Skunk Works

Kelly solved the Electra instability problem with an unconventional twin-tail arrangement that soon became his and Lockheed’s trademark. The Electra revolutionized commercial aviation in the 1930s. Meanwhile 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.

The Skunk Works was always strictly off-limits to any outsider. I had no idea who even worked there when I reported in that first day, just before Christmas, 1954, to Building 82, which was an old bomber production hangar left over from World War II days. The office space allocated to Kelly’s Skunk Works operation was a narrow hallway off the main production floor, crowded with drilling machines and presses, small parts assemblies, and the large assembly area which served as the production line. There were two floors of surprisingly primitive and overcrowded offices where about fifty designers and engineers were jammed together behind as many desks as a moderate-size room could unreasonably hold. Space was at a premium, so much so that Kelly’s ten-person procurement department operated from a small balcony looking down on the production floor. The place was airless and gloomy and had the look of a temporary campaign headquarters where all the chairs and desks were rented and disappeared the day after the vote. But there was no sense of imminent eviction apparent inside Kelly’s Skunk Works. His small group were all young and high-spirited, who thought nothing of working out of a phone booth, if necessary, as long as they were designing and building airplanes. Added to the eccentric flavor of the place was the fact that when the hangar doors were opened, birds would fly up the stairwell and swoop around drawing boards and dive-bomb our heads, after knocking themselves silly against the permanently sealed and blacked-out windows, which Kelly insisted upon for security. Our little feathered friends were a real nuisance, but Kelly couldn’t care less. All that mattered to him was our proximity to the production floor. A stone’s throw was too far away; he wanted us only steps away from the shop workers, to make quick structural or parts changes or answer any of their questions. All the workers had been personally recruited by Kelly from the main plant and were veterans who had worked with him before on other projects.

The engineers dressed very informally—no suits or ties—because being stashed away, no one in authority except Kelly ever saw them anyway. “We don’t dress up for each other,” Kelly’s assistant, Dick Boehme, told me with a laugh. I asked Dick how long I could expect to stay. He shrugged. “I don’t know exactly what Kelly has in mind for you to do, but I’d guess anywhere from six weeks to six months.”

He was slightly off: I stayed for thirty-six years.

Twenty designers were stashed away in choking work rooms up on the second floor. The windows were sealed shut, and in those days nearly everyone smoked. To my delight, I was sharing an office with only six other engineers composing the analytical section, most of whom I discovered I already knew from my previous work on the F-104 Starfighter. Without exception, these were all colleagues whom I had particularly admired at the time, so I gave Kelly a quick “A” for sharp recruiting, myself excepted of course. We were only two doors removed from the boss’s big corner office.

Before I really got to work, Boehme handed me a piece of paper on which was mimeoed Kelly’s “riot act”—ten basic rules we worked by. A few of them: “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 person anticipating the delay.” “Special parts or materials shall be avoided whenever possible. Parts from stock shall be used even at the expense of added weight. Otherwise the chances of delay are too great.” “Everything possible will be done to save time.”