. Constant inspection forced our workers to be supercritical of their work before passing it on. Self-checking was a Skunk Works concept now in wide use in Japanese industry and called by them Total Quality Management.

We had lived and died by fourteen basic operating rules that Kelly had written forty years earlier,

The Skunk Works program manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects.

Strong but small project offices

The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner.

Very simple drawing and drawing release system with great flexibility for making changes must be provided in order to make schedu...

There must be a minimum number of rep...

There must be a monthly cost review covering not only what has been spent and committed but also projected costs ...

Because only a few people will be used in engineering and most other areas, ways must be provided to reward good performance by pay not based on the number of personnel supervised.

I even came in on one wheel, just kissed down on the left side, hoping that jarring effect would spring the other gear loose—a hell of a maneuver if I have to say so—but it proved useless.

Our people knew what they were doing, worked skillfully under intense pressure, and skirted hazards mostly by sheer expertise and experience. But as we grew, the skill level decreased and sloppiness suddenly became a serious problem.

The rule of thumb in the aerospace business was the more you build, the better you get at it. Our view was that efficiency was mostly the result of quality training, careful inspection, supervision, and high worker motivation.

“There shall be only one object: to get a good airplane built on time.”

Engineers shall always work within a stone’s throw of the airplane being built.”

“Any cause for delay shall be immediately reported to C. L. Johnson in writing by the pers...

“Special parts or materials shall be avoided whenever possible. Parts from stock shall be used even a...

“Everything possible will be done t...

The missile site was a three-hour trip, but about seventy-five minutes into the mission I looked through my drift sight and saw a startling sight: the familiar circular graded contours that I had seen marking our own nuclear test site at Yucca Flats.

Because he was chicken, the president endured a terrible international humiliation. Power’s survival also embarrassed Dulles and Bissell, who had assured the president, presumably in good faith, that not much would be left of a U-2 or a pilot if shot down by a missile. Powers was also faulted for not pulling a seventy-second delayed explosive charge before bailing out that would have destroyed the film and cameras and kept them out of the hands of the KGB.

Had Powers killed himself or not survived the missile hit, he would have come home a hero in a flag-draped wooden box. But coming home haggard and alive, he was greeted like a traitor and was whisked off in great secrecy to a CIA safe house in Virginia to be grilled unmercifully for days about his experiences over and inside Russia.

Building the U-2 was absolutely the smartest decision ever made by the CIA. It was the greatest bargain and the greatest triumph of the cold war.

On afterburners, a fighter was burning fuel at a rate four times faster than at cruise speed, so afterburners were saved for combat threat situations—escaping flak after a bombing run or outflying missiles or dogfighting MiGs.

Kelly surrounded himself only with the kind of can-do guys that made American aerospace technology preeminent. To him, the word “impossible” was a gross insult.

Eighty percent efficiency would get the job done, so why strain resources and bust deadlines to achieve that extra 20 percent, which would cost as much as 50 percent more in overtime and delays and have little real impact on the overall performance of the aircraft itself?

Kelly briefed, while McNamara took copious notes and asked several questions about the airplane’s unique navigational system. It was the first astro-navigational system that actually used a small computer-driven telescope to find approximately sixty stars in its database. The telescope looked through a small window toward the rear of the airplane and was extremely accurate and reliable locking onto stars.

we received a contract for six two-man reconnaissance versions of the Blackbird to be built exclusively for the Air Force. The plane would be ultimately designated as the SR-71.

“Goddam it, Ben, I don’t believe a word that guy said to you. I’ll bet my ranch against Northrop starting its own Skunk Works. Companies give it lip service because we’ve been so successful running ours. The bottom line is that most managements don’t trust the idea of an independent operation, where they hardly know what in hell is going on and are kept in the dark because of security. Don’t kid yourself, a few among our own people resent the hell out of me and our independence.

in the main plant they give raises on the basis of the more people being supervised; I give raises to the guy who supervises least. That means he’s doing more and taking more responsibility. But most executives don’t think like that at all. Northrop’s senior guys are no different from all of the rest in this business: they’re all empire builders, because that’s how they’ve been trained and conditioned.