Skunk Works

Kelly’s stature still gained him entry to the offices of the secretary of the Air Force, the Air Force chief of staff, the head of the Air Force’s black, or top secret, programs, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Senator Goldwater, and half a dozen other of the top movers and shakers. Through him, I met them all. But Kelly being Kelly had also made as many high-level enemies as friends, and plenty of blue-suiters who had dealt with him on procurement matters still had the wounds to prove it. Kelly said what he meant and meant what he said, and he couldn’t care less about who was offended. I remember attending one black-tie affair with him in late 1974 at which Barry Goldwater, a general in the Air Force Reserve, was being honored with an award, and half the Air Force high command was present. Kelly was asked to make a few remarks. He said: “I’ve never got in trouble making a speech on engineering. But over the years I’ve learned what not to say. I’m an expert at that. For instance, I will not say that if we had followed the policies of the man we are honoring tonight we would not have made such a shambles of the Vietnam War as we did. Nor would I say how stupid we were in the same war to take the guns out of our fighter aircraft and then send our pilots into combat with such a cost-saving training program that few of them had fired even a handful of air-to-air missiles before facing the enemy. And for gosh sakes, I won’t say that the Israeli air force using the same kind of U.S. aircraft against the same kind of MiGs scored about four times the victory ratios that we did, using better pilot training and tactics!”

When he was finished speaking, about half of those blue-suiters present sat on their hands. Still, we had our shots at getting back in the fighter business. In 1972, the Air Force put out bids for a new lightweight fighter to several companies. We managed to insinuate ourselves into the bidding. This would be an advanced version of the F-4 Phantom, a highly maneuverable Air Force tactical aircraft that NATO allies could use as well to upgrade their air defense inventories. The bid contained specific design and performance requirements for a fighter that weighed 17,000 pounds, carried 5,000 pounds of fuel, had a 275-square-foot wing, and a specific excess power rate. I was ready to put my design team on it and give the Air Force exactly what they asked for, but Kelly had other ideas.

“Goddam it, Ben, this airplane isn’t carrying enough fuel. A fighter on afterburner uses a thousand pounds a minute, and every fighter that carried only five thousand pounds in Vietnam combat ran out in tough spots and the pilot wound up as a guest at the Hanoi Hilton. This is unacceptable. I won’t submit a proposal for something this wrong.”

I pleaded with Kelly to go along. I said, “Give the Air Force what they ask for initially, and as the procurement process unfolds all kinds of changes and modifications will follow. That always happens; you know that. But if you cut us off before we even get up to the plate, there’s no way we can score.”

He got sore. “Ben, if I teach you anything, it’s this: don’t build an airplane you don’t believe in. Don’t prostitute yourself for bucks.”

In the end, he allowed us to submit his version of what he thought the Air Force should be requesting: a fighter weighing 19,000 pounds and carrying 9,000 pounds of fuel and a 310-square-foot wing. General Dynamics won the competition by sticking to exactly what the Air Force wanted. By the time their airplane, the F-16, became operational, it weighed 19,000 pounds, carried 7,400 pounds of fuel, and had a 310-square-foot wing. I told Kelly, “Admit it, the blue-suiters would have made your changes in due course, just as I predicted.”

But they weren’t about to be led by the nose by Kelly Johnson. And to compound the loss, which was substantial, because General Dynamics sold hundreds of those damned fighters, Kelly had balked over the Air Force’s insistence that they run all the flight tests on the prototype of the fighter, if we had been selected. “I will never agree to that,” he fumed. Historically, we flight-tested our prototypes and made all the fixes and adjustments before turning them over to the customer. Kelly called Lt. General Jim Stewart, head of the Aeronautical Systems Division at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, and read him the riot act. “No one runs my flight tests, Jim, but me and my people. That’s the way it’s been since day one. And that’s how it is going to stay. I’m putting you on notice right here and now.”

After that phone call, I received a message at home from General Stewart’s administrative assistant: Stewart was fed up dealing with Kelly Johnson, and so was the fighter command. As far as Tactical Air Command was concerned, the Skunk Works could go fly a bomber. We were out of the fighter business.