He decided he wanted to design aircraft when he was 12 years old after reading Tom Swift and his airplane. He designed his first plane before he'd ever seen one in person. When he first applied for a job at Lockheed, the company turned him down flat. He got his master's degree in aeronautical engineering and returned and was rewarded for his persistence with an $83 a month job as a tool designer by the time his career at Lockheed ended 47 years later, he had built the most important aircraft research and design facility in the world. There, in Lockheed's legendary Skunk Works, he and the team he led revolutionized aviation. For 30 years it was impossible to see a significant display of American aircraft without seeing something Kelly Johnson had designed. Whether it was a fighter, bomber, transport, passenger liner or even a spy plane, the odds were that he had designed at least part of it. Without question, he is the greatest aircraft designer in history. He is Clarence Kelly Johnson. Clarence Kelly. Johnson was born in the town of Ishpeming in Michigan's Upper Peninsula on February 27th, 1910, the son of Swedish immigrants. He got his Irish nickname from schoolmates after he stood up to the school bully. He had been dealing with the some of the kids at the school calling him Clara since his first name was Clarence and he finally had his fill of it and decided to take reprisals on one of the bullies. And after he was finished, the kids in the schoolyard decided that he could no longer be a Clara and instead they were going to find some more appropriate name. And since Irishmen were known at that time for their pugilistic skill, they decided to dub him Kelly. He designed his first airplane, which he called the Merlin Battle Plane, as a 12 year old and it won him a prize at school. He knew then that was what he wanted to do with his life. He paid $5 for his first flight, a 3 minute trip in a biplane that ended badly when the plane's engine conked out at 700 feet. When he got older, he worked in construction and in the Buick factory and saved his money. He took his savings to a flight school and asked to be taught to fly. The flight instructor, a cash strapped barnstormer refused Johnson's money and told the young man to spend it on college. Johnson enrolled at the University of Michigan just before the stock market crash in 1929 and supported himself washing dishes in fraternity houses. As an assistant in the aeronautical engineering department, he worked with the school's wind tunnel. The school allowed him to rent the tunnel out when it wasn't in use. Johnson charged $35.00 an hour and helped design a new, streamlined Studebaker model. He graduated in 1932 and tried to enlist in the Army Air Corps, but was refused. He returned to Michigan for his master's degree and, among other things, used the Michigan wind tunnel To help design aerodynamic racing cars for the Indianapolis 500. In 1933, he went to work for Lockheed in California as an $83 a month tool designer. Lockheed at the time was a deeply troubled company. It had just emerged from bankruptcy and had bet its future on the Electra a two engine transport. When Johnson arrived in Burbank, his boss asked him what he thought of the plane. Johnson looked and said it would be unstable and that he did not trust Lockheed's wind tunnel test. Chief Engineer Hall Hibbard sent Johnson back to Michigan with the model of the Electra and a mandate to do his own study in his own wind tunnel. See if you can do better, Hibbard told him. He did. After 72 tunnel tests, Johnson came up with a newly designed flap system and traded the Electra's single stabilizer for a twin tail. Those changes stabilize the Electra and help make it one of the most successful airplanes of its time. Johnson returned to Lockheed a full engineer assigned as the Model 10, Electra's flight test engineer. He had at last started flying on a regular basis. He befriended Amelia Earhart and advised her on several of her missions. She flew an Electra and Johnson advised her on techniques of fuel mixing to help her get the best performance out of her plane. He continued to work on updates to the Electra through Electra Model 14 and was soon attracting attention outside of Lockheed. In 1937, he won the Sperry Award for outstanding achievements in aeronautics by a young man. That same year, Congress passed the Neutrality Act. That law was designed to keep the United States out of World War II. At the same time, those in the military had become convinced that American involvement in the war was inevitable. They threw as many of their precious dollars as they could into the design of new equipment. Lockheed won the competition to build a new fighter with a plane designed by Johnson, the XP-38. With two engines and a double fuselage. It was an unconventional aircraft that had its share of problems, in particular it's high speed and tight maneuvering. Sometimes created forces so great that they shattered the plane in midair. Once again, Johnson went back to his wind tunnel, and after making a few changes to the plane's design, it passed Army Air Corps muster and was ordered into limited production. Johnson, the designer, was 27 years old. In the late 1930s, Lockheed came back from bankruptcy, largely on the strength of its commercial aircraft. The Electra in particular had built a profitable customer base, but if Lockheed was going to grow, it was going to have to build a successful military aircraft business. The P-38 was a start. Though when the Army Air Force first awarded the contract, no one knew how many thousands of planes would eventually be built. In 1938, with Europe on the brink of war, the British set a Purchasing Commission to the United States in search of military aircraft, particularly a long distance coastal patrol bomber that could be used to hunt submarines. The Commission, scheduled to visit several aircraft manufacturers, did not originally intend to visit Lockheed. Their schedule changed at the last minute and Lockheed was invited to make a presentation with only five days to prepare. During the five days of preparation for the Brits, Johnson showed what he was destined to become famous for the ability to make something entirely new out of existing components and to manage a project to completion with a ruthless eye to the deadline. He himself lived by the credo. Be quick, be quiet, be on time. He was somebody who believed very much in getting good people and giving them the ability to do what they do best. He also believed in minimizing the number of people working on any one project. In only five days, Johnson and his crew not only redesigned the Electra to fit the needs of the Royal Air Force, they also built from scratch a full scale wooden model of the plane. A civilian transport converted into a Median bomber. The Brits were amazed. They were so impressed by Johnson and his crew, they invited Lockheed executives to England to confer with the Air Ministry. Johnson went along at the meetings. The British changed the design specifications, necessitating a complete redesign of the aircraft. Johnson locked himself in a London hotel room and it only 72 hours completed the engineering drawings. The British were once again amazed and Lockheed got the contract, but not before the British expressed their hesitancy about working with an engineer as young and inexperienced as the 28 year old Johnson. Lockheed reassured the Air Minister, who ordered 200 of what became known as the Hudson bomber. It was the largest single order of aircraft ever received by an American manufacturer and upon the party's return to the United States. Lockheed promoted Johnson to chief engineer in 1939. The Congress significantly increased the defense budget, and P-38 started rolling off the line in record numbers. During this, Johnson truly mastered the art of manufacturing, streamlining production processes and developing an entirely new job, the program manager, now a staple of manufacturing. The program manager is a person far down the chain of command who has working control of a project. If that all seems a bit heavy on the business administration and a discussion of aircraft, consider this. Johnson believed that outstanding aircraft, designed and manufactured quickly, were inevitably the product of a single visionary. That visionary was usually, of course, Johnson. He was not someone who believed in development via committee. He was also somebody who hated lengthy reports and normally limited any report that was sent to him to 20 pages. He believed in brevity, he believed in clarity, and he believed in get giving people the tools necessary to get the job done. In 1943, Lockheed put Johnson in charge of Advanced Products Research. Setting him up on a plot of land on the outskirts of Burbank, Californina, Johnson called his new Kingdom the Skunk Works, after the still in a cartoon strip, Little Abner, that was responsible for the making of a mysterious and powerful brew called Skunk Works. In the little Abner cartoon, there was a potent mystery elixir known as Kickapoo Joy juice. And Kickapoo Joy Juice was made at the Skunk Works, or Skonk Works as it was called in the comic strip, through a variety of things that were thrown into a giant mixture, among them skunks, old shoes, and things like that. And the nickname was applied to the Lockheed operation because indeed, it was a mystery elixir. Nobody was quite sure what was going on in there, but they knew that a lot of things were being thrown into it, and that Kelly Johnson was pulling a lot of people from various locations in order to create something interesting. The job of the Skunk Works was to quickly, cheaply and secretly develop advanced aircraft that could help win the war. Its first assignment was the P-80 Shooting Star, the first American jet. Intelligence had determined the Germans were far along in their development of jets, and the not so secret fear of the Army Air Force was that the Nazis would deploy their jets in large numbers before the war in Europe had ended. The effect on the Allied bombing campaign would have been horrendous. The Allies propeller driven fighters would have been almost useless against a jet powered fighter. Kelly Johnson, in his efforts to oversee those operations, would pull people from other projects and would go about trying to get a minimum number of the very best people and put them on the project, Give them minimal supervision, but let them trust them to be able to do the jobs that they're chosen to do. After setting up the Skunk Works and recruiting his team, Johnson went to work on the P-80. Lockheed's contract with the Army Air Force gave him an incredibly short schedule, 180 days. Johnson went on a binge of designing and set his team to work on various critical paths and had the prototype ready for testing 37 days ahead of schedule. In five months, Lockheed had designed and built the first American jet. They hauled it from Burbank to Muroc Air Base in the California desert for testing. Fearful that there might be spies in the surrounding hills, they disguised the jet during transport with a plywood propeller. Johnson said years later that when he rolled out a new plane for testing, there was only one thing he thought about "what have I forgotten"? In the case of the P-80, despite the short design and construction cycle, he hadn't forgotten much. It was a beautiful aircraft, faster and more agile than anything in the American arsenal. The war ended before it saw combat, but it evolved into the T-33. One of the best and longest lived jet trainers in history. When the war ended, however, there were those who questioned whether the Skunk Works had a role to fill. after World War I, the business of aviation had shrunk, almost nonexistent after World War II, many people expected that it would again. But there were two basic differences between the ends of the wars. First, the United States was engaged in the world after World War II. In a way it wasn't after World War I. No one could reasonably expect the world's only nuclear power to go back into hibernation. And second, before the war ended, it became clear that the post war world would require a strong and ready military. Because on the day the Japanese surrendered, the world separated into two groups of allies, those in the Communist East under the control of Joseph Stalin and those in the democratic West. World War II was over, but the Cold War was just beginning. Kelly Johnson and the Skunkworks were just about to become the most important aircraft developers in the world. Over the course of his career, Kelly Johnson designed more than 40 aircraft. His most prolific by far was in the 1950s. That was a decade of tremendous technological advance achieved in an atmosphere of never ending crisis. And there was no better place for aeronautical engineers to work than the Skunk Works. Johnson designed and built the Constellation, the most elegant aircraft of its time and a plane that served effectively in both civilian and military roles. He experimented unsuccessfully with vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, with the idea that they can operate from relatively small ships. He designed the F-1O4 starfighter at 1300 miles an hour, the fastest aircraft ever flown at the time. It was a sometimes fussy plane to fly and at more than Mach II, There wasn't a lot of room for error. It was adapted around the world to a number of difficult tasks, including carrying nuclear weapons. Johnson didn't approve of all the modifications others were making to his plane, but could do little about them. As the Cold War heated up, it became clear that the United States needed a way to peer deep into Russian territory. East of the Ural Mountains, where the Russians did their atomic research and where they developed their aircraft and missiles, the United States didn't even have an accurate topographical map, let alone a way of getting information on military capabilities. The Air Force put out a quiet request for a fast, high altitude plane that could overfly Russia and bring back pictures of the communist secret bases. Johnson at first toyed with, modifying the F-1O4. But it lacked the range and would be too difficult to fly on long missions. In 1954, he sent the Air Force a proposal to build a plane that could fly at a range of 4000 miles above 70,000 feet. It would be slower than the Air Force had hoped, but at that altitude would be high above Russian air defenses. The Air Force didn't believe Johnson could do it. They doubted any jet engine would work at that altitude and instead ordered a competition between manufacturers for the best spy plane design. President Eisenhower approved a $35 million contract with the competition winner. Johnson and his skunkworks team went into Over Drive in mid November 1954. He met with the Government Advisory Board on what was then called the CL282 project. Ten days later, he formed the team to design the craft. On December 2nd, the first 12 engineers went to work designing the aircraft systems and the first design drawings were completed and released to the shop for manufacture the next day. A week later the drawings were complete and by the end of the year he'd won the contract and frozen the design. Wind tunnel testing completed in March. The first plane finished in July and the first flight took place on August 4th, 1955 in less than a year. From Pipe Dream to first flight, Kelly Johnson and the Skunk Works had designed and built a completely new kind of airplane. The U-2 had something of a patch together, quality to be sure. The first ones cut weight by leaving out the ejection seat, and the balancing wheels on the wings dropped off a takeoff to lose a few more pounds. The engineers were still making modifications on the craft in the summer of 1956. When a young pilot named Francis Gary Powers saw his first U-2 parked on a taxiway at a secret base in Nevada, it had not been built to last, he said. Years later, Powers was among the pilots who flew spy missions over the Russian heartland in the U-2 and for years it was safely out of range of the Soviets. The planes routinely returned with photographs showing Russian fighters four miles below them. Coming up for a fight but unable to fly high enough to get a shot off. Eventually, however, the Russians improve their air defenses and by the time Powers were shot down in 1960, Johnson was already at work on his next generation spy plane. Johnson, with the U-2's flying with seeming impunity had gone back to the government to propose a plane that could fly 10,000 feet higher and four times as fast as the subsonic U-2. Building a plane that would cruise at Mach 3.2, Johnson said years later, was the hardest thing the Skunk Works ever did. Everything about the plane, Johnson said, had to be invented. In 1960, the Air Force gave the go ahead for Johnson to develop the A-12A plane that didn't succeed as an interceptor but paved the way for its slightly larger sister, the SR-71 Blackbird. Built out of titanium, which is light and could tolerate the 500 degree temperatures that built up as the plane sliced through the atmosphere at more than three times the speed of sound, the Blackbirds were like something out of a science fiction movie. The rollout was Johnson's proudest day. It was, he said, the smoothest test flight he'd ever been through. Johnson, who had never been much of a talker insisted that he was not bothered by the fact that he couldn't talk about his perfect airplane. If I can talk about it, he'd like to say, it's obsolete. But years later, when word of the SR-71 had leaked out and the Air Force had stopped denying its existence, he took joy in its racing from New York to London, a distance of almost 3500 miles, in less than two hours. And before the Blackbirds were retired in March 1990. and SR-71 flew across the United States coast to coast in 68 minutes. Kelly Johnson retired from Lockheed in 1975. Even then, he was a presence at the Skunk Works. His 14 rules of effective program management are gospel there and are taught in some of the leading business schools in the world. Johnson even consulted with Lockheed during the development of the F-117 stealth fighter. As an old man, he said that there would come a time when aircraft were no longer relevant. People wouldn't travel for business, he said, because they could sit at their desks and talk to people in Europe by video, phone and on the battlefield. Manned aircraft were no longer cost effective in an age of missiles, though it hasn't happened yet, don't bet against it. I think his greatest contribution was in the vision that he had for the Skunk Works for Lockheed, for American Aviation, and in his ability to translate that vision into something that other people embraced and believed in and wanted to work toward to a great extent. His greatest contribution was his ability to get other people to commit to his dream. Kelly Johnson died just before Christmas in 1990. We knew that in overflying Russia for four years that they were making important advances in radar and missiles. And so in 1958, two years before Gary Powers was shot down, but we decided we'd try to make a follow on airplane, which became finally the SR-71 to fly higher and four times as fast. So that's the connection between the grandfather types and the SR-71. Everyone called him Kelly, and as he reminisced that day about the genesis of his Mach 3 masterpiece, he could have just as easily reflected back on a time when aircraft designers were striving for 200 mph, a time when he landed his first job with the fledgling Lockheed Aircraft Company. In 1932, a small group led by Robert E. Gross had purchased Lockheed out of bankruptcy for $40,000 dollars and staked the company's future on the development of an all metal twin engine transport. Models of the design were sent to the University of Michigan, where young graduate student named Clarence L Johnson conducted wind tunnel tests. Although his faculty advisors gave the design of passing grade, he wasn't much impressed. And after he'd been hired on as a tool designer at Lockheed in August of 1933, he let Chief Design engineer Hall Hibbard know about it. Among other things, it'd be directly unstable, especially with one engine out. A rather presumptuous, certainly unconventional way for a 23 year old to start his career the new company, but it was only a hint of what would follow. The son of Swedish immigrants. He'd been nicknamed "Kelly" by classmates because of his quick temper, stubborn tenacity and unwillingness to back down from a fight, even against overwhelming odds. Instead of reminding the outspoken young man of his place, Hibbard suggested he go back to the wind tunnel and see if he could improve the design. After 72 test runs, he came up with the solution, an unconventional twintail arrangement soon to become a Lockheed trademark. And the Model 10 Electra became the foundation for Lockheed's future growth as various models of the airplane helped revolutionize commercial air transport in the 1930s. With his work on the design, Kelly Johnson became the 6th member of an engineering department in an industry which then couldn't afford specialists, working often simultaneously as an aerodynamicist, stress analysts, weight wind tunnel and flight test engineer. He also put in long hours out in the shop getting hands on production experience, learning first hand the importance of designing producibility into an airplane was a real world education on all phases of design and development that within a decade couldn't be duplicated and the lessons learned became guideposts for the rest of his career. He flew, for example, as flight test engineer on all models of the Electra. And worked for some of the most notable figures in aviation, such as Amelia Earhart. Out of this experience gave his lifelong conviction, the designer had to be able to test his own airplane, as he later commented. And I decided at an early date that unless I had the hell scared out of me once a year, I wouldn't have the proper balance to really design new airplane of any type. Kelly Johnson Logged more than 2300 hours as a flight test engineer, the versatile Electra spawned two major developments. One was the XC-35A modified Model 10, which in 1937 first demonstrated the practical feasibility of transforming the entire fuselage into a pressurized cabin to permit comfortable high altitude flight. Johnson was Lockheed's flight test engineer on this project, gaining first hand experience. Problems of pressurization and, more important, with tremendous possibilities pioneered by this aircraft. Possibilities to which he and Hall Hibbard began to give serious consideration. Meanwhile, the Model 14 Electra incorporated a number of Johnson innovations, such as the first practical application to follower flaps, which both increased the wings lifting surface and served from its slower, shorter distance landings and achievement which won him the 1937 Lawrence Sperry Award. In 1938, the high speed and innovative features of the Model 14 attracted British interest in its potential as an anti submarine patrol plane, but the requirements necessitated a major redesign. Johnson worked around the clock for three days transformed the Model 14 into the Hudson bomber. The British ordered an initial batch of 250 aircraft, at that time the largest production order ever received by an American company. But there would be many more. 2000 to the RAF alone. Out of a total production run of nearly 3000 airplanes. The Hudson put Lockheed into the big time. But even as production was gearing up, Kelly Johnson and his colleagues were well into other, much more ambitious designs. The success of the pressurized XC-35 and the recognition that the next generation of air transports would be much larger, higher speed transoceanic aircraft inspired Johnson, Hibbard and a small design team to lay out the now classic lines of the Model 49 Constellation in 1939. Using his soon to be legendary powers of persuasion, he convinced Lockheed to build its own wind tunnel. A decision that paid for itself many times over during the development of this design, as all aerodynamic problems were overcome early on and not one external change had to be made to the actual aircraft. Hibbard was so impressed by Johnson's wizardry that he swore he could see air. Commercial development of the legendary Connie would be delayed by the war, and at first flew as the Army Air Force's C-69. This, however, provided time to refine the airplane so that at war's end, Lockheed was postured to capture a lion's share of the commercial market, and various models of the elegant Connie would continue to grace the world's Airways into the late 1950s. At the time he laid down the basic design of the Constellation, Johnson was already well into another pathbreaking project in early 1937. Responding to an Air Corps requirement for a high altitude interceptor capable of 360 mph, Johnson and Hibbard hastily conceived some possible configurations, depicted here in one of Kelly's rough sketches. As Johnson observed, many times in design, you're forced to develop unusual solutions to unusual problems. Their decision to go with an unconventional twin boom configuration was dictated by another axiom. Design features are the creatures of necessity. The twin booms evolved as a logical development of engine the cells which had to be extended to house the liquid cooled engines, turbo superchargers, radiators and main landing gear. It seemed logical then to simply extend the cells into booms which could carry the empanage. Their novel approach produced a winning design. When the P-38 was finally rolled out in January of 1939, it's sleek lines bespoke speed, and when Lieutenant Ben Kelsey took it up for its maiden flight, it delivered an impressive 403 mph, far exceeding the requirements. Thus began the saga of the P-38 Lightning, the first American aircraft able to fly at such speeds. It offered dazzling performance and a host of new problems. Or as it peeled over at the dives at high altitudes, it could hit speeds approaching 500 mph. In this region, the aircraft began to violently shake and nose over into increasingly steeper angles, and control forces became so heavy pilots couldn't pull out. Tragically, some never recovered. Kelly Johnson wasn't taken by surprise. Although many insisted it was tail flutter, he immediately recognized it as the then little understood phenomenon of compressibility. At 500 mph, localized air flow over certain parts of the aircraft was reaching supersonic velocity and this produced shockwaves and serious problems. The P-38 was the first aircraft to encounter this and so little was actually known about it that Johnson launched exhaustive wind tunnel studies. And an accelerated dive test program headed by chief test pilot Milo Bercham. After more than two years, he finally identified the problem, the shock stall on the wing, which reduced lift and increased drag, thereby inducing the nose down tuck. Typically, he was quick to devise a cleverly simple remedy, a dive left mounted to the main wingspar that when deployed, generated a positive pressure field, immediately restoring lift. In a nose up pitching moment. Flown on every battle, the P-38 excelled in combat, christening the "fork tailed Devil" by Germans. The versatile fighter combining speed and boat carrying capability, proved adaptable to a wide array of combat rolls and its long legs needed, ideal for the vast reaches of the Pacific where it destroyed more enemy aircraft than any other Allied fighter. Impressive though it was, Kelly Johnson was never satisfied with it. He'd longed for seeing the inherent limitations of prop driven aircraft, and though unaware of developments in Germany and England where turbojets had already been successfully developed, he decided that props had to go. Thus he and Hibbard became the first in this country to seriously pursue the possibilities of turbojet propulsion when in 1939. They asked Nathan Price to design an experimental turbojet power plants. Design of the L-1000 got underway in 1940, and by 1942 Price had come up with a truly advanced design, a high compression ratio twin spool axial flow power plant promising an extraordinary 5100 pounds of thrust meanwhile Johnson and the young engineer named Willis Hawkins led a design team that came up with the L-133, the truly radical twin engine stainless steel aircraft featuring thin wings and canard surfaces and projected to achieve 625 mph at 50,000 feet. But surprisingly, when Johnson submitted a proposal for development of the engine and airframe in March 1942, the Army Air Force has showed little interest. Although launched long after his effort, top secret development of an American turbojet fighter powered by a British Whittle engine was by then already underway. The Bell XP-59 a first flew at Muroc Army Air Force Base on California's High Desert in October of 1942, but it proved to be underpowered, overweight and scarcely optimized for jet flight and early on the Army Air Forces decided that it wouldn't meet frontline fighter requirements. Though Bell didn't yet know this, and the testing continued. On June 10th, 1943, a Bell engineer in Muroc reported back that Johnson had been permitted to examine the still top secret XP-59A, and he wondered what he was up to. Unbeknownst to Bell, the Army Air Force had already asked Lockheed to submit a proposal for a simpler Single engine jet fighter built around a 3000 pound thrust Alfred H1 engine which would be capable of frontline service. Johnson took in a lot that day, but it already been wrestling with Jet Propulsion for nearly three years and he already had a suitable design well in hand. When he made his proposal at Wright field on June 18th, he made the astounding promise that he deliver an aircraft within just 180 days, getting immediate approval. He was cautioned that the utmost secrecy was required. Lockheed was already swamped in terms of manpower, tooling and facilities with wartime contracts. But this was a blessing in disguise, an opportunity to implement an idea he'd been pestering Robert Gross about for years. Let him round up a small group of talented people, designers, engineers and shop men. Put them under one roof, where they could all work closely together. And give him complete authority over everything from procurement to flight test. With no other options, Rose said "Go ahead". Stealing people from around the plant, just 28 engineers, including himself, and 105 shop men, he also built a small facility out of discarded shipping crates, using a circus tent for a roof. On June 19th he laid down the principles under which the project would operate. In one and a half pages, now preserved, an old photo stats. They formed the basis for how we try to operate for the next 30 years. He'd be responsible for all decisions. Paperwork and red tape would be cut to the minimum. Each engineer would be designer, shop contact, parts chaser and mechanic, and each will remain within a stone's throw of the shop at all times. There'd be but one object to get a good airplane built on time. The daily log indicates that two days later he laid out the horizontal structure of the organization. No pyramidal multi tiered layers of management. Each project engineer and the shop foreman would report directly to him and in fact he'd be looking over everyone's shoulder. He wanted information to wreck from the men doing the work. And if they had questions, they'd get decisions immediately on the spot. He'd promised the airplane in 180 days, as would become his custom. He gave his men 150. The clock started ticking on June 23rd, forcefully reminded that simplicity is the keynote of good design. The designers jumped into their work, but this was a new kind of operation, and instead of moving from stage to stage, the schedule demanded an extraordinary degree of concurrency with finished detailed design still many weeks away. The mock up was started on June 30th and completed by July 17th. By then, milling and fabrication of parts and the construction of jigs to assemble a prototype was already while underway and by July 31st the bulkheads were going into the jigs and section by section. The airframe started coming together throughout this. However, the design process continued as concurrent wind tunnel tests revealed problems the wing and the engine air inlets were the biggest headaches. He'd gambled on the wing, a laminar flow airfoil that had never before been tested on an airplane. And of course, nobody had had any experience with inlets. Johnson was willing to accept the stakes on such an accelerated and risky venture. As long as they were reported promptly. Typically, he never asked why, but what are you going to do to fix it? The project was so secret that his group didn't even have a name. The whole setup reminded one of his design engineers, Erv Culver, of the mysterious place where Hairless Joe, one of Al Caps cartoon characters Little Abner Ground up skunks, old shoes, and other unsavory ingredients to brew a potent concoction called Kickapoo Joy Juice. So inspired he answered the phone one day. Skunk works inside Man Culver. Though Johnson wasn't amused. His organization suddenly had a name that stuck. Remarkably, the completed aircraft arrived at Muroc on November 14th, just 143 days after startup. When the engine was run up three days later, there was a terrific roar as the inlet ducts collapsed, sending debris into the engine and cracking the impeller. It took six weeks to get a new engine, but on January 3rd, 1944 Milo Burcham successfully completed the taxi tests and five days later... the chill of the morning on January 8th, Johnson white coveralls, overcoat and stocking cap. Worked intently with his crew, preparing for the first flight as over 100 Skunkworks employees stood atop a hill looking on. He wanted everyone who'd worked on the airplane they now call Lulu Bell beyond hand, he told Bercham Just fly her Milo find out if she's a lady or a witch 9:15 he took off. But only 5 minutes later, taxiing back to report that the landing gear hadn't retracted and that the boosted ailerons felt too sensitive while the gear problem was being fixed, Johnson assured him that the control sensitivity was normal and at 10:00 o'clock he took off again and this time but on a dazzling 20 minute display attaining a top speed of 490 mph. And reporting A roll rate of 360 degrees per second. Back on the ground, he was able to report that Lulu Bell was indeed a lady. The XP-80 ultimately became the first American aircraft to exceed 500 mph, but this was only the beginning. For months Johnson had been working on a larger, more advanced version with a 4000 pound thrust General Electric I-40 engine. Promising much greater speed, he promised the XP-80A just 150 days and delivered it in 132. But as Tony LeVier taxied in after the first flight on June 10th, he'd had a few surprises. Center of gravity miscalculations that caused porposing the faulty pressurization valve that Channel 325 degree engine bleed air into the cockpit, malfunctioning flaps but the airplane into violent rolls. Only his superb flying skills allowed him to bring it back, and Johnson was so great he doubled LaVier's bonus, a gesture winding up the special relationship between them and indeed between Kelly Johnson and all of his test pilots. Unlike so many of his peers, Johnson both understood and appreciated what his pilots did. He flew with them whenever possible, shared their concerns, always listened, and then acted. On their recommendations, the XP-80A's problems were quickly remedied and it went on to become the prototype for America's first operational jet fighter. Though it wouldn't have her combat in World War II, the P-80 shooting star would deliver awesome performance in January of 1946, for example. Colonel William Council completed the first nonstop transcontinental jet flight, covering 2450 miles in a record 4 hours and 13 minutes, an average speed of 580 mph. In June of 1947. Lying especially modified P-80R Colonel Albert Boyd pleaded four runs over a speed course at Muroc, averaging 623 mph. And reclaiming the world speed record for the United States for the first time 24 years and over Korea, November of 1950, a shooting star would down a MiG 15 in history's first all jet combat and amply confirming Johnson's methods and his insistence on simplicity, the P-80 would give birth to a number of progeny, shrewdly sensing the need for a jet trainer. Johnson gambled $1,000,000 of Lockheed money on the development of an F-80C airframe into a two seat configuration, which after its first flight in March 1948, was transformed into the classic T-33AN airplane actually called the T Bird, which would serve as the standard jet trainer for legions of student pilots around the world for the next three decades. In response to an urgent Air Force requirement for an interim all weather interceptor, the T-33 in turn served as the basis for three different models of the F-94 Starfire, which filled a critical void of newer designs specifically tailored for that role, remained under development in the early 1950s. Not done yet, the now vintage design would realize its final incarnation. As the T2V-1 SeaStar, an advanced navalized version of the T-33. All of the iterations of the P-80 design were still yet to come, however, as in 1946 he started design work to meet an Air Force requirement for a new penetration escort fighter. Early on, he explored the possibility of applying new concepts, a delta wing, even in flight, variable wing sweep, and then discarded both. Some of the more than 60 concepts he'd examine and reject. When the XF-90 finally rolled out three years later, he was the victim of ever changing and conflicting requirements from a time to climb of 35,000 feet in 10 minutes to 50,000 in five. 900 mile range to 1500, and then back to 600, and finally ground attack capability and a high speed, high altitude design. This prompted him to build a brawny airframe over 30,000 pounds, fully loaded and stressed for over 12 G's. When Tony LeVier took off an early test flights he had to use rocket assist because the pair of small 3000 Pounds thrust J34s still lacked after burning capability, the usual post flight congratulations and festivities. belied The fact that Johnson knew he was facing terrible odds. With the same pair of inadequate engines as their principal rival, the McDonald XF-88 at half again as heavy because the 88 hadn't been beefed up for ground attack. Johnson's airplane was bound to suffer performance wise, was overweight and underpowered, and even when after burning was finally added, boosting combined thrust up to more than 8000 pounds. Its top speed and level flight is only 668 mph slower than existing operational F-86s. It achieved one distinction, however, when in April 1950 LeVier pushed over into a steep dive and it became the first Lockheed airplane to exceed the speed of sound with performance no better than the XF-90s. The McDonnell entry won the competition, but neither design went into production. The whole ordeal taught Johnson, never again to take on a job unless the requirements were both well defined and firm. Even though a failure, the X F-90 went on to demonstrate that he certainly knew how to build a rugged airframe, as in April 1952, it survived the first of a series of atomic blasts, suffering only 20 hours worth of repair work. Meanwhile, Johnson was completing work on a much more unconventional airplane designed to meet a Navy requirement for a vertical takeoff and landing or veto fighter. The XF-V1 was supposed to claw its way straight up by means of huge Contra rotating props driven by a twin turbine power plant providing more power than the airplane's weight. Engine development lagged, however. And after test pilot Herman "Fish" Salmon first lifted off from the lake bed and what was now called Edwards Air Force Base in December 1953, the underpowered XF-V1 continued to rely on its makeshift landing gear for all takeoffs and landings. Once aloft, however, Salmon was able to demonstrate that it could make satisfactory transitions horizontal to vertical flight and that it could hover in the vertical attitude. But lacking the promised power, explaining in his words that "it's awful hard to fly an airplane looking over your shoulder", Salmon wasn't eager to attempt vertical liftoffs or touchdowns. Neither was Johnson, believing a designer shouldn't be afraid to fly his own airplane at the integrity to recommend cancellation of the whole project. By that time, however, he already had a much more promising design on the ramp at Edwards. When Tony LeVier first saw it, he asked incredulously, where the wings were. But those tiny blade, thin wings and everything else about the XF-104 were actually the product of years of careful thought, effort and Johnson's determination this time to employ his skunkworks methods. Back in 1947, it modified a P-80 with wingtip mounted ramjets with "fish" salmon at the controls. Became the first piloted aircraft to fly on ramjet power alone. These tests supported a major Skunk Works type of effort to explore a whole new realm. At a time when missile and guidance system technologies were still in their infancy, Johnson's team had to design a pilotless Mach 3 test bed to further explore ramjet technology. The X-7 was the product of their efforts. And it's tiny, thin, slightly tapered wings, Johnson's solution to the problems of high Mach flight. Thoroughly tested on rockets and with scale models, the X-7 first flew in April 1951 and went on to a remarkable career, launched from a B-29 based at the high speed powerful rockets and then flying on various Ram jets under test. It ultimately exceeded Mach 4 and climbed well above 100,000 feet. Thus, those small, thin wings were already more than just a theory. Johnson visited the Korean battlefront in 1951, still smarting from the XF-90. He'd gone there to talk to the ultimate customers, combat pilots, about what they wanted in a fighter to a man. It was higher speed, more altitude, and less complexity. Intent on giving them just that, he made an unsolicited proposal to build a fighter for which no requirement yet existed. When he promised Mach 2 with 60,000 feet and a simple, lightweight fighter, Colonel Bruce Holloway stepped into the next room and within two hours returned with a short one and a half page list of requirements, this time the firm, straightforward requirement. Johnson returned to his favorite Skunk Works mode of operation, and less than a year later, February of 1954, Tony LeVier lifted the XF-1O4 from the lakebed for its first flight. Though configured with a much lower thrust engine than the powerful J 79 scheduled for the production model, the XF-104 was still faster than any other fighter in the world. But Johnson had produced more than just a dazzling performer fanatical about costs and producibility. While design of the prototypes was still underway, he'd set up a small group of engineers to find the cheapest and most efficient way to produce each part of the production airplane and innovation, which would result in savings of about $12,000 per aircraft and millions for his customers when the press finally got to see the F-1O4. They called it the Missile with a man in It, and they weren't far off the mark. The first Mach 2 operational aircraft in the world would want to shatter every significant record on the books 91,000 feet and 1400 mph in May of 1958, making it the first aircraft ever to hold both the world altitude and speed mark simultaneously, three time decline records later that year and in 1959. Became the first airplane, taking off on its own power ever to climb above 100,000 feet as captain Joe Jordan zoomed up over 103,000 feet. This kind of performance clinched the 1958 Collier Trophy for Johnson. While the Starfighter was capturing headlines with recordbreaking performances, another, much more exotic Johnson design was unbeknownst to all but a few. Almost daily cruising in level flight at altitudes far beyond any official records. It had been born of the massive arms buildup of the early 50s, when U.S. intelligence agencies urgently needed confirmation of reports of major Soviet advances and intercontinental range bombers and ballistic missiles. The decision to proceed with overflights led to a design competition for a reconnaissance aircraft capable of 70,000 feet. lockheed hadn't been invited to participate. Johnson had caught wind of it and hastily submitted a proposal to build the CL-282, essentially a modified F-1O4 with a Wide span high aspect ratio wing. Though it lost out to the bell, X-16 Kelly Johnson wasn't about to quit. Over the years, he'd gotten to know a lot of people in high places, and he developed consummate lobbying skills. With a revised design and promising an airplane within just eight months, he got the go ahead to produce 20 aircraft for $22 million dollars. The project code, named Aquatone, was directed by the CIA's Richard Bissell, who found the Skunk Works streamlined, informal method of getting things done, much to his liking. Secrecy limited access to a mere handful of CIA and Air Force personnel. Which was fine with Johnson because it freed him from a lot of needless paperwork and interference. The urgency of the project also freed him from what he regarded as the tyranny of technical specifications. His customers simply wanted an airplane that could do the job, and all he had to do was deliver on time, while the article, as it was called, was a relatively conventional design. The extreme altitudes at which it was supposed to operate impose severe demands, forced to ruthlessly cut weight and reduce structural components to the minimum and design delicate lighter like wings spanning 80 feet and weighing less than four pounds per square foot, the fragile airframe was designed to run a special high altitude version of the J57 engine, virtually hand built to extremely high tolerances. In originally producing 10,500 pounds of thrust when the disassembled aircraft was unloaded from a C-124 at a remote desert test site in July of 1955, Johnson had met yet another seemingly impossible deadline. After reassembly was rolled out in the daylight for the first time, painstakingly prepared Red's taxi tests. On August 1st, as he had so many times in the past, Tony LeVier climbed into the cockpit. During his third run that day, he suddenly noticed that he was more than 30 feet off the ground, coming down hard. The tires blew and the brakes failed, caught fire. Reporting afterwards, he explained that at 70 knots I became aware of being airborne, which left me with utter amazement. As I had no intentions whatsoever of flying. Those fragile wings had more than enough lifts. He completed the first real flight four days later, and on a subsequent flight reported that the aircraft climbed toward the heavens like a homesick Angel. To conceal its true purpose the Angel was given the misleading official designation U-2. And a cover story was released the effect that it was being developed as a high altitude research vehicle for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. While it would perform this role admirably, tests focused on preparing the U-2 for its real mission carry 700 pounds of high resolution camera equipment up to altitudes then beyond any air defense capabilities. And in July 1956, just eleven months after first flight, it commenced its clandestine operational career, climbing to well above 70,000 feet as fuel burned off, U-2 successfully completed flights over denied areas and brought back the first hard data on the status of Soviet military preparedness and the true extent of its intercontinental ballistic missile program, called the Dragon Lady, by its pilots. Because it reminded them of the beautiful, mysterious and sometimes treacherous character in the Terry and the Pirates cartoon strip. It flew with virtual impunity four years till that day in May of 1960 Francis Gary Powers was shot down by a surface to air missile. While deep penetration of Soviet airspace came to a halt, U-2 continued to overfly hotspots around the world such as in 1962. when it confirmed the existence of missile launch sites in Cuba. And it would also continue to perform an incredibly wide array of extremely high altitude research missions. Kelly Johnson had reason to be proud of his Angel, the Skunk Works and finally been formally established as Lockheed Advanced Development Projects and on this, its first production program He'd refunded $2,000,000 dollars from the original $22,000,000 million dollar contract and build an additional five airplanes out of spare parts, surely one of the best bargains in defense procurement history. That pride was rekindled when, in 1981, the larger, more sophisticated TR-1 was rolled out years after U-2 production had ended. It was the first time the Air Force had ever put an aircraft back into production and it remains to this day the highest flying single engine piloted aircraft in the world. Back in December of 1956, the Skunk works as remarkable performance on the U-2 had convinced Lucky to give Johnson the job of designing and developing prototypes for a small military jet transport. The dollars were scarce, competition keen, and he'd only have eight months to do the job. Being on time had always been one of his cardinal rules, and in just 241 days he delivered the Jet Star. He'd actually been working on designs for a large jet transport since 1944. This trim little crab was actually a scaled down version of the L-193, an innovative 1953 design. Which the airlines had feared too risky support. Johnson, who continued to put in long hours as a flight test engineer on this project, was out to prove them wrong, and he was more than pleased with results. The top speed of over 600 mph, a peak altitude of 52,000 feet, and with wing tanks a range of over 3000 miles, the Jet Star easily won the competition. And though only a limited number went into military service as C-140s, ultimately more than 200 were produced. The Jet Star was a pleasant diversion as he worked on another, much tougher project, even as development of the U-2 was still underway. He projected that air defenses would catch up with it within two years, and he'd initiated a remarkable series of design studies for liquid hydrogen fueled supersonic successor. Capable of climbing above 90,000 feet, performance varied from Mach 2.5 in a range of 2200 miles to Mach 4 and 9000 miles because of the extremely low volumetric density of liquid hydrogen. However, the latter speed and range capability could only be achieved by building an airframe twice the size of a B-52 that was far too costly. And that's a much smaller design at the lower end of the performance spectrum went into development as the CL-400 in 1956. Though the CL-400 proved the technical feasibility of a liquid hydrogen powered aircraft, Johnson was dissatisfied with its short range and convinced that the problems of producing and transporting fuel around the world were insurmountable, Refusing to build an airplane he didn't believe in he recommended cancellation of the project in 1957, but he had an ace up his sleeve as concurrent with the liquid hydrogen studies. He'd also examined the potential of another advanced design using jet fuel, which at some loss in altitude promised Mach 3 cruise 4000 mile range. It was the genesis of his most spectacular creation, given approval to proceed in April of 1958. Johnson began a series of design studies, unveiled publicly here for the first time, for what he initially called the U-3 and then the Archangel, because it would soar much higher than the U-2. He explored various means by which you could get the vehicle to altitudes as high as 150,000 feet, employing A variety or even a combination of rocket, ramjet and turbojet power plants. At one point, he looked at the use of balloons to lift it to its rocket boost phase, and then at using a modified U-2 to tow a ramjet vehicle to 60,000 feet for engine ignition, even considered a multistage vehicle and one with inflatable wings and empanache. And throughout, he was challenged by the urgent need to reduce radar cross section for the first time. Stealth would have to be designed into the airplane. The intense design gestation process was completed in just 16 months, and when he presented his 12th concept to the CIA and Air Force in August 1959, he got the go ahead. When the stunningly beautiful A-12 was finally rolled out for its initial tests in April 1962. It wasn't some fantastic multi staged aberration. It was an honest airplane, but nothing like it had ever been built before. Ironically codenamed Oxcart and designed for sustained Mach 3.2 cruise at altitudes between 75 and 95,000 feet, it posed by far the greatest challenge of Johnson's career. And as everything from structural materials to hydraulic fluid and fuels had to be invented from scratch, For example, because of the intense heat and sustained Mach 3 speeds averaging more than 550 degrees on the surface of the airplane, Johnson employed a titanium alloy for more than 90% of the airframe. But no one had ever before attempted to process such quantities of the extremely hard metal. To the purity and strength levels required. Thus new forging and milling processes had to be invented and perfected. When the thin titanium skin on a wing panel shriveled up during heating tests, Johnson separated the panels from the wing spars with extrusions and put the now famous corrugations in the skin. When heated thereafter, the corrugations merely deepened a few thousandths of an inch and on cooling, Return to their original shape, common sense, solution to a difficult problem. There were literally thousands of such problems to overcome. And as always, Johnson stayed on top of all of them, looking over people's shoulders, asking lots of questions, always the best way in his view to get people to solve problems. And he continued to amaze everyone with, for example, on the spot predictions of skin temperatures which after hours of calculation. They find were within one or two degrees. The exact figure the whole effort completed an absolute secrecy with an incredibly small group of people, was all the more remarkable because it was done without the benefits of computers, as Johnson later recalled. When you think back to 1958 when the basic design worked on, the other types for this airplane is being designed and built. We had to make use of the Michigan computer, which is a 12 inch slide rule, and it did its job quite well. All of this prodigious effort is about to come to fruition. On an April 25th, 1962, preparations for high speed taxi and an initial brief liftoff were completed, but as Lou Schalk sped down the runway, he encountered nose wheel steering problems and had to kick in heavy right rudder then, as Johnson wrote on his log. The aircraft got off the ground. It was an immediate change of rudder angle. This set up lateral oscillations which were horrible to see. Schalk was lucky to get the airplane back on the ground. The problem was fixed posthaste and the next day he completed the first unofficial flight with the gear down. On April 30th Johnson was back with an entourage of VIP's for the official first flight, looking like he didn't have a care in the world. He offered a few last words of encouragement and advice before Schalk taxied out, and from there everything went flawlessly. 59 minutes later, Schalk was back on the ground, welcomed by an elated Kelly Johnson. The small, awestruck assembly just witnessed something very special. Limited by interim J75 engines, the A-12 didn't begin to realize its full potential until after the Pratt and Whitney J58s for which it was designed finally arrived in January 1963. At 32,500 pounds of thrust, the J58 was every bit as exotic as the airplane itself. In combination with an extremely complex inlet and exhaust ejector system, it operated as a normal after burning turbojet up to speeds of about 1600 mph and then shifted to bleed bypass cycle, with the inlet actually providing most of the thrust at Mach 3 cruise. When a two seat trainer became available in early 1963, Johnson, true to his convictions about flying his own aircraft, jumped into the rear cockpit and taking control after climb out, he flies supersonic first time in his life. During the course of the test program, a pair of airframes were modified for a highly unconventional mission. 1964 The Skunk Works built a small 42 foot long airframe with the very same materials used on the A-12. Designed to overfly areas deemed too risky for aircrews, the D-21 drone would ride piggyback atop an A- 12 for Mach 3 launches. At 80,000 feet and powered by a ramjet originally developed during the X-7 program, it would be even faster than the A-12 The finished article was mounted to its mother ship, now designated M-12 December 1964 and on December 22nd the unusual pair taxi for the first time and flight tests got underway. After takeoff on launch missions, the M-12 climbed to a rendezvous with a KC-135 for refueling. And then proceeded on to the predetermined launch point where the back seater would monitor the systems and initiate the launch procedures. While there were several successful tests, it was always a very risky business at best, and Kelly Johnson personally canceled this program after a fatal midair collision in 1966. By then, however we already had two other very successful oxcart progeny off the ground. The first was the YF-12A prototype for a proposed high speed interceptor. It was this aircraft which went on public display when in 1964 President Lyndon Johnson announced the existence of the A-11 and it subsequently put on a dazzling show as in May 1965. Claimed no less than nine world records, including a top speed of more than 2000 mph and a sustained altitude to over 80,000 feet without in any way taxing its full potential. the YF-12 was equipped with an advanced ASG-18 Doppler radar system and configured to carry three AIM-47 missiles internally. No Missiles had never before been launched within the YF-12 speed and altitude regime. The aircraft and its systems scored a reported 90% kill rate, even against drones flying head on down on the deck at distances of 120 miles and more. The Air Force was impressed enough to order 93 the big fighters into production for the Air Defense Command. The budgetary constraints ultimately resulted in their cancellation. The A-12 was also removed from service, leaving only the Air Force's SR-71, which took over its reconnaissance mission. Know everything about it and its activities would remain cloaked in a heavy shroud of secrecy. This was the aircraft that everyone came to know as the Blackbird solid coat of black paint, which seemed to add to its allure and mystery. Actually had a very practical purpose. It reduced skin temperatures by about 75 degrees. It's clean, elegant lines. The smooth contours of its blended wing body shape give the impression that an artist had sculpted it into a rare work of art. An aircraft design, however, more than any other field or follows function. And here again, every line, every detail of the airplane Exists only to serve some practical purpose. The chines, for example, which extend from the wing to the nose and flow gracefully up into the fuselage, actually satisfied a number of requirements. Aerodynamically, they reduce drag and added lift while also enhancing the stability of the aircraft. The SR-71's mission was long range reconnaissance and it's fuselage was essentially a big fuel tank. And thus the Chines also served to house its sophisticated cameras and sensors. Finally, those sloping contours extending up from the Chines enhance the airplane survivability by reducing its radar cross section. Thus, while an artist might envy its striking beauty, an engineer but only marveled at the logical genius of its design. That genius is recognized when in 1964 Kelly Johnson became the first person ever to be awarded a second Collier trophy. The SR-71 went on to claim the world absolute speed and altitude records and then repeatedly extended them, and to the public it always remained Kelly Johnson's mysterious record-breaking Blackbird. The crews who flew it, however, had another name, for it Through out its long operational career it remained invincible and incredibly effective. And to its crews, it was Habu dark skinned pit Viper with a deadly bite. And though it was finally retired from Air Force Service in 1990, Kelly Johnson's Mach 3 masterpiece is still charting the future. It's crews still looking up toward the blue black void of space flying exotic research missions for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. When he retired in 1975, Kelly Johnson had been on the cutting edge of an advance from 200 to more than 2000 mph. He'd been involved in the design of 44 different airplanes, many of them among the classics of aviation history, and at the time, he was still looking very much into the future. He'd gotten the Skunk Works into a project which would bear fruit to the F-117A, world's first true stealth aircraft, and it left a legacy which would leave its mark on the future. It seems kind of ironic, the a lowly creature. Known primarily for its orderiferous emanations, had, by the time Kelly retired, become a universal symbol for excellence. He had a remarkable capacity to take a complex problem, reduce it to its simplest components, and then take the most direct and sensible approach to its solution. Always a maverick, he was smart enough and tough enough not to follow the committee rule of conventional wisdom, this gave him remarkable freedom. With that freedom came a tremendous burden of responsibility. Finally, and most important, he understood himself well enough to realize that the few good people you can do remarkable things. Kelly Johnson's greatest legacy wasn't just what he did but the way he did it.
