Skunk Works

Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos SKUNK WORKS A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed

To the men and women of the Skunk Works, past, present, and future

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE AUTHORS wish to acknowledge the contributions of various friends, co-workers, and former colleagues who enriched the pages of this book with their perspectives and recollections. Special thanks to Nancy Johnson and to Lockheed’s CEO, Dan Tellep, for providing access to Kelly Johnson’s logbooks and to former colleagues Sherm Mullin, Jack Gordon, Ray Passon, Dennis Thompson, Willis Hawkins, and Steve Shobert, who provided their expertise and advice through the manuscript process. Thanks also to Col. (ret.) Barry Hennessey, Pete Eames, Air Force historian Richard Hallion, and Don Welzenbach of the CIA.

Numerous Skunk Workers contributed their insights and memories. Among them: Dick Abrams, Ed Baldwin, Alan Brown, Buddy Brown, Norb Budzinske, Fred Carmody, Henry Combs, Jim Fagg, Bob Fisher, Tom Hunt, Bob Klinger, Alan Land, Tony LeVier, Red McDaris, Bob Murphy, Norm Nelson, Denys Overholser, Bill Park, Tom Pugh, Jim Ragsdale, Butch Sheffield, Steven Schoenbaum, and Dave Young.

We are particularly grateful for the participation of Air Force and CIA pilots, past and present: Bob Belor, Tony Bevacqua, William Burk Jr., Jim Cherbonneaux, Buz Carpenter, Ron Dyckman, Barry Horne, Joe Kinego, Marty Knutson, Joe Matthews, Miles Pound, Randy Elhorse, Jim Wadkins, Al Whitley, and Ed Yeilding. Significant too were the contributions of the current secretary of defense, William J. Perry, and former secretaries, Donald H. Rumsfeld, James R. Schlesinger, Harold Brown, and Caspar Weinberger; also former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General David Jones, former Air Force Secretary Don Rice, the CIA’s Richard Helms, Richard Bissell, John McMahon, Albert “Bud” Wheelon, and John Parangosky; Generals Leo Geary, Larry Welch, Jack Ledford, and Doug Nelson; National Security advisers Walt Rostow and Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Albert Wohlstetter, formerly of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

For obtaining photos and reference sources, appreciation to Lockheed’s Denny Lombard and Eric Schulzinger, Bill Lachman and Bill Working of the Central Imaging Office, Jay Miller of Aerofax, and Tony Landis. For reference material, a salute to aviation writers Chris Pocock and Paul Crickmore.

For help often above and beyond the call of duty, our gratitude to Diana Law, Myra Gruenberg, Debbie Elliot, Karen Rich, Bert Reich, Ben Cate, and in particular to my son, Michael Rich, for his insights and suggestions, and to our wives, Hilda Rich and Bonnie Janos, for their patience and support.

Finally, our affectionate appreciation to our agent, Kathy Robbins, and to our editor, Fredrica Friedman, executive editor of Little, Brown.

Los Angeles, January 1994

1 A PROMISING START

It’s August 1979 on the scorching Nevada desert, where Marines armed with ground-to-air Hawk missiles are trying to score a “kill” against my new airplane, an experimental prototype code-named Have Blue. We in the Skunk Works have built the world’s first pure stealth fighter, which is designed to evade the Hawk’s powerful radar tracking. The Marines hope to find Have Blue from at least fifty miles away and push all the right buttons so that the deadly Hawks will lock on. To help them, I’ve actually provided Have Blue’s flight plan to the missile crew, which is like pointing my finger at a spot in the empty sky and saying, “Aim right here.” All they’ve got to do is acquire the airplane on radar, and the homing system inside the Hawk missile will do the rest. Under combat conditions, that airplane would be blasted to pieces. If that defensive system locks on during this test, our experimental airplane flunks the course.