Dont duplicate so much inspection. , , , , , ., Dave Robertson, one of Kellys original recruits and aerospaces most intuitively smart hydraulic specialist, ridiculed our design by calling it a flying engagement ring. Dave seldom minced words; he kept a fourteen-inch blowgun he had fashioned out of a jets tailpipe on his desk and would fire clay pellets at the necks of any other designers in the big drafting room who got on his nerves. Despite this, Johnson spent a lot of his free time consulting on new Lockheed aircraft, until his death in 1990. Taking action to help you protect what matters most. Funding a program must be timely so that the contractor doesnt have to keep running to the bank to support government projects. Many of these people subsequently became executives at Lockheed Martin. The book Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben Rich and Leo Janos (1996, Little Brown & Company) covers their historic achievements in great detail. In an e-mail, dated July 29, 1999, apparently addressed to Lindemann, McDonald referenced an excerpt of a discussion with Harold Puthoff, founder of the highly classified U.S. remote viewing program. Ben Rich Lockheed Skunk Works CEO had admitted in his Deathbed Confession that Extraterrestrial UFO visitors are real and the U.S. Military travel among stars. I took off with my backseat navigator, Lt. Col. Joe Vida, at 4:30 in the morning from Palmdale, just outside L.A., and despite the early hour, a huge crowd cheered us off. Call it whatever you want., We completed our pass over Beirut and turned toward Malta, when I got a warning low-oil-pressure light on my right engine. Commercial bid procedures are often better than military ones. He can and must test it in the initial stages. The Lockheed Rye Canyon Research and Development Center inSanta Claritawas renamed, the Kelly Johnson Research and Development Center in his honor. The Blackbird had as much gliding capacity as a manhole cover, and it came barreling in over Salt Lake, just as our pilot got a restart and hit those afterburners right above the Mormon Tabernacle. I lit the afterburners and left that Mirage standing still. Naturally, Johnson received his fair share of awards for these designs. 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. Will Rogers It is vitally important that we implement immigration reform. Created by Ben Rich and Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, Skunk Works takes its name from the . Skunk Works produced such revolutionary planes as the U-2, SR-71 Blackbird and FB-117 Nighthawk. Kelly's Heroes: Lockheed's five finest airplanes | Ars Technica If you've got the gold, you make the rules. Skunk Works Quotes - Goodreads | Meet your next favorite book And we have ones that can diagnose and cure cancer. This was Lockheeds secretive division, designing the aircraft of the future. We have lost something in the aerospace engineering world, and I wish we has leaders like Kelly Johnson around so that we could somehow get it back. Lord of the Skunk Works,, Oliver, Myrna. This aircraft also flew higher than any other jet before it. The Skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects. Now you can run this goddamn place. No video evidence of this alleged confession? Clarence L. Kelly Johnson Biography - wvi.com