Secrets in the Sky: The Untold Story of Skunk Works (2019)

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Blitz: When you have
a super-secretive base

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in the middle of the desert,

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there is more
than meets the eye.

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Jacobsen: These incredibly nerdy
engineers are really James Bond.

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Petraeus: Skunk Works
originally started out

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as a highly secret bunch
of revolutionary thinkers.

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Mullin: Skunk Works
was hidden within

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the Lockheed California company.

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Justice: The Skunk Works created
these incredible flying machines

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that fundamentally
changed history.

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Trimble: Area 51 was
created for the U-2.

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That was the aircraft
that discovered

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the missile sites on Cuba.

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That's when the Cuban
Missile Crisis started.

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Gilliland Jr.:
The Blackbird is probably
the most popular airplane.

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People like the fastest,
the highest,

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and it helped end the Cold War.

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Law: In the Gulf War,

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the Nighthawk changed
combat aircraft permanently.

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Justice: The Skunk Works
created airplanes

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that changed world history.

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Jacobsen:
These guys are really

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at the nexus of
mystery, intrigue.

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Secrets are built in
into the American military.

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Narrator: For years,
I had to live in the shadows.

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See, that's what
we did back then.

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I led a top-secret organization
called the Skunk Works.

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Funny name, I know.

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I'll get to that later.

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My men made the airplanes
that kept America safe.

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I'm Kelly Johnson,
and for years,

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I was more than happy
that very few knew my name.

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He's a figure in American
military history

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that more people should know,
but the CIA

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and the United States government
did not want the public

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to know his name.

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People weren't supposed to know
about Kelly Johnson.

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Narrator:
As head of Skunk Works,

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I wrote near daily
in a logbook,

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making a record of my thoughts,
plans, and ideas.

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It was my personal journal,

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hidden from the public
until now.

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Westwick:
These mythical logbooks,
I've seen pages out of them.

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They're kind of the holy grail
of aerospace historians

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because here is a detailed log
of one of the iconic

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aircraft designers
of the 20th century.

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But I've never seen
a full round of them

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because I think a lot of them
are still classified.

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Narrator: The Skunk Works
is a concentration

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of a few good people solving
problems far in advance

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and at a fraction
of the cost of other groups

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in the aircraft industry.

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Almost all of what we did
was classified.

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We designed our first spy plane
during a very different time

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in American history, when
America was in the Cold War.

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The origins of the Cold War
manifested in the late 1940s,

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early 1950s.

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The first big blowup
was in 1949.

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The Soviets explode
their first atomic bomb.

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All of a sudden,
America and the Soviets

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have this nuclear capability.

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This arms race ensues.

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They were boasting and bragging

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that they had missiles
being pumped out like sausages.

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They had bombers.

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Painter:
And everybody is scared that,

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"Oh, my God,
they've got so many bombers.

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They're going to fly over
the North Pole,

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and they're going to bomb
the United States

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into, you know,
Never Never Land."

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Lockheed Jr. And it was
simply a fact of life.

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There was a possibility that
the threats and the desire

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expressed for world domination
by the Soviet Union

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could turn into
a nuclear conflict.

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It was implicit
in all of the air drills

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that we did as children
in grade school.

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The American government
was desperate to find out

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how strong the Soviets were,
and it was very difficult

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to get information
out of the Soviet Union.

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They were a closed society.

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The CIA could not get
any human spies on the ground

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in the Soviet Union.

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I mean, it was called
the Iron Curtain

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for a real reason, you know?

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It was impenetrable.

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Cappuccio: What Eisenhower was
impressed with was data.

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"I need to see
what they're doing.

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I have to see that data.
I have to..."

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And it has to be of a quality
that says,

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"That is a tank
and not a 2-ton truck.

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That is a missile
and not a pipe."

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And the President authorized
these incredibly nerdy engineers

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to create this spy plane
that can fly high enough

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to be out of the line of fire of
Soviet surface-to-air missiles.

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Narrator: The year was 1955.

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Previously, Skunk Works
had designed

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two successful jet fighters
for the government,

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the Shooting Star
and the Starfighter.

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Planes could soar
to 50,000 feet.

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We needed an airplane
that could go 70,000 feet,

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out of range of them
Russian missiles.

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And from that height,
we needed to capture images

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as tiny as my typewriter.

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That was the first
reconnaissance aircraft

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built from the ground up,
capturing secrets in the sky.

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We called it the U-2.

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Powers Jr.
Up until the U-2,

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there was no
reconnaissance aircraft.

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It was a modified bomber
with a camera.

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The U-2 was the first plane
to be specifically designed

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to fly over foreign countries

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to take pictures
to gather intelligence

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for review here
by the United States.

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With the U-2,
you wanted high altitude.

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That was going to be
the way you survived.

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Well, if you want high altitude,

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then you got to
have light weight,

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so you do severe things.

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Like, on the U-2,
you have one main landing gear

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in the middle of the fuselage
on the bottom.

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You don't have two
or more landing gears.

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Jacobsen: This was a plane that
had to be so incredibly light

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to get up to 70,000 feet.

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I mean, the skin on the aircraft
was something like

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0.02 inches.

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Painter: In the camera system,
they actually had

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two 9-inch reels of film,
and they counter-rotated

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so that the weight between the
two reels was always the same.

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It was that critical
on that aircraft

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to keep the weight in balance.

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Narrator: Everything we did
had to be secretive,

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even within our own
parent company, Lockheed.

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During the 1950s,

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it was one of the top airplane
manufacturers in the world.

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Skunk Works was a subdivision,

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yet very few within the company
knew what we were doing.

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Mullin: Skunk Works was
physically in Burbank,

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and it was hidden within
the Lockheed California company.

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I had been with Lockheed
well over 20 years,

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and I knew very little
about the Skunk Works.

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Justice: The Skunk Works itself
was a secret for a long time.

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When I hired in,
I was not allowed to tell people

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I worked for the Skunk Works.

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Law:
When I first went to Lockheed,
I didn't know a thing about it,

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and everybody
that was there says,

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"If you're a good engineer,
maybe you'll get to go over

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to the Skunk Works some day."

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As it turned out, when I did
go over to the Skunk Works,

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it was a different world.

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Number one, you would not talk
about your work to anybody,

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including your wife.

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They could fire you
if you told somebody

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you worked for the Skunk Works.

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Cappuccio: The second thing is,
you had to be investigated

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to make sure you were an honest,
loyal, trustworthy citizen.

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The fact that there was
an organized approach

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by the Soviets to have spies
here was a fact of life.

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There were, undoubtedly,
hostile agents that were trying

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to steal the intellectual
property, as we would say today,

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or understand what it is
that was being developed.

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Simple things like,

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"Watch the guy
on the Xerox machine.

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Make sure he only replaces
the cartridge,

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not put a camera in it."

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Law: Russians and Chinese
had ships out in the water,

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and they could tap
your phone calls,

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and, you know, everything was
just getting to the point

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where you
couldn't trust anybody,

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so they started giving
lie-detector tests.

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"Has anybody contacted you
on this?

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Has anybody asked you this?"

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Another thing everyone
was afraid of was a honeypot,

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and the honeypot is literally
like a female paramour,

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a Russian spy
who would try to seduce

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a male worker at the Skunk Works
and try and then,

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in pillow talk,
get this information from them.

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The environment that created
the U-2, they wanted to truly

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protect the fact
that the airplane

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was even in development.

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Kelly had money delivered
to his house,

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the payments for the contract.

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They set up front companies
to buy equipment,

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anything they could do
to mask the fact

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that an airplane
was in development.

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Narrator: We needed a place
to build the U-2,

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somewhere completely
off the grid,

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not the kind of place
you could find on a map.

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Jacobsen: They have to find
a base that is so secret

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that no one will know
what they're doing,

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so Kelly Johnson
and the CIA's Richard Bissell

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start flying
over the American west,

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and where do they wind up?

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Inside the middle
of the Nevada Test Site

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where the Atomic
Energy Commission

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just so happens to be
setting off nuclear bombs.

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I mean, I'm talking
mushroom cloud and all

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outside of Las Vegas, Nevada.

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It's impossible to imagine now,
but this was going on

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in the 1950s,
and they think to themselves,

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"No one is going to
follow us here."

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So, they partition off a segment
of the Nevada Test Site

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specifically for this aircraft,

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and the reason it's chosen
in particular

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is because it's an old,
dry lake bed,

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and it's extraordinarily flat,

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and that's what they need
for a sort of natural runway.

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And it's called Groom Lake,

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and now we know Groom Lake
to be Area 51.

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Petraeus: Well, Area 51,
of course, in the 1950s,

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this is so isolated.

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A lot of activity could be
conducted there

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without folks seeing it.

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Narrator: Base location has
been decided as Site II,

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for which the government
will accept my proposed name

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of "Paradise Ranch."

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Justice: The Paradise Ranch name
was given to it

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to try to make it sound better.

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There is just nothing there,
and in the days of the U-2,

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it's a few trailers
that are set up,

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so you can imagine
there wasn't really a lot of

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air-conditioning or anything.

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This is rough
working conditions.

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Jacobsen: One of the lead
physicists out there told me

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one of his most acute memories

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was looking across the way
and being like, "What is that?"

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and realizing that it was
a coyote chasing a rabbit,

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but they were both walking.

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Painter: One of the little
not-so-good features was

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Yucca Flats was still detonating

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nuclear weapons,
so every once in a while,

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everybody had to get
out of town,

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and they'd have to wait
two or three weeks,

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and they'd go back in
with the Geiger counters

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and make sure it was safe,
and they'd go back to work.

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Jacobsen: You can imagine
how glamorous it must seem,

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but if you go back
in time to 1955,

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the reality of the situation
was that it was a bunch

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of engineers,
test pilots, and CIA officers.

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It was an extremely tiny project
in terms of need to know.

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There was the President,
and there was only 200 people

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working out at Area 51
to get this U-2 aloft.

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And then, back in the old days,
we flew up there from Burbank,

243
00:13:16,447 --> 00:13:18,536
and the first time you went up
to the test site,

244
00:13:18,580 --> 00:13:20,321
you had to sit
in a part of the airplane

245
00:13:20,364 --> 00:13:23,150
with the windows blocked

246
00:13:23,193 --> 00:13:25,456
so that you couldn't see
where you were going,

247
00:13:25,500 --> 00:13:28,633
but once you got up there
and filled out your paperwork

248
00:13:28,677 --> 00:13:30,418
to get the badge
that you had to have

249
00:13:30,461 --> 00:13:32,072
when you were on the site,

250
00:13:32,115 --> 00:13:33,725
then you could sit
in any part of the airplane

251
00:13:33,769 --> 00:13:34,988
where there was a window.

252
00:13:35,031 --> 00:13:36,903
It was fun.

253
00:13:36,946 --> 00:13:39,253
I hate to say this, but we got
to fly over the craters

254
00:13:39,296 --> 00:13:41,995
that were in the ground
up in north of Las Vegas

255
00:13:42,038 --> 00:13:43,779
where they were doing
all the atomic tests.

256
00:13:43,823 --> 00:13:45,912
You could see these big cavities
and things.

257
00:13:50,438 --> 00:13:53,397
The U-2 was pushing
the boundaries

258
00:13:53,441 --> 00:13:56,009
of what we knew how to do,

259
00:13:56,052 --> 00:14:00,404
but this was
absolutely critical.

260
00:14:00,448 --> 00:14:01,884
This was at a time where --

261
00:14:01,928 --> 00:14:03,930
And we knew the Soviets
were working

262
00:14:03,973 --> 00:14:05,583
on these nuclear weapons.

263
00:14:05,627 --> 00:14:06,976
There was even reports

264
00:14:07,020 --> 00:14:09,631
that they had
a nuclear-powered bomber,

265
00:14:09,674 --> 00:14:12,112
but we didn't have
any way to verify.

266
00:14:12,155 --> 00:14:14,201
We didn't have satellites then.

267
00:14:14,244 --> 00:14:15,767
Narrator:
We worked night and day

268
00:14:15,811 --> 00:14:18,596
perfecting the U-2 at Area 51.

269
00:14:18,640 --> 00:14:23,471
Sleep -- that was just something
we all dreamt about.

270
00:14:23,514 --> 00:14:25,603
Airplane essentially completed.

271
00:14:25,647 --> 00:14:27,779
Terrifically long hours.

272
00:14:27,823 --> 00:14:30,173
Everybody almost dead.

273
00:14:46,711 --> 00:14:50,063
We did everything we could
to keep the U-2 top-secret,

274
00:14:50,106 --> 00:14:52,543
but there were times
civilians spotted

275
00:14:52,587 --> 00:14:55,198
the plane soaring in the sky.

276
00:14:55,242 --> 00:14:57,592
Luckily, the reports
coming in were sightings

277
00:14:57,635 --> 00:15:01,204
of unidentified flying objects.

278
00:15:01,248 --> 00:15:05,426
Man: I'm getting some reports
from the tower, radio tower,

279
00:15:05,469 --> 00:15:08,429
and several radar sites
about the UFO.

280
00:15:10,779 --> 00:15:15,653
During the testing of the U-2,
people saw these "UFOs,"

281
00:15:15,697 --> 00:15:19,570
and 50% of all sightings
in the '50s and '60s

282
00:15:19,614 --> 00:15:22,008
were because
of Skunk Works aircraft.

283
00:15:22,051 --> 00:15:28,971
The CIA had a whole bureau
to deal with U-2/UFO sightings

284
00:15:29,015 --> 00:15:33,715
because it was such a common
thing to have happen

285
00:15:33,758 --> 00:15:36,413
whereby someone would see
something up in the sky

286
00:15:36,457 --> 00:15:38,198
that was completely
inexplicable.

287
00:15:38,241 --> 00:15:41,027
I mean, the U-2 --
the wings are so long in it,

288
00:15:41,070 --> 00:15:43,725
it almost looks like
a flying cross,

289
00:15:43,768 --> 00:15:46,467
and people just
couldn't comprehend

290
00:15:46,510 --> 00:15:48,251
what could fly up that high.

291
00:15:51,385 --> 00:15:54,170
Justice:
You know, imagine that you're
a commercial airliner pilot

292
00:15:54,214 --> 00:15:57,086
and you're up at about
38,000 or 40,000 feet.

293
00:15:57,130 --> 00:15:58,827
You're pretty high.

294
00:15:58,870 --> 00:16:03,005
You know that military jets
go to about 50,000 feet.

295
00:16:03,049 --> 00:16:06,313
And then you see
something way above you.

296
00:16:06,356 --> 00:16:09,011
It is way above 50,000 feet.

297
00:16:09,055 --> 00:16:11,883
So now you see this
very light-colored thing

298
00:16:11,927 --> 00:16:14,016
at twice your altitude.

299
00:16:14,060 --> 00:16:16,192
What conclusion are you
going to draw?

300
00:16:16,236 --> 00:16:18,455
After one year's investigation,

301
00:16:18,499 --> 00:16:22,024
I believe that the flying
saucers seen by veteran airline

302
00:16:22,068 --> 00:16:26,898
and Air Force pilots
are objects from another planet.

303
00:16:26,942 --> 00:16:29,553
Narrator: At Area 51,
we did have creatures

304
00:16:29,597 --> 00:16:34,776
that seemed more than human,
but they weren't space men.

305
00:16:34,819 --> 00:16:37,822
They were our test pilots.

306
00:16:37,866 --> 00:16:41,478
These men were a different
breed of beings,

307
00:16:41,522 --> 00:16:45,569
and testing our machines
was a test of their own mettle.

308
00:16:45,613 --> 00:16:47,919
If you go back and you say,

309
00:16:47,963 --> 00:16:49,486
when these airplanes
were designed

310
00:16:49,530 --> 00:16:51,749
and you look at the tool sets
to design them,

311
00:16:51,793 --> 00:16:54,578
most of them were done
with simple slide rules,

312
00:16:54,622 --> 00:16:57,886
so there was a fair
amount of uncertainty.

313
00:16:57,929 --> 00:17:00,410
Justice: And we're talking,
you know, the mid-1950s here.

314
00:17:00,454 --> 00:17:04,327
You know, I mean, the technology
was still very crude.

315
00:17:04,371 --> 00:17:07,852
Flying at that altitude, you're
above most of the atmosphere.

316
00:17:07,896 --> 00:17:10,333
The air is extremely thin,
and getting a jet engine

317
00:17:10,377 --> 00:17:12,248
to run up there
is very difficult.

318
00:17:12,292 --> 00:17:16,644
Keeping the pilot alive
is very difficult.

319
00:17:16,687 --> 00:17:19,560
Trimble: The aircraft is flying
at 70,000 feet.

320
00:17:19,603 --> 00:17:23,085
Once you get above
63,000, 64,000 feet,

321
00:17:23,129 --> 00:17:25,957
if your body was exposed
to the air pressure

322
00:17:26,001 --> 00:17:27,568
at that altitude,

323
00:17:27,611 --> 00:17:31,267
the blood inside your body
would begin to boil.

324
00:17:31,311 --> 00:17:34,096
The human body is not
designed to be exposed

325
00:17:34,140 --> 00:17:38,187
to air pressure that low,
so you have to wear

326
00:17:38,231 --> 00:17:43,105
a pressurized space suit
just to survive.

327
00:17:43,149 --> 00:17:46,021
Jacobsen: It took three
flight surgeons to help you

328
00:17:46,065 --> 00:17:50,069
into the suit to make sure
there were no rips,

329
00:17:50,112 --> 00:17:51,809
that the zipper went up
the right way,

330
00:17:51,853 --> 00:17:53,898
and then you sat
and you re-breathed

331
00:17:53,942 --> 00:17:57,293
pure oxygen for two hours.

332
00:17:57,337 --> 00:17:59,730
Man: High flights without free
breathing would result

333
00:17:59,774 --> 00:18:02,516
in nitrogen bubbles
forming in the blood,

334
00:18:02,559 --> 00:18:05,127
the painful and often fatal
bends encountered

335
00:18:05,171 --> 00:18:07,477
by deep-sea divers.

336
00:18:07,521 --> 00:18:10,132
Jacobsen: What these pilots
had to go through

337
00:18:10,176 --> 00:18:12,134
before they even
got into the plane,

338
00:18:12,178 --> 00:18:13,614
it's just extraordinary
to think about.

339
00:18:13,657 --> 00:18:15,311
That's American history.

340
00:18:15,355 --> 00:18:18,967
Petraeus: They're right
on the edge of what their

341
00:18:19,010 --> 00:18:20,925
physical capacity is
and, of course,

342
00:18:20,969 --> 00:18:23,754
what their aircraft's
capacity is.

343
00:18:23,798 --> 00:18:25,321
This is a very rare breed

344
00:18:25,365 --> 00:18:28,542
and a very special
group of Americans.

345
00:18:28,585 --> 00:18:30,674
Painter: You're essentially
flying in what some pilots

346
00:18:30,718 --> 00:18:32,372
refer to as coffin's corner.

347
00:18:32,415 --> 00:18:34,461
You have about
10 knots of air speed

348
00:18:34,504 --> 00:18:36,985
from stall to going Mach 1,

349
00:18:37,028 --> 00:18:40,249
so at either end,
the plane is non-flyable.

350
00:18:40,293 --> 00:18:43,165
Doing a high rate of bank turn
at that altitude,

351
00:18:43,209 --> 00:18:46,212
you can't do that, either,
because the wingspan is so long.

352
00:18:46,255 --> 00:18:49,563
The inside wing is stalling, and
the outside wing is going Mach.

353
00:18:49,606 --> 00:18:51,521
So the pilots who flew
these airplanes

354
00:18:51,565 --> 00:18:54,524
had to be
extremely gifted pilots.

355
00:18:54,568 --> 00:18:56,352
Powers Jr.:
You had to have the aptitude

356
00:18:56,396 --> 00:18:59,703
to fly this type of a mission
and to keep quiet about it.

357
00:18:59,747 --> 00:19:03,925
Pilots were breaking the
high-altitude record every day,

358
00:19:03,968 --> 00:19:07,537
yet they couldn't
tell anybody about it.

359
00:19:07,581 --> 00:19:10,192
Gilliland Jr.: Why does a guy
like that get into a plane

360
00:19:10,236 --> 00:19:14,892
that's never been flown before,
with the possibility of death?

361
00:19:14,936 --> 00:19:18,157
Not everybody
goes to work each day

362
00:19:18,200 --> 00:19:22,944
with a high possibility of being
killed at the end of the day.

363
00:19:22,987 --> 00:19:24,380
Morgenfeld:
I think most of us aren't

364
00:19:24,424 --> 00:19:26,687
quite that emotional about it.

365
00:19:26,730 --> 00:19:30,560
Crashes can be useful
in sort of a perverse way,

366
00:19:30,604 --> 00:19:33,998
in that, "Hey, we just found
out something that's wrong."

367
00:19:37,001 --> 00:19:38,873
Oh, boy, there have been
so many of the guys

368
00:19:38,916 --> 00:19:41,049
that I know that have died.

369
00:19:41,092 --> 00:19:44,618
Hell, I just can't even...

370
00:19:44,661 --> 00:19:49,884
It's hard to talk about
those people that have died.

371
00:19:49,927 --> 00:19:51,799
We did the best we could,
and something

372
00:19:51,842 --> 00:19:56,020
that we couldn't possibly
take into account happened.

373
00:19:56,064 --> 00:19:58,675
And the reason we concentrate
on it so much

374
00:19:58,719 --> 00:20:00,416
is because these people's lives

375
00:20:00,460 --> 00:20:04,072
and their family's lives
are on the line in our hands.

376
00:20:05,856 --> 00:20:08,250
Kelly was beyond devastated.

377
00:20:08,294 --> 00:20:10,426
He would cry.

378
00:20:13,473 --> 00:20:15,823
I mean, these guys
are your friends.

379
00:20:18,347 --> 00:20:21,045
Narrator: Whenever one
of our planes went down,

380
00:20:21,089 --> 00:20:23,918
I'd get a bad stomach ulcer.

381
00:20:25,528 --> 00:20:29,140
If you go into Kelly's logs,
you can tell that he took

382
00:20:29,184 --> 00:20:31,317
his responsibility
very, very hard.

383
00:20:31,360 --> 00:20:34,276
He suffered from stress.

384
00:20:34,320 --> 00:20:36,800
Just a few months before
they delivered the U-2,

385
00:20:36,844 --> 00:20:38,324
he had a complete
physical breakdown

386
00:20:38,367 --> 00:20:40,543
that almost killed him.

387
00:20:40,587 --> 00:20:45,635
Narrator: I just want to help
the U.S., my people, and others.

388
00:20:45,679 --> 00:20:49,900
The sacrifices of these
test pilots can't be in vain.

389
00:20:49,944 --> 00:20:52,729
And they weren't.

390
00:20:52,773 --> 00:20:55,950
Within the first year
of operation, it dispelled

391
00:20:55,993 --> 00:20:57,647
the missile gap
and the bomber gap.

392
00:20:57,691 --> 00:21:00,346
Because of the U-2 flights
and the photographic

393
00:21:00,389 --> 00:21:02,435
reconnaissance imagery
they brought home,

394
00:21:02,478 --> 00:21:05,307
America was able to prove
and show internally

395
00:21:05,351 --> 00:21:08,005
that the Soviets were boasting
about the missiles they had.

396
00:21:08,049 --> 00:21:11,139
They were not as far advanced
as we thought they were

397
00:21:11,182 --> 00:21:13,228
or as they were bragging about.

398
00:21:15,491 --> 00:21:18,799
Narrator: We thought the Red's
radar couldn't detect us,

399
00:21:18,842 --> 00:21:22,629
but we were wrong.

400
00:21:22,672 --> 00:21:25,327
Justice: The very first
overflight of the Soviet Union

401
00:21:25,371 --> 00:21:29,113
was tracked on its full length,
and that surprised the CIA

402
00:21:29,157 --> 00:21:31,202
and it surprised
the American government.

403
00:21:31,246 --> 00:21:32,943
That was a bad thing.

404
00:21:32,987 --> 00:21:35,206
It meant that the Soviet radars
were way better

405
00:21:35,250 --> 00:21:37,339
than we thought they were.

406
00:21:37,383 --> 00:21:40,951
Brown: They could pick the U-2
up, and they couldn't reach it,

407
00:21:40,995 --> 00:21:45,347
and it became obvious almost
as soon as the U-2 was designed

408
00:21:45,391 --> 00:21:48,089
that it was going to become
obsolete as soon as the Soviets

409
00:21:48,132 --> 00:21:51,614
had adequate
surface-to-air weapons.

410
00:21:51,658 --> 00:21:56,663
In 1955, the Soviets only had
one type of a missile, SA1,

411
00:21:56,706 --> 00:21:58,447
Surface-to-Air Missile 1.

412
00:21:58,491 --> 00:22:01,276
It could reach an altitude
of 60,000 feet,

413
00:22:01,320 --> 00:22:04,105
but U-2s were flying
at 70,000 feet,

414
00:22:04,148 --> 00:22:07,413
so for four years,
they were out of harm's way.

415
00:22:07,456 --> 00:22:13,462
May 1st of 1960, my father is
briefed that, upon this mission,

416
00:22:13,506 --> 00:22:15,943
there are certain targets
he should overfly,

417
00:22:15,986 --> 00:22:17,814
that they're trying
to get information.

418
00:22:17,858 --> 00:22:20,600
One of the targets,
over Sverdlovsk,

419
00:22:20,643 --> 00:22:25,344
was to film an SA2 base, a new,
improved missile base

420
00:22:25,387 --> 00:22:27,998
that a previous mission
had uncovered.

421
00:22:28,042 --> 00:22:30,740
The goal of this
particular flight May 1st

422
00:22:30,784 --> 00:22:35,310
was to find out if
the Soviets were getting ready

423
00:22:35,354 --> 00:22:38,618
to put operational the missile
base they had discovered.

424
00:22:38,661 --> 00:22:40,707
And my father
found out firsthand

425
00:22:40,750 --> 00:22:42,361
that it was operational.

426
00:22:45,233 --> 00:22:47,366
Reporter: A United States
Air Force plane shot down

427
00:22:47,409 --> 00:22:49,890
on Russian soil,
reportedly an ultra-secret

428
00:22:49,933 --> 00:22:52,675
high-altitude
reconnaissance craft.

429
00:22:52,719 --> 00:22:54,938
As the Soviet launches
its most belligerent

430
00:22:54,982 --> 00:22:58,507
anti-American propaganda barrage
in recent years.

431
00:22:58,551 --> 00:23:02,511
Jacobsen: And it all went back
to these engineers, you know,

432
00:23:02,555 --> 00:23:04,905
with the pencils
in their pocket.

433
00:23:04,948 --> 00:23:12,129
The Skunk Works are really
at the nexus of history.

434
00:23:12,173 --> 00:23:15,959
At issue was nuclear war.

435
00:23:31,627 --> 00:23:35,936
Narrator: We lost airplane
flown by Francis G. Powers.

436
00:23:35,979 --> 00:23:38,199
There was an immediate
Russian reaction,

437
00:23:38,242 --> 00:23:42,290
and they claimed they shot
down the airplane by missile.

438
00:23:42,333 --> 00:23:48,383
The political implications of
the flight were extremely major.

439
00:23:48,427 --> 00:23:50,907
Justice: The aftermath of
Powers being shot down

440
00:23:50,951 --> 00:23:55,477
was really interesting
because he didn't report in

441
00:23:55,521 --> 00:23:58,393
or land when he was supposed to,
so now you have

442
00:23:58,437 --> 00:24:00,787
the U.S. decision-makers
wondering what happened.

443
00:24:00,830 --> 00:24:03,703
They picked up some
of the radio reports

444
00:24:03,746 --> 00:24:05,574
that maybe something
had happened to him,

445
00:24:05,618 --> 00:24:07,228
but they didn't have
confirmation,

446
00:24:07,271 --> 00:24:10,405
so now you had this silence
as each other waited

447
00:24:10,449 --> 00:24:14,496
to see what the other one
was going to do.

448
00:24:14,540 --> 00:24:16,498
The Soviets were playing a game.

449
00:24:16,542 --> 00:24:18,805
They were trying
to trap the Americans,

450
00:24:18,848 --> 00:24:22,286
so they intentionally released
this fake photo

451
00:24:22,330 --> 00:24:25,986
to see what
the Americans would do.

452
00:24:26,029 --> 00:24:29,250
This photograph showed a pile
of wreckage, plane wreckage,

453
00:24:29,293 --> 00:24:33,559
in a field with kids
and farmers around it.

454
00:24:33,602 --> 00:24:36,823
Kelly Johnson takes one look
at this photo and says,

455
00:24:36,866 --> 00:24:39,042
"The rivets are not lined up
correctly for a U-2,"

456
00:24:39,086 --> 00:24:42,219
and that, "The fuel intake and
the jet intake isn't correct.

457
00:24:42,263 --> 00:24:44,308
That's not my plane."

458
00:24:44,352 --> 00:24:48,574
Narrator: So I was given the job
of insulting them to the point

459
00:24:48,617 --> 00:24:51,490
where they would show us
what they had,

460
00:24:51,533 --> 00:24:56,712
because we did not know whether
Powers had just defected.

461
00:24:56,756 --> 00:25:00,977
Painter: So, Kelly was brought
in and made some public comments

462
00:25:01,021 --> 00:25:03,153
about what was
being shown on TV,

463
00:25:03,197 --> 00:25:05,982
saying, "That's no U-2.
Soviets are lying."

464
00:25:06,026 --> 00:25:07,897
Powers Jr.:
As a result, all of a sudden,

465
00:25:07,941 --> 00:25:09,420
maybe they didn't shoot it down.

466
00:25:09,464 --> 00:25:10,987
Maybe there's no plane wreckage.

467
00:25:11,031 --> 00:25:12,946
Maybe the pilot died.
They have no evidence.

468
00:25:12,989 --> 00:25:14,425
Release the cover stories.

469
00:25:14,469 --> 00:25:16,166
Justice:
Then the U.S. announced,

470
00:25:16,210 --> 00:25:18,125
"Well, we lost tck
of a weather plane.

471
00:25:18,168 --> 00:25:21,998
It may have wandered into
Soviet airspace."

472
00:25:22,042 --> 00:25:24,044
And the Soviets go, "Got you."

473
00:25:24,087 --> 00:25:25,654
Powers Jr.: Premier Khrushchev
comes up and says,

474
00:25:25,698 --> 00:25:28,048
"Ah, we do have the pilot.
Here he is.

475
00:25:28,091 --> 00:25:31,138
Ah, we do have the wreckage.
Here it is."

476
00:25:31,181 --> 00:25:34,141
The trial, guy gets stuck
in a Russian prison,

477
00:25:34,184 --> 00:25:37,187
sentenced to 10 years
imprisonment.

478
00:25:37,231 --> 00:25:39,625
The first three months
of his captivity

479
00:25:39,668 --> 00:25:42,715
was solitary confinement.

480
00:25:42,758 --> 00:25:46,849
And then he was interrogated --
bright lights,

481
00:25:46,893 --> 00:25:50,897
long days of questioning,
Mutt-and-Jeff type of scenario.

482
00:25:50,940 --> 00:25:52,899
One KGB guy would come in,

483
00:25:52,942 --> 00:25:54,770
rough and gruff,
yelling and screaming,

484
00:25:54,814 --> 00:25:57,468
"You tell us everything,
or we'll shoot you tomorrow."

485
00:25:57,512 --> 00:25:59,775
The next guy would come in,

486
00:25:59,819 --> 00:26:02,952
"Mr. Powers, you help us,
we can help you."

487
00:26:05,389 --> 00:26:07,609
Trying to get information
out of him

488
00:26:07,653 --> 00:26:11,787
by any means necessary,
short of physical abuse.

489
00:26:11,831 --> 00:26:14,137
He would reveal certain things
that he knew

490
00:26:14,181 --> 00:26:15,704
they could find out
in the press.

491
00:26:15,748 --> 00:26:18,141
He'd keep other things secret
that he knew

492
00:26:18,185 --> 00:26:21,449
that they could have
no ways of finding out.

493
00:26:21,492 --> 00:26:23,146
Gilliland Jr.:
Francis Gary Powers was held

494
00:26:23,190 --> 00:26:25,366
for quite a while,
and then eventually, you know,

495
00:26:25,409 --> 00:26:26,976
there was the story
with the "Bridge of Spies,"

496
00:26:27,020 --> 00:26:29,500
you know,
the movie that was done.

497
00:26:29,544 --> 00:26:31,590
Powers Jr.:
February 10, 1962,

498
00:26:31,633 --> 00:26:35,071
you have two spies
on each side of this bridge --

499
00:26:35,115 --> 00:26:40,773
Rudolf Abel on the west side,
my father on the east side.

500
00:26:40,816 --> 00:26:42,513
They are positively ID'd.

501
00:26:42,557 --> 00:26:45,952
They walk home to
their respective freedoms.

502
00:26:45,995 --> 00:26:48,563
My father returns home
to an American public

503
00:26:48,607 --> 00:26:50,826
that doesn't really know
what to make of this ordeal.

504
00:26:50,870 --> 00:26:54,221
There have been misinformation
and rumors in the papers

505
00:26:54,264 --> 00:26:56,571
that he had defected,
that he had landed

506
00:26:56,615 --> 00:26:58,660
the plane intact,
that he had spilled his guts

507
00:26:58,704 --> 00:27:00,923
and told the Soviets
everything he knew

508
00:27:00,967 --> 00:27:04,057
or that he hadn't followed
orders and committed suicide.

509
00:27:08,322 --> 00:27:12,152
Dad is not able to go back
into the Air Force at the time.

510
00:27:12,195 --> 00:27:14,154
He's the known spy.

511
00:27:14,197 --> 00:27:18,332
If they employ him, they will be
accused of employing spies.

512
00:27:18,375 --> 00:27:21,552
In the meantime, Kelly Johnson
offered my dad a job

513
00:27:21,596 --> 00:27:25,861
as a Lockheed test pilot,
flying U-2s.

514
00:27:25,905 --> 00:27:27,384
Justice:
One of the attributes of Kelly,

515
00:27:27,428 --> 00:27:31,301
while he was a tough guy,
he had a soft spot,

516
00:27:31,345 --> 00:27:34,870
and he always wanted
to take care of his pilots,

517
00:27:34,914 --> 00:27:38,265
and when Francis Gary Powers
came back,

518
00:27:38,308 --> 00:27:40,571
Kelly couldn't stand to see
that guy on the street.

519
00:27:40,615 --> 00:27:43,009
This was a national hero,

520
00:27:43,052 --> 00:27:45,446
even though he wasn't being
treated like one,

521
00:27:45,489 --> 00:27:48,231
so, yeah, Kelly gave him a job.

522
00:27:48,275 --> 00:27:50,451
Narrator: I felt for Powers.

523
00:27:50,494 --> 00:27:54,455
He and I were both now
known to the public.

524
00:27:54,498 --> 00:27:58,677
After the U-2 incident,
everything changed.

525
00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:01,505
It was suggested to me
by security people

526
00:28:01,549 --> 00:28:04,813
that I not go to work
by the same route.

527
00:28:04,857 --> 00:28:07,729
I've been told to avoid certain
traffic intersections

528
00:28:07,773 --> 00:28:10,340
and watch out for big trucks.

529
00:28:10,384 --> 00:28:14,736
I slept with
an automatic pistol close by.

530
00:28:14,780 --> 00:28:17,260
There were concerns,
and the CIA told him

531
00:28:17,304 --> 00:28:20,568
that he needed
to take precautions,

532
00:28:20,611 --> 00:28:23,571
because somebody like him
was somebody who an adversary

533
00:28:23,614 --> 00:28:26,966
might want to kidnap or do
something about to prevent him

534
00:28:27,009 --> 00:28:31,361
from embarrassing them
with new technology again.

535
00:28:31,405 --> 00:28:35,496
It does sound paranoid,
but it wasn't crazy.

536
00:28:35,539 --> 00:28:38,586
The idea behind it is that
they would, like, get them

537
00:28:38,629 --> 00:28:41,720
and torture them and say,
"Tell us how you built the U-2,"

538
00:28:41,763 --> 00:28:45,375
but that was a very real threat
because, as far as we know,

539
00:28:45,419 --> 00:28:47,595
the Soviets never got

540
00:28:47,638 --> 00:28:51,468
a spy plane
over the United States.

541
00:28:51,512 --> 00:28:55,777
Narrator: The U-2 is still busy,
now over Cuba.

542
00:28:55,821 --> 00:28:58,693
This aircraft took the pictures
that were the basis

543
00:28:58,737 --> 00:29:01,130
for our move on Cuba.

544
00:29:01,174 --> 00:29:04,655
The images showed
Soviet missiles just 90 miles

545
00:29:04,699 --> 00:29:06,745
from U.S. soil.

546
00:29:06,788 --> 00:29:09,878
That was the aircraft that
discovered the missile sites

547
00:29:09,922 --> 00:29:12,489
on Cuba that weren't
supposed to be there.

548
00:29:12,533 --> 00:29:14,796
That's when the Cuban
Missile Crisis started.

549
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:18,452
I have directed the continued
and increased close surveillance

550
00:29:18,495 --> 00:29:20,584
of Cuba and its
military buildup.

551
00:29:23,326 --> 00:29:26,460
Narrator:
A U-2 was shot down over Cuba.

552
00:29:26,503 --> 00:29:30,507
They had 11 radar and missile
sites turned on against him

553
00:29:30,551 --> 00:29:33,249
and repeated their success
with Powers,

554
00:29:33,293 --> 00:29:35,251
except, this time,

555
00:29:35,295 --> 00:29:39,125
Major Rudolf Anderson
was killed.

556
00:29:39,168 --> 00:29:42,215
It is apparent that the U-bird
has just about

557
00:29:42,258 --> 00:29:47,176
reached the end of
its reconnaissance capability.

558
00:29:47,220 --> 00:29:50,397
We knew we needed
a new kind of airplane,

559
00:29:50,440 --> 00:29:53,226
one that was near impossible
to shoot down,

560
00:29:53,269 --> 00:29:56,925
a plane unlike anything man
had ever seen before,

561
00:29:56,969 --> 00:30:01,103
something so fast the human eye
could barely see it in the sky.

562
00:30:24,039 --> 00:30:28,217
yearsbefore the U-2 was shot down,

563
00:30:28,261 --> 00:30:31,177
that we ought to be working on
something that would go higher,

564
00:30:31,220 --> 00:30:34,093
go faster, go further.

565
00:30:34,136 --> 00:30:37,792
We'd be starting from scratch,
just like the Wright brothers.

566
00:30:40,926 --> 00:30:43,232
Powers Jr.: Kelly Johnson and
the Skunk Works team realized

567
00:30:43,276 --> 00:30:45,756
they had to develop
some type of an airplane

568
00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:48,672
that could fly higher and faster
than the U-2

569
00:30:48,716 --> 00:30:51,153
in order
to avoid Soviet missiles.

570
00:30:51,197 --> 00:30:53,939
We have to design
something better.

571
00:30:53,982 --> 00:30:55,897
Jacobsen: It was impossible
to think about,

572
00:30:55,941 --> 00:30:58,900
but Kelly Johnson said,
"We did it with the U-2.

573
00:30:58,944 --> 00:31:00,946
We can do it."

574
00:31:00,989 --> 00:31:04,601
Carpenter: We needed an airplane
that flies not at 70,000 feet

575
00:31:04,645 --> 00:31:07,604
but at 85,000 feet and above.

576
00:31:07,648 --> 00:31:11,086
Instead of an airplane
that flies at 450 miles an hour,

577
00:31:11,130 --> 00:31:14,785
we needed an airplane that flies
at 2,100 miles an hour --

578
00:31:14,829 --> 00:31:17,353
Mach 3-plus.

579
00:31:17,397 --> 00:31:21,836
Mach is a designation for
capturing the speed of airplane

580
00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:24,665
relative to the speed of sound.

581
00:31:24,708 --> 00:31:28,582
Mach 1 is the speed of sound.

582
00:31:28,625 --> 00:31:32,325
Mach 3 means that you're
covering 1 mile

583
00:31:32,368 --> 00:31:34,066
every second and a half.

584
00:31:39,506 --> 00:31:43,162
Mach 3.2, the airplane goes
faster than a .30-06 bullet.

585
00:31:43,205 --> 00:31:45,991
You cannot turn the airplane
in the state of Ohio

586
00:31:46,034 --> 00:31:47,731
it goes so fast.

587
00:31:49,777 --> 00:31:52,388
What made it so special
and so difficult

588
00:31:52,432 --> 00:31:53,607
was that there were
so many things in it

589
00:31:53,650 --> 00:31:55,522
that had never been done before.

590
00:31:55,565 --> 00:31:57,002
You know, for example,
that's the first time

591
00:31:57,045 --> 00:32:00,005
we ever built anything
large out of titanium.

592
00:32:00,048 --> 00:32:03,095
The decision to use titanium
is traceable to

593
00:32:03,138 --> 00:32:05,271
the environment
in which it flew.

594
00:32:05,314 --> 00:32:08,665
When you're traveling
2,000 miles per hour,

595
00:32:08,709 --> 00:32:11,451
the friction of the air
rubbing over the airplane

596
00:32:11,494 --> 00:32:16,021
heats up the airframe
to about 550 degrees Fahrenheit,

597
00:32:16,064 --> 00:32:20,025
which is about as hot
as your oven can get at home.

598
00:32:20,068 --> 00:32:22,592
You could almost immediately
rule out aluminum,

599
00:32:22,636 --> 00:32:26,945
because aluminum above about
370 degrees loses its strength.

600
00:32:29,860 --> 00:32:33,777
So he was driven to titanium
because it's strong as steel

601
00:32:33,821 --> 00:32:36,084
and half the weight of steel,

602
00:32:36,128 --> 00:32:39,870
but we really hadn't used
much of titanium.

603
00:32:39,914 --> 00:32:43,962
Narrator: To get the titanium,
we went to an unlikely source --

604
00:32:44,005 --> 00:32:45,876
our enemy.

605
00:32:45,920 --> 00:32:47,487
Carpenter: We don't have
a titanium source

606
00:32:47,530 --> 00:32:50,838
in the United States,
so the CIA eventually set up

607
00:32:50,881 --> 00:32:53,406
a frontal company in Europe,

608
00:32:53,449 --> 00:32:55,451
and the Russians sold us
all the titanium.

609
00:32:55,495 --> 00:32:58,237
They never knew
who they sold it to.

610
00:32:58,280 --> 00:33:00,935
So you had the CIA buying
the materials

611
00:33:00,979 --> 00:33:02,763
that they needed
for this aircraft

612
00:33:02,806 --> 00:33:05,505
so it could fly over the
Soviet Union and spy on them.

613
00:33:05,548 --> 00:33:10,336
It was an incredibly
ambitious aircraft to design.

614
00:33:10,379 --> 00:33:14,079
The other issue is that jet
engines are really, really good,

615
00:33:14,122 --> 00:33:17,125
even up to Mach 2, Mach 2.5,

616
00:33:17,169 --> 00:33:22,826
but once they go beyond that
speed, it gets very tricky.

617
00:33:22,870 --> 00:33:25,046
Westwick: For a Mach-3 flight,
you have funnel just

618
00:33:25,090 --> 00:33:28,658
an amazing quantity of air
through these jet engines.

619
00:33:28,702 --> 00:33:30,225
The quantity of air is like
as much water

620
00:33:30,269 --> 00:33:32,010
as flows over Niagara Falls.

621
00:33:32,053 --> 00:33:34,273
That's the volume of air
that you're funneling through.

622
00:33:34,316 --> 00:33:37,711
The problem is, when you're
funneling that volume of air in,

623
00:33:37,754 --> 00:33:40,192
you get these shock waves
in the air that prevent the air

624
00:33:40,235 --> 00:33:41,845
from actually
reaching the jet engines,

625
00:33:41,889 --> 00:33:44,239
so the engine stalls,
and the airplane crashes.

626
00:33:46,546 --> 00:33:49,070
Narrator: We needed a special
engineer to solve

627
00:33:49,114 --> 00:33:52,073
the air-flow problem
on our new plane.

628
00:33:52,117 --> 00:33:55,076
His name -- Ben Rich.

629
00:33:55,120 --> 00:33:57,687
Westwick: Ben Rich helped
solve that problem

630
00:33:57,731 --> 00:34:00,690
by designing this cone
in the middle of the jet engine

631
00:34:00,734 --> 00:34:03,084
that moves in and out depending
on how fast you're flying,

632
00:34:03,128 --> 00:34:08,307
and that allows the aircraft
to control shock waves,

633
00:34:08,350 --> 00:34:11,310
one of Ben Rich's early
signature achievements.

634
00:34:11,353 --> 00:34:14,182
You're not talking about
a computer that, you know,

635
00:34:14,226 --> 00:34:16,054
you can just put
a couple lines of code in

636
00:34:16,097 --> 00:34:17,794
to operate the intake.

637
00:34:17,838 --> 00:34:20,536
You know, you're talking
mechanical hydraulic systems

638
00:34:20,580 --> 00:34:22,495
that was very difficult
to operate,

639
00:34:22,538 --> 00:34:25,759
and it was Ben's job to fix it,
and he did.

640
00:34:25,802 --> 00:34:27,848
And he solved that problem
without computer

641
00:34:27,891 --> 00:34:30,677
and without digital,
all analog, which is a --

642
00:34:30,720 --> 00:34:32,287
And that made him famous.

643
00:34:36,117 --> 00:34:37,727
Gilliland Jr.:
I remember walking around,

644
00:34:37,771 --> 00:34:41,383
and I'd see
these big 500-gallon drums,

645
00:34:41,427 --> 00:34:44,647
and they'd catch
the leaking fuel.

646
00:34:44,691 --> 00:34:46,606
The airplane actually expands
mid-flight

647
00:34:46,649 --> 00:34:48,912
because of the heat soak.

648
00:34:48,956 --> 00:34:51,176
They couldn't get a sealant
that would really work tight,

649
00:34:51,219 --> 00:34:53,743
so what happens is,
the plane leaks on the ground,

650
00:34:53,787 --> 00:34:56,094
a lot of fuel,

651
00:34:56,137 --> 00:34:58,748
but once it gets up
to speed at altitude,

652
00:34:58,792 --> 00:35:02,230
the airplane tightens up,
and it's tight as a drum.

653
00:35:05,494 --> 00:35:09,150
Middle of July in 1961,

654
00:35:09,194 --> 00:35:12,066
the airplane was
being assembled,

655
00:35:12,110 --> 00:35:15,374
and from that time, not a very
long period of time from July

656
00:35:15,417 --> 00:35:20,074
to the next February,
a whole airplane was built.

657
00:35:20,118 --> 00:35:24,296
Took them on a truck,
took them up to the test site.

658
00:35:24,339 --> 00:35:27,995
Narrator: At the time, the
Soviets had a new ally, in Cuba.

659
00:35:28,038 --> 00:35:29,779
It seemed at any moment,

660
00:35:29,823 --> 00:35:33,043
we could be on the brink
of nuclear war.

661
00:35:33,087 --> 00:35:35,829
We needed to test
our new recon plane,

662
00:35:35,872 --> 00:35:37,874
and we went back to the place

663
00:35:37,918 --> 00:35:41,269
where we had
our greatest success --

664
00:35:41,313 --> 00:35:44,446
Area 51.

665
00:35:44,490 --> 00:35:46,666
Painter:
Out a Groom Lake, Area 51,

666
00:35:46,709 --> 00:35:49,582
they worked on doing testing,

667
00:35:49,625 --> 00:35:52,976
which essentially turned that
from a temporary area

668
00:35:53,020 --> 00:35:54,543
into a permanent facility.

669
00:35:54,587 --> 00:35:55,849
That's when they realized
they needed hard,

670
00:35:55,892 --> 00:35:57,503
fast buildings.

671
00:36:19,568 --> 00:36:23,224
Narrator: In testing,
while flying Mach 3.2,

672
00:36:23,268 --> 00:36:25,748
we found we could reduce
the internal temperature

673
00:36:25,792 --> 00:36:30,623
by painting the plane black,
hence the name Blackbird.

674
00:36:34,801 --> 00:36:39,066
There was a great deal of risk
involved for everyone.

675
00:36:39,109 --> 00:36:44,289
We had to make sure the pilots
didn't cook in the cockpit.

676
00:36:44,332 --> 00:36:47,640
Law: The environment
that they were in,

677
00:36:47,683 --> 00:36:50,033
the minimum surface temperature
around the cockpit

678
00:36:50,077 --> 00:36:53,820
was 550 degrees, and some parts
of the cockpit windshield

679
00:36:53,863 --> 00:36:56,518
were up at 640 degrees
Fahrenheit.

680
00:37:00,305 --> 00:37:03,612
Cappuccio: The test pilots knew
the risk they were taking

681
00:37:03,656 --> 00:37:05,179
because of the nuances

682
00:37:05,223 --> 00:37:06,963
associated
with propulsion ramping.

683
00:37:07,007 --> 00:37:10,619
There was always a 5%, 6% chance
you'll get a shock wave

684
00:37:10,663 --> 00:37:13,143
that goes around
the entire vehicle.

685
00:37:13,187 --> 00:37:15,058
And we had one, and it snapped
the vehicle in hal

686
00:37:15,102 --> 00:37:17,235
It literally broke
the vehicle in half.

687
00:37:17,278 --> 00:37:20,934
We lost the pilot.

688
00:37:20,977 --> 00:37:23,110
So Kelly -- he was very nervous
in the beginning.

689
00:37:23,153 --> 00:37:24,677
"Did I get
the calculations right?

690
00:37:24,720 --> 00:37:28,550
Did I use the right
safety factors?"

691
00:37:28,594 --> 00:37:31,945
Petraeus: These are individuals
who voluntarily went into

692
00:37:31,988 --> 00:37:34,774
that world
understanding the risk,

693
00:37:34,817 --> 00:37:37,342
just constantly
pushing the envelope,

694
00:37:37,385 --> 00:37:39,431
knowing the importance
of the tasks

695
00:37:39,474 --> 00:37:41,389
in which they were engaged.

696
00:37:45,350 --> 00:37:47,830
The day of the mission,
you came in about 2 1/2 hours

697
00:37:47,874 --> 00:37:49,528
before the flight.

698
00:37:49,571 --> 00:37:51,443
You had to have a physical
before every flight

699
00:37:51,486 --> 00:37:53,183
that you had to pass.

700
00:37:53,227 --> 00:37:56,622
At that point, they fed you
high-protein food

701
00:37:56,665 --> 00:37:59,842
to give you the energy through
the flight -- steak and eggs.

702
00:37:59,886 --> 00:38:04,064
About an hour 15 prior,
you donned your space suit.

703
00:38:04,107 --> 00:38:06,153
They then took you out
to the airplane.

704
00:38:11,593 --> 00:38:14,030
They gave you time to taxi
out to the runway.

705
00:38:18,339 --> 00:38:21,516
Your greatest sense of speed
is on takeoff.

706
00:38:21,560 --> 00:38:23,257
You release the brakes.

707
00:38:23,301 --> 00:38:25,651
You light those two
powerful afterburners.

708
00:38:25,694 --> 00:38:28,915
Within 20 seconds,
you're going to go 4,500 feet

709
00:38:28,958 --> 00:38:32,005
and lift off
doing 240 miles an hour.

710
00:38:35,487 --> 00:38:38,228
You'll climb through 20,000 feet
less than 2 minutes

711
00:38:38,272 --> 00:38:40,318
from the time
you release the brakes.

712
00:38:42,885 --> 00:38:46,628
Now, once you got up there,
typically around 78,000 feet,

713
00:38:46,672 --> 00:38:49,370
you can see the curvature
of the Earth.

714
00:38:49,414 --> 00:38:51,459
The sky above you
is absolutely black,

715
00:38:51,503 --> 00:38:55,724
because 97% of the atmosphere
is below you.

716
00:38:55,768 --> 00:38:58,553
At night, the sky
is absolutely spectacular.

717
00:38:58,597 --> 00:39:01,817
90% of the stars you can see up
there we can't see on the earth

718
00:39:01,861 --> 00:39:05,081
because the atmosphere
filters them out.

719
00:39:05,125 --> 00:39:06,779
It's very quiet.

720
00:39:06,822 --> 00:39:08,215
You're in an airplane
that's traveling

721
00:39:08,258 --> 00:39:09,738
at three times
the speed of sound,

722
00:39:09,782 --> 00:39:13,351
so most of the sound
is behind you.

723
00:39:13,394 --> 00:39:15,570
You see the Earth
from a different perspective.

724
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:28,366
Those were 11-hour-and-20-minute
missions, some of them,

725
00:39:28,409 --> 00:39:31,586
so it's like
the long-distance runner.

726
00:39:31,630 --> 00:39:33,588
You're not necessarily
sprinting, but you've got to

727
00:39:33,632 --> 00:39:37,418
keep your energy up,
so you watched your diet.

728
00:39:37,462 --> 00:39:40,290
I remember once on a mission,
the night before,

729
00:39:40,334 --> 00:39:42,771
I'd had a seafood dinner.

730
00:39:42,815 --> 00:39:48,124
And I had an explosive
diarrhea attack,

731
00:39:48,168 --> 00:39:51,563
one of those really interesting
moments in your life.

732
00:39:51,606 --> 00:39:53,303
We had a discussion,
and we kind of said,

733
00:39:53,347 --> 00:39:55,436
"Well, you know, if you don't
change a baby's diapers,

734
00:39:55,480 --> 00:39:57,046
what's the worst thing
that can happen?

735
00:39:57,090 --> 00:39:58,439
Maybe they'll get a rash."

736
00:39:58,483 --> 00:40:00,223
So I told my back-seater --
I said,

737
00:40:00,267 --> 00:40:01,486
"I think we can press on."

738
00:40:01,529 --> 00:40:03,444
I said, "The last thing I want

739
00:40:03,488 --> 00:40:05,403
is a message
sent to the president,

740
00:40:05,446 --> 00:40:09,885
'The pilot pooped in his suit,
so they had to return back.'"

741
00:40:09,929 --> 00:40:11,496
I can't remember
if I got a rash,

742
00:40:11,539 --> 00:40:14,237
but they had to tear out
the liner when we got back,

743
00:40:14,281 --> 00:40:17,763
and I gave our suit-maintenance
people a case of beer

744
00:40:17,806 --> 00:40:21,244
for having to
reconstitute my suit.

745
00:40:26,249 --> 00:40:29,905
Narrator: The Blackbird made
my men go beyond their limits --

746
00:40:29,949 --> 00:40:31,733
the men who flew

747
00:40:31,777 --> 00:40:37,652
and those who made it possible
to fly, our engineers.

748
00:40:37,696 --> 00:40:40,176
To me, some of the most
remarkable thing of it

749
00:40:40,220 --> 00:40:43,876
is that it was all done
using logarithms

750
00:40:43,919 --> 00:40:48,097
and trig tables
and Friden calculators.

751
00:40:48,141 --> 00:40:50,535
Jacobsen: It's just
so remarkable to think about.

752
00:40:50,578 --> 00:40:53,320
You know, they were
just looking at physics.

753
00:40:53,363 --> 00:40:56,802
They were looking
at basic foundations

754
00:40:56,845 --> 00:41:00,588
of how science works.

755
00:41:00,632 --> 00:41:05,854
They simply used their minds,
their imaginations,

756
00:41:05,898 --> 00:41:11,077
and their willingness
to engineer a system.

757
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:13,209
They didn't have computers.

758
00:41:13,253 --> 00:41:19,215
How could you possibly come up
with such advanced technology?

759
00:41:19,259 --> 00:41:22,480
So a lot of people came to
believe that the Skunk Works

760
00:41:22,523 --> 00:41:26,222
were actually
reverse-engineering

761
00:41:26,266 --> 00:41:28,660
some kind of alien technology

762
00:41:28,703 --> 00:41:31,314
Kelly Johnson
brought to Area 51.

763
00:41:42,543 --> 00:41:46,025
e Air Force

764
00:41:46,068 --> 00:41:48,549
in December of 1953.

765
00:41:48,593 --> 00:41:53,902
He had gone home to his ranch
in California, and he looked out

766
00:41:53,946 --> 00:41:58,254
and saw something
he couldn't quite understand.

767
00:41:58,298 --> 00:42:00,256
This was something that was
moving at a very high rate

768
00:42:00,300 --> 00:42:03,477
of speed away from him,
and he drew a little sketch

769
00:42:03,521 --> 00:42:07,307
of what the aircraft
looked like.

770
00:42:07,350 --> 00:42:10,223
Narrator: I have definitely
believed in the possibility

771
00:42:10,266 --> 00:42:13,487
that flying saucers exist.

772
00:42:13,531 --> 00:42:15,794
This is in spite of
a good deal of kidding

773
00:42:15,837 --> 00:42:18,840
from my technical associates.

774
00:42:18,884 --> 00:42:21,843
I am now more firmly
convinced than ever.

775
00:42:24,454 --> 00:42:27,545
Jacobsen: Because of this
extraordinary circumstance,

776
00:42:27,588 --> 00:42:29,329
whatever it may have been,

777
00:42:29,372 --> 00:42:32,201
a lot of people came to believe
that the Skunk Works

778
00:42:32,245 --> 00:42:35,988
were actually
reverse-engineering

779
00:42:36,031 --> 00:42:38,120
some kind of alien technology

780
00:42:38,164 --> 00:42:41,036
Kelly Johnson
brought to Area 51.

781
00:42:45,475 --> 00:42:47,347
Law:
There were some people --

782
00:42:47,390 --> 00:42:50,089
they had come up with this idea
of all these weird things

783
00:42:50,132 --> 00:42:52,613
that had supposedly happened
at the test site

784
00:42:52,657 --> 00:42:55,268
to do with the Blackbirds.

785
00:42:55,311 --> 00:42:58,619
Because how could you
possibly come up with such

786
00:42:58,663 --> 00:43:00,403
advanced technology?

787
00:43:00,447 --> 00:43:02,405
They didn't have computers.

788
00:43:05,365 --> 00:43:07,062
Cappuccio: What about
the conspiracy theories

789
00:43:07,106 --> 00:43:10,457
that the Blackbird was based
on alien technology?

790
00:43:10,500 --> 00:43:14,592
They like to believe it
because they can't envision

791
00:43:14,635 --> 00:43:17,769
a class of people
that can think out of the box.

792
00:43:17,812 --> 00:43:19,988
There was no magic. It didn't
come from anything else.

793
00:43:20,032 --> 00:43:22,948
It just came from somebody
having a dream.

794
00:43:22,991 --> 00:43:27,779
If you look at Kelly's design
book, it's about 20 pages.

795
00:43:27,822 --> 00:43:30,999
I was very, very interested
in understanding

796
00:43:31,043 --> 00:43:35,743
how he managed to envision
something so unique

797
00:43:35,787 --> 00:43:38,267
from the technology
that existed at the time.

798
00:43:38,311 --> 00:43:40,879
I didn't get the magic
until there was one chart

799
00:43:40,922 --> 00:43:42,663
that had a propulsion
curve in it,

800
00:43:42,707 --> 00:43:46,885
and he said, "You know,
I think I can get 20% higher."

801
00:43:46,928 --> 00:43:50,540
And it finally dawned on me --
if you go 20% higher

802
00:43:50,584 --> 00:43:54,066
on every part of the design --

803
00:43:54,109 --> 00:43:57,025
It's easier to go from
1.5 Mach number,

804
00:43:57,069 --> 00:43:59,985
which we knew how to do,
to 3,

805
00:44:00,028 --> 00:44:02,291
and that was how genius works.

806
00:44:07,296 --> 00:44:10,430
Narrator: All it really is,
is the application

807
00:44:10,473 --> 00:44:13,999
of common sense to some
pretty tough problems.

808
00:44:14,042 --> 00:44:18,699
The mental challenge
is entertainment for me.

809
00:44:18,743 --> 00:44:22,572
It's always been, even back
to my first day at Lockheed.

810
00:44:24,966 --> 00:44:28,361
He gets the job at Lockheed as
a tooling engineer, by the way.

811
00:44:28,404 --> 00:44:30,189
He wasn't hired to be
an aerodynamicist.

812
00:44:30,232 --> 00:44:33,671
He was hired to design the tools
to build the airplane.

813
00:44:33,714 --> 00:44:35,977
But he goes to the chief
engineer, Hall Hibbard,

814
00:44:36,021 --> 00:44:39,154
at the time, his first day
on the job and says,

815
00:44:39,198 --> 00:44:41,591
"Your design
for the Model 10 Electra,"

816
00:44:41,635 --> 00:44:45,595
which was the newest plane
that Lockheed is developing,

817
00:44:45,639 --> 00:44:48,250
"is unsafe and unstable,

818
00:44:48,294 --> 00:44:50,731
and you can't
build it that way."

819
00:44:50,775 --> 00:44:52,602
This was a passenger aircraft,

820
00:44:52,646 --> 00:44:56,302
and you don't want that
kind of airplane to be unsafe.

821
00:44:56,345 --> 00:44:59,392
It was all he could do to keep
from firing the kid on the spot.

822
00:44:59,435 --> 00:45:03,352
"Who are you? You know,
where'd you come from?"

823
00:45:03,396 --> 00:45:05,354
But they bring Kelly
in the next day and says,

824
00:45:05,398 --> 00:45:08,793
"Okay, why is it
not going to fly?"

825
00:45:08,836 --> 00:45:11,970
And Kelly is able to answer
every one of his questions

826
00:45:12,013 --> 00:45:15,495
to the satisfaction that Hall
gives this college graduate

827
00:45:15,538 --> 00:45:18,150
the model for the aircraft
and says, "Fix the airplane."

828
00:45:18,193 --> 00:45:19,891
And that's what he did.

829
00:45:19,934 --> 00:45:22,067
Westwick: He said,
"I think the way to solve it --

830
00:45:22,110 --> 00:45:24,373
instead of having one tail,
have two."

831
00:45:24,417 --> 00:45:26,636
And they tested it,
and, sure enough,

832
00:45:26,680 --> 00:45:29,074
the twin-tail solution
solved the problem

833
00:45:29,117 --> 00:45:31,380
and turned out to be
a kind of hallmark

834
00:45:31,424 --> 00:45:33,948
of a lot of that
generation of planes.

835
00:45:33,992 --> 00:45:37,865
Trimble: You don't see too many
split-tail designs until 1933,

836
00:45:37,909 --> 00:45:39,737
and then you see it
with the Model 10,

837
00:45:39,780 --> 00:45:42,304
and then, suddenly, everybody
has got a split-tail design.

838
00:45:42,348 --> 00:45:45,394
It gets copied
by almost everybody,

839
00:45:45,438 --> 00:45:48,354
but, essentially,
he saved the company,

840
00:45:48,397 --> 00:45:51,096
you know,
with that idea in 1933,

841
00:45:51,139 --> 00:45:52,793
because if they had
come out with the airplane

842
00:45:52,837 --> 00:45:54,969
that they had designed
originally,

843
00:45:55,013 --> 00:45:56,710
it would have been too unsafe,

844
00:45:56,754 --> 00:46:00,018
and airlines
just wouldn't buy it.

845
00:46:00,061 --> 00:46:02,194
Narrator:
I quickly got promoted,

846
00:46:02,237 --> 00:46:05,371
eventually becoming
chief research engineer.

847
00:46:05,414 --> 00:46:09,549
Over the next decade, I worked
with the likes of Howard Hughes

848
00:46:09,592 --> 00:46:11,203
and Amelia Earhart.

849
00:46:14,902 --> 00:46:18,340
It was in 1943 that I set up
a secret division

850
00:46:18,384 --> 00:46:20,734
within the Lockheed corporation

851
00:46:20,778 --> 00:46:24,433
to build the P-80
during World War II.

852
00:46:24,477 --> 00:46:28,350
Officially, we were called
Advanced Development Research,

853
00:46:28,394 --> 00:46:30,788
but the boys came up
with "Skunk Works"

854
00:46:30,831 --> 00:46:34,095
because we were hidden
next to a plastics factory,

855
00:46:34,139 --> 00:46:39,057
and the fumes
drifting over stunk.

856
00:46:39,100 --> 00:46:42,843
Everyone at Skunk Works
understood our mission.

857
00:46:42,887 --> 00:46:46,586
We had our own set of rules,
my rules.

858
00:46:48,893 --> 00:46:51,504
If there was a Steve Jobs
of the aerospace industry,

859
00:46:51,547 --> 00:46:54,550
it was definitely Kelly Johnson.

860
00:46:54,594 --> 00:46:56,596
And what Kelly did
in his approach

861
00:46:56,639 --> 00:46:59,251
was to simplify everything

862
00:46:59,294 --> 00:47:02,167
and, above all,
keep the momentum going.

863
00:47:02,210 --> 00:47:03,908
The way he put it was,

864
00:47:03,951 --> 00:47:05,735
"I'd rather make
a wrong decision

865
00:47:05,779 --> 00:47:07,737
that keeps things
moving forward

866
00:47:07,781 --> 00:47:09,739
than to stop everything
for several weeks

867
00:47:09,783 --> 00:47:13,526
to make sure that we're
making the right decision."

868
00:47:13,569 --> 00:47:16,355
Narrator: Three times,
I was offered company president

869
00:47:16,398 --> 00:47:20,141
at Lockheed
and three times declined it.

870
00:47:20,185 --> 00:47:23,710
To me, there was no better job
at the corporation

871
00:47:23,753 --> 00:47:27,496
than head of Skunk Works.

872
00:47:27,540 --> 00:47:30,456
We were about
getting things done,

873
00:47:30,499 --> 00:47:34,677
but not everyone
appreciated our methods.

874
00:47:34,721 --> 00:47:37,942
The Skunk Works
did have its enemies.

875
00:47:37,985 --> 00:47:40,858
People didn't like the way
the Skunk Works did things,

876
00:47:40,901 --> 00:47:43,338
believed that they cut corners,

877
00:47:43,382 --> 00:47:47,516
that they were not living
by all the rules and everything.

878
00:47:47,560 --> 00:47:50,650
You know, it was, like,
on the fly, "Go, go, go.

879
00:47:50,693 --> 00:47:52,652
We don't have time
for bureaucracy."

880
00:47:52,695 --> 00:47:55,481
And this became a problem
later in the '60s,

881
00:47:55,524 --> 00:47:59,615
when that was threatening
to the machine

882
00:47:59,659 --> 00:48:02,662
that was the Pentagon,
and, surely, someone like

883
00:48:02,705 --> 00:48:05,665
Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara,

884
00:48:05,708 --> 00:48:10,800
who loved to control things like
the businessman that he was --

885
00:48:10,844 --> 00:48:14,848
And you could see
Robert McNamara making a move

886
00:48:14,892 --> 00:48:18,852
to take out Kelly Johnson
and the Skunk Works.

887
00:48:23,988 --> 00:48:26,381
Narrator: The Blackbird was
the fastest jet-powered,

888
00:48:26,425 --> 00:48:29,080
manned aircraft ever made,

889
00:48:29,123 --> 00:48:32,910
with speed records
that were never broken.

890
00:48:32,953 --> 00:48:36,391
It was also known as the SR-71.

891
00:48:36,435 --> 00:48:41,092
The "SR" stood for
strategic reconnaissance.

892
00:48:41,135 --> 00:48:44,530
The SR has an unequaled
reputation

893
00:48:44,573 --> 00:48:47,533
for accomplishing
what it was set out for.

894
00:48:47,576 --> 00:48:51,276
Carpenter: During
the Arab-Israeli War of 1973,

895
00:48:51,319 --> 00:48:55,280
95% of the imagery
that our president used

896
00:48:55,323 --> 00:48:59,849
to render decisions
came from the SR-71.

897
00:48:59,893 --> 00:49:02,635
And the photography
was spectacular.

898
00:49:02,678 --> 00:49:04,985
When you take a normal
sheet of paper

899
00:49:05,029 --> 00:49:07,857
and you're holding it out
in the parking lot

900
00:49:07,901 --> 00:49:12,514
and I fly over at 85,000 feet,
doing 35 miles a minute,

901
00:49:12,558 --> 00:49:15,126
I will take your picture,
and I will see you standing

902
00:49:15,169 --> 00:49:17,824
beside your car
holding this sheet of paper.

903
00:49:17,867 --> 00:49:20,044
And most of the time,
I could tell you

904
00:49:20,087 --> 00:49:22,872
what kind of a car
you were driving.

905
00:49:22,916 --> 00:49:26,354
But that's the quality
of the imagery we brought back

906
00:49:26,398 --> 00:49:28,878
for the leadership
here in this country.

907
00:49:28,922 --> 00:49:31,446
Six presidents used us
because they knew

908
00:49:31,490 --> 00:49:34,667
they could send us out,
and we'd come back.

909
00:49:34,710 --> 00:49:37,235
Powers Jr.:
I've heard stories from pilots

910
00:49:37,278 --> 00:49:39,933
where they'd be flying missions
during Vietnam,

911
00:49:39,977 --> 00:49:42,370
and they would see
the missiles come up,

912
00:49:42,414 --> 00:49:44,155
and they would see them
fall back down,

913
00:49:44,198 --> 00:49:46,244
because the SR
was going so fast,

914
00:49:46,287 --> 00:49:47,767
the missiles could not
keep up with them.

915
00:49:47,810 --> 00:49:50,161
Gilliland Jr.:
There have been over 5,000

916
00:49:50,204 --> 00:49:52,163
surface-to-air missiles
that have been fired

917
00:49:52,206 --> 00:49:55,035
at the SR-71
by hostile countries.

918
00:49:55,079 --> 00:49:58,169
Not one of them
ever hit an SR-71.

919
00:49:58,212 --> 00:49:59,605
As Dad used to say,

920
00:49:59,648 --> 00:50:01,737
"It helped end
the Cold War with Russia,

921
00:50:01,781 --> 00:50:03,609
because they spent, you know,
a lot of money

922
00:50:03,652 --> 00:50:05,741
shooting surface-to-air missiles
and never getting a hit,

923
00:50:05,785 --> 00:50:09,789
so it helped Russia
go bankrupt a little faster."

924
00:50:09,832 --> 00:50:12,487
Narrator:
With the success of the SR-71,

925
00:50:12,531 --> 00:50:15,882
I wanted to build a new version
of the Blackbird,

926
00:50:15,925 --> 00:50:20,669
more than just a recon plane,
something far greater.

927
00:50:23,890 --> 00:50:26,762
Once they finished
building the SR-71s,

928
00:50:26,806 --> 00:50:28,764
if you go into Kelly's logs,

929
00:50:28,808 --> 00:50:32,072
you can tell that the one
that he wanted to build the most

930
00:50:32,116 --> 00:50:34,727
was a fighter-interceptor
version.

931
00:50:34,770 --> 00:50:37,817
Called the YF-12A,
and it was a missile shooter.

932
00:50:37,860 --> 00:50:41,690
It was being proposed
as an interceptor.

933
00:50:41,734 --> 00:50:44,345
Trimble: There was a lot of fear
about what would happen

934
00:50:44,389 --> 00:50:47,131
if the Soviets decided
to attack us with bombers

935
00:50:47,174 --> 00:50:48,697
rather than missiles,

936
00:50:48,741 --> 00:50:51,613
so the whole idea
of that airplane

937
00:50:51,657 --> 00:50:54,747
was intercepting
an incoming Soviet bomber,

938
00:50:54,790 --> 00:50:57,706
and Kelly wanted to sell that
to the Air Force,

939
00:50:57,750 --> 00:51:00,579
sell hundreds of them, actually.

940
00:51:00,622 --> 00:51:03,451
And this became a problem
later in the '60s,

941
00:51:03,495 --> 00:51:07,151
when, at the Pentagon,
now led by Secretary of Defense

942
00:51:07,194 --> 00:51:10,980
Robert McNamara,
who loved to control things,

943
00:51:11,024 --> 00:51:13,157
and there's a sense of,
"Wait a minute.

944
00:51:13,200 --> 00:51:16,247
That boys club out in California
called Skunk Works

945
00:51:16,290 --> 00:51:18,162
has a little too much power."

946
00:51:18,205 --> 00:51:22,731
And you could see him, you know,
making a move to take out

947
00:51:22,775 --> 00:51:25,995
Kelly Johnson
and the Skunk Works.

948
00:51:26,039 --> 00:51:28,259
And McNamara shut it down,

949
00:51:28,302 --> 00:51:31,436
shut the program down,
said it wasn't needed.

950
00:51:31,479 --> 00:51:35,092
Narrator: McNamara's decision
is almost unbelievable.

951
00:51:35,135 --> 00:51:36,745
The Air Force has gone with us

952
00:51:36,789 --> 00:51:39,183
all the way
supporting the plane,

953
00:51:39,226 --> 00:51:44,013
but McNamara and his band
see it differently.

954
00:51:44,057 --> 00:51:47,147
Cappuccio: Now, what happened
was -- Kelly was

955
00:51:47,191 --> 00:51:50,324
a very influential player
in Washington at the time,

956
00:51:50,368 --> 00:51:54,067
with his contacts in the agency
that had used SR-71

957
00:51:54,111 --> 00:51:56,374
and his contacts
with the Air Force, right?

958
00:51:56,417 --> 00:51:59,072
Well, the Air Force pilots
liked the SR-71,

959
00:51:59,116 --> 00:52:02,597
so he started
going around the system.

960
00:52:02,641 --> 00:52:05,209
And McNamara was furious.

961
00:52:06,775 --> 00:52:10,953
And a decree came back, "You
will cut up the SR-71 tools,

962
00:52:10,997 --> 00:52:13,652
and you will destroy
all the drawings."

963
00:52:13,695 --> 00:52:17,134
And that was an edict.

964
00:52:17,177 --> 00:52:20,267
You know, to kind of get
the point across, they told

965
00:52:20,311 --> 00:52:24,184
Lockheed to destroy the tooling,
which the U.S. government owned.

966
00:52:24,228 --> 00:52:27,318
And when you do that,
you make the cost of

967
00:52:27,361 --> 00:52:30,190
restarting production
astronomically higher,

968
00:52:30,234 --> 00:52:34,890
so that was the decision that
finally killed the Blackbird.

969
00:52:34,934 --> 00:52:38,720
Narrator: The damage has been
done, the tools destroyed.

970
00:52:38,764 --> 00:52:41,114
We were never able to build
the version of the Blackbird

971
00:52:41,158 --> 00:52:44,639
our country needed, the YF-12.

972
00:52:44,683 --> 00:52:49,775
To this point, I have laid off
130 people in engineering,

973
00:52:49,818 --> 00:52:52,908
and it's a sad time for me.

974
00:52:52,952 --> 00:52:56,173
This was a really difficult time
for the Skunk Works

975
00:52:56,216 --> 00:52:57,565
when it happened.

976
00:52:57,609 --> 00:52:59,611
It needed money.

977
00:52:59,654 --> 00:53:03,876
It had a few thousand employees,
and they needed things to do,

978
00:53:03,919 --> 00:53:08,097
and the F-12 was supposed
to be that thing.

979
00:53:08,141 --> 00:53:11,318
Narrator: Yesterday,
I took my yearly physical.

980
00:53:11,362 --> 00:53:14,495
The doctor says
I must have an operation.

981
00:53:14,539 --> 00:53:17,585
My stomach has so many ulcers
that the outlet is down

982
00:53:17,629 --> 00:53:19,718
to the size of a pencil.

983
00:53:19,761 --> 00:53:22,590
Constant pain.

984
00:53:22,634 --> 00:53:24,418
Trimble:
And, at that point,

985
00:53:24,462 --> 00:53:26,812
Kelly's health
was deteriorating to the point

986
00:53:26,855 --> 00:53:30,250
where he had started thinking
about whether he should retire.

987
00:53:30,294 --> 00:53:33,210
But he also didn't like the idea
of retiring, either.

988
00:53:33,253 --> 00:53:38,432
That wasn't really sort of
in his DNA, so he kept going,

989
00:53:38,476 --> 00:53:42,175
but by 1972, 1973,

990
00:53:42,219 --> 00:53:46,135
they decided to pass it on,
and Ben Rich was the guy.

991
00:53:48,790 --> 00:53:51,924
Painter: Ben -- he had
an extremely hard job,

992
00:53:51,967 --> 00:53:54,056
because Kelly
was still a consultant,

993
00:53:54,100 --> 00:53:57,059
so he was still
coming to Lockheed.

994
00:53:57,103 --> 00:53:59,497
He still had that
strong loyalty bond

995
00:53:59,540 --> 00:54:02,543
with so many of the engineers
and people that worked there

996
00:54:02,587 --> 00:54:05,329
that instead
of going to Ben for answers,

997
00:54:05,372 --> 00:54:08,506
they would wait for Kelly
to come in on his day of work.

998
00:54:08,549 --> 00:54:12,727
So Ben had to overcome all that
to establish his leadership,

999
00:54:12,771 --> 00:54:16,165
his fingerprint
on the Skunk Works.

1000
00:54:16,209 --> 00:54:19,560
The key job
in running the Skunk Works

1001
00:54:19,604 --> 00:54:22,781
is to work on the future.

1002
00:54:22,824 --> 00:54:25,610
Ben understood that,
and he worked hard at it,

1003
00:54:25,653 --> 00:54:27,786
and he was very good at it.

1004
00:54:27,829 --> 00:54:31,398
Once he saw stealth,
he took hold of it

1005
00:54:31,442 --> 00:54:35,707
and pursued it with a vengeance.

1006
00:54:35,750 --> 00:54:40,189
If I made a plane invisible
to radar, would you buy it?

1007
00:54:42,191 --> 00:54:43,845
Kelly was never impressed.

1008
00:54:43,889 --> 00:54:45,934
He thought Ben
had the wrong idea,

1009
00:54:45,978 --> 00:54:48,241
that Lockheed was just
going to waste money.

1010
00:54:48,285 --> 00:54:49,764
He pretty much
put his reputation

1011
00:54:49,808 --> 00:54:51,375
and his whole career on the line

1012
00:54:51,418 --> 00:54:54,247
when he went after
that stealth technology.

1013
00:54:59,948 --> 00:55:02,951
Trimble: After Vietnam,
our losses toimble: A,

1014
00:55:02,995 --> 00:55:04,997
surface-to-air missiles
were pretty bad,

1015
00:55:05,040 --> 00:55:08,130
and it became pretty clear
that unless you had some way

1016
00:55:08,174 --> 00:55:12,004
of defeating these ground-based
radars that could cue these

1017
00:55:12,047 --> 00:55:14,049
surface-to-air missiles
that you were going to lose

1018
00:55:14,093 --> 00:55:17,139
your entire Air Force if you
ever got into combat again.

1019
00:55:17,183 --> 00:55:21,187
So they had to come up
with a way to make aircraft

1020
00:55:21,230 --> 00:55:23,885
less visible to those radars.

1021
00:55:23,929 --> 00:55:27,802
DARPA, the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency,

1022
00:55:27,846 --> 00:55:30,152
sent out a request

1023
00:55:30,196 --> 00:55:34,461
to the seven most recent
fighter-building companies

1024
00:55:34,505 --> 00:55:37,464
for experimental
stealth technology,

1025
00:55:37,508 --> 00:55:41,903
and they had a requirement
to get the radar cross-section

1026
00:55:41,947 --> 00:55:45,298
down to certain levels.

1027
00:55:45,342 --> 00:55:51,086
Okay. So, think about the radar
cross-section on the SR-71,

1028
00:55:51,130 --> 00:55:56,309
that it shows up on enemy radar
the size of a man, okay?

1029
00:55:56,353 --> 00:56:00,531
We need an airplane
that's going to show up

1030
00:56:00,574 --> 00:56:02,620
the side of a ball bearing.

1031
00:56:02,663 --> 00:56:04,448
That was the new challenge.

1032
00:56:04,491 --> 00:56:08,321
"We're going to make
an invisible airplane."

1033
00:56:08,365 --> 00:56:10,454
Cappuccio: How we came
across stealth was --

1034
00:56:10,497 --> 00:56:14,762
the SR-71
and the angles of the tails

1035
00:56:14,806 --> 00:56:16,721
were taking the radar section

1036
00:56:16,764 --> 00:56:19,767
and bouncing
the radar beam away.

1037
00:56:19,811 --> 00:56:24,206
So the radar system was not
picking up that reflection.

1038
00:56:24,250 --> 00:56:29,342
And Ben said, "If I can make
a plane with all flat plates,

1039
00:56:29,386 --> 00:56:31,562
that radar won't pick up
the signal."

1040
00:56:31,605 --> 00:56:33,651
Justice:
Ben went to the CIA.

1041
00:56:33,694 --> 00:56:36,654
The CIA gave him permission
to brief the Air Force

1042
00:56:36,697 --> 00:56:39,874
on the stealth technologies
embodied in the Blackbird

1043
00:56:39,918 --> 00:56:42,311
and say, "Hey, we deserve
entry into this," and they said,

1044
00:56:42,355 --> 00:56:45,097
"Well, we've already
given out all the contracts.

1045
00:56:45,140 --> 00:56:47,491
There's no more money
to give out,

1046
00:56:47,534 --> 00:56:49,144
so if you want to participate,

1047
00:56:49,188 --> 00:56:51,059
you've got to kind of do it
on your own."

1048
00:56:51,103 --> 00:56:52,974
And so Ben says,
"We'll participate.

1049
00:56:53,018 --> 00:56:54,759
Give us a $1 contract,

1050
00:56:54,802 --> 00:56:56,500
which means we have
a formal relationship with you,

1051
00:56:56,543 --> 00:56:59,111
but we basically
pay our own way."

1052
00:56:59,154 --> 00:57:03,768
Skunk Works is on its knees
at this point in 1975.

1053
00:57:03,811 --> 00:57:06,379
It's got to have something new.

1054
00:57:06,423 --> 00:57:08,773
Painter: The company needs
to up-front $10 million

1055
00:57:08,816 --> 00:57:11,036
as their share
in building a prototype,

1056
00:57:11,079 --> 00:57:13,517
so he has to go to the corporate
fathers and say,

1057
00:57:13,560 --> 00:57:15,780
"Give me $10 million,
because I got to build

1058
00:57:15,823 --> 00:57:19,087
an airplane
for unproven technology."

1059
00:57:19,131 --> 00:57:20,959
He pretty much
put his reputation

1060
00:57:21,002 --> 00:57:24,136
and his whole career on the line
when he went after that program.

1061
00:57:28,053 --> 00:57:29,707
Carpenter:
Kelly was never impressed.

1062
00:57:29,750 --> 00:57:32,449
He thought that Ben
had the wrong idea,

1063
00:57:32,492 --> 00:57:34,538
that Lockheed was just
going to waste money.

1064
00:57:34,581 --> 00:57:36,627
To describe the radar
cross-section,

1065
00:57:36,670 --> 00:57:40,326
Ben would roll marbles
across the desk.

1066
00:57:40,369 --> 00:57:43,285
Ben went to Kelly and said,
"Look at this.

1067
00:57:43,329 --> 00:57:46,506
What would a Soviet radar see?

1068
00:57:46,550 --> 00:57:49,596
Here's a marble,
and based upon that,

1069
00:57:49,640 --> 00:57:52,991
they would not identify that
as a significant threat

1070
00:57:53,034 --> 00:57:57,038
but, rather, a radar anomaly."

1071
00:57:57,082 --> 00:57:58,736
Justice:
And Kelly just thought,

1072
00:57:58,779 --> 00:58:00,346
"You're not going to be able
to make it,"

1073
00:58:00,389 --> 00:58:03,001
and, quite honestly,
broke one of his own rules.

1074
00:58:03,044 --> 00:58:04,916
Kelly would just assume
something could be done,

1075
00:58:04,959 --> 00:58:07,353
and that's what he expected
his teams to do,

1076
00:58:07,396 --> 00:58:08,876
but that's where you see Ben

1077
00:58:08,920 --> 00:58:11,444
having that piece of DNA
of the Skunk Works.

1078
00:58:11,488 --> 00:58:13,359
You know, let's just assume
it can be done.

1079
00:58:13,402 --> 00:58:14,926
Let's make it happen.

1080
00:58:14,969 --> 00:58:18,756
Law: Denys Overholser
came up with this idea

1081
00:58:18,799 --> 00:58:21,454
that reflects the beams
in all the directions

1082
00:58:21,498 --> 00:58:23,282
to where they don't
make a return,

1083
00:58:23,325 --> 00:58:26,111
based on a bunch
of Russian calculations.

1084
00:58:31,464 --> 00:58:33,684
Narrator: Just like they once
sold us the titanium

1085
00:58:33,727 --> 00:58:37,209
for the Blackbird,
the Russians inadvertently

1086
00:58:37,252 --> 00:58:40,081
helped Skunk Works again.

1087
00:58:40,125 --> 00:58:43,824
Trimble: Denys had come across
a Soviet mathematics journal.

1088
00:58:43,868 --> 00:58:46,305
The Soviets had no idea
that that's what those equations

1089
00:58:46,348 --> 00:58:48,263
could be used for,
or they would never

1090
00:58:48,307 --> 00:58:50,831
have allowed it to be published
in that kind of a publication.

1091
00:58:50,875 --> 00:58:54,008
But because they did and
Denys read it and applied it,

1092
00:58:54,052 --> 00:58:56,881
the Skunk Works suddenly had
sort of a secret sauce

1093
00:58:56,924 --> 00:59:00,798
to breaking this problem
that had affected aircraft

1094
00:59:00,841 --> 00:59:04,976
in Vietnam and the U-2 itself,
which is radar detection.

1095
00:59:05,019 --> 00:59:07,456
So, Alan Brown comes in,

1096
00:59:07,500 --> 00:59:10,503
and he's leading Lockheed's
effort under Ben Rich,

1097
00:59:10,547 --> 00:59:12,549
and he doesn't care
about the aerodynamics,

1098
00:59:12,592 --> 00:59:14,115
because he's a propulsion guy.

1099
00:59:14,159 --> 00:59:17,771
First of all,
we did the calculations.

1100
00:59:17,815 --> 00:59:22,994
We built third-scale models,
which we tested on radar ranges.

1101
00:59:23,037 --> 00:59:26,214
It was made up of a whole bunch
of flat plates,

1102
00:59:26,258 --> 00:59:28,129
and the reason for that was that

1103
00:59:28,173 --> 00:59:32,046
we did not have
the technical capability

1104
00:59:32,090 --> 00:59:34,571
to calculate
the radar cross-section

1105
00:59:34,614 --> 00:59:36,964
from curved surfaces
at that time.

1106
00:59:37,008 --> 00:59:39,271
Keep in mind this is why
Kelly Johnson

1107
00:59:39,314 --> 00:59:44,624
hated this approach
that Ben Rich took.

1108
00:59:44,668 --> 00:59:47,192
There aren't any airplanes
out there that are made flat,

1109
00:59:47,235 --> 00:59:51,022
because air doesn't like
flying over corners, right?

1110
00:59:51,065 --> 00:59:53,285
You want nice, smooth,
rounded surfaces,

1111
00:59:53,328 --> 00:59:55,330
and there wasn't
a rounded surface

1112
00:59:55,374 --> 00:59:56,680
anywhere on that airplane.

1113
00:59:56,723 --> 00:59:59,291
He called it
the Hopeless Diamond,

1114
00:59:59,334 --> 01:00:01,685
and it was a way
of sort of ridiculing

1115
01:00:01,728 --> 01:00:06,994
this design that,
to an aerodynamicist, is sinful.

1116
01:00:07,038 --> 01:00:08,866
I think some people called it
the Hopeless Diamond

1117
01:00:08,909 --> 01:00:10,998
because they thought
it was a hopeless effort.

1118
01:00:13,740 --> 01:00:16,656
The shape of it was --
It was actually a geometry

1119
01:00:16,700 --> 01:00:17,701
problem pretty much.

1120
01:00:17,744 --> 01:00:19,354
You wanted a, you know,

1121
01:00:19,398 --> 01:00:21,443
angle of incidence
and angle of reflection.

1122
01:00:21,487 --> 01:00:23,663
If a radar hit
comes in this way,

1123
01:00:23,707 --> 01:00:25,622
it's going to bounce off,
so what you want to do

1124
01:00:25,665 --> 01:00:28,276
is control
the way it bounces off

1125
01:00:28,320 --> 01:00:30,583
so that the bounce
doesn't go back to the guy

1126
01:00:30,627 --> 01:00:33,978
that shined it on you
in the first place.

1127
01:00:34,021 --> 01:00:35,414
When the radar hits it, right,

1128
01:00:35,457 --> 01:00:37,764
instead of bouncing
right back to you,

1129
01:00:37,808 --> 01:00:40,767
if I can curve it,
I'm bouncing it here.

1130
01:00:40,811 --> 01:00:42,900
That radar don't pick up
the signal.

1131
01:00:42,943 --> 01:00:45,424
So it's analogous
to playing billiards.

1132
01:00:45,467 --> 01:00:47,644
You hit one cushion,
it goes to someplace else.

1133
01:00:50,124 --> 01:00:52,083
Narrator: The first phase
of the competition

1134
01:00:52,126 --> 01:00:53,693
was to build a scale model

1135
01:00:53,737 --> 01:00:57,044
to test its invisibility
to radar.

1136
01:00:57,088 --> 01:00:59,960
Ours was easily the best.

1137
01:01:00,004 --> 01:01:03,747
But next, we had to build
the actual plane.

1138
01:01:03,790 --> 01:01:06,575
Could this Hopeless Diamond
really fly?

1139
01:01:08,882 --> 01:01:11,580
To find out,
we needed to test it.

1140
01:01:11,624 --> 01:01:14,975
We needed to go back to where
we had our greatest success

1141
01:01:15,019 --> 01:01:17,891
and our most guarded secrecy.

1142
01:01:17,935 --> 01:01:22,635
We needed to go back to Area 51.

1143
01:01:33,733 --> 01:01:36,780
Narrator: At Area 51,
Ben's Hopeless Diamond

1144
01:01:36,823 --> 01:01:39,434
was going to be tested.

1145
01:01:39,478 --> 01:01:41,393
We were going to find out

1146
01:01:41,436 --> 01:01:45,702
if an airplane could really
become invisible on radar,

1147
01:01:45,745 --> 01:01:50,141
if it could be become
completely stealth.

1148
01:01:50,184 --> 01:01:52,230
The stakes were high.

1149
01:01:52,273 --> 01:01:54,275
If the airplane
showed up on radar,

1150
01:01:54,319 --> 01:01:56,582
the project could be scrapped,

1151
01:01:56,625 --> 01:01:59,846
but Ben and his team
believed they could do it.

1152
01:01:59,890 --> 01:02:02,762
I still had my doubts.

1153
01:02:02,806 --> 01:02:06,331
You have to remember
that Area 51 has not only

1154
01:02:06,374 --> 01:02:09,116
the most interesting new,
top-secret development

1155
01:02:09,160 --> 01:02:12,772
that the Air Forces
are coming up with,

1156
01:02:12,816 --> 01:02:17,211
but they also had
the top radar people,

1157
01:02:17,255 --> 01:02:19,039
so we were going to fly against

1158
01:02:19,083 --> 01:02:24,523
the very best radar team
in the country.

1159
01:02:24,566 --> 01:02:27,265
So we said, "Okay,
we'll make it easy for you.

1160
01:02:27,308 --> 01:02:30,137
Tomorrow afternoon, at 3:00,

1161
01:02:30,181 --> 01:02:34,838
we're going to come over
that hill at 500 feet altitude.

1162
01:02:34,881 --> 01:02:36,665
You won't even
have to look for us.

1163
01:02:36,709 --> 01:02:38,885
You'll be pointing
in the right direction

1164
01:02:38,929 --> 01:02:41,714
right at the beginning.
Okay?"

1165
01:02:41,758 --> 01:02:43,324
Off we go.

1166
01:02:46,284 --> 01:02:50,201
3:00 comes and goes,
and they said,

1167
01:02:50,244 --> 01:02:53,552
"Oh, guess you missed
your takeoff time."

1168
01:02:53,595 --> 01:02:56,120
I said, "I don't think so."

1169
01:02:56,163 --> 01:02:58,687
There's a guy
looking through a telescope,

1170
01:02:58,731 --> 01:03:02,300
which is run...
parallel to the radar.

1171
01:03:02,343 --> 01:03:04,563
Looking through his telescope,
he said,

1172
01:03:04,606 --> 01:03:09,437
"I just picked the airplane up.
It's just 8 miles out."

1173
01:03:09,481 --> 01:03:11,875
The radar guys immediately
kicked their radar,

1174
01:03:11,918 --> 01:03:13,833
assumed it wasn't
working properly.

1175
01:03:16,183 --> 01:03:21,841
We flew over the whole situation
without being seen at all.

1176
01:03:21,885 --> 01:03:25,323
As soon as that happened,
immediately, the Air Force said,

1177
01:03:25,366 --> 01:03:30,067
"Okay, we got to have
a military version of this."

1178
01:03:30,110 --> 01:03:32,286
Narrator:
The damn thing worked.

1179
01:03:32,330 --> 01:03:34,071
Didn't happen too often,

1180
01:03:34,114 --> 01:03:39,380
but this time, I was wrong,
and I told Ben as much.

1181
01:03:39,424 --> 01:03:41,643
Trimble:
Kelly was always quite stubborn

1182
01:03:41,687 --> 01:03:44,603
and always quite insistent
that he was right,

1183
01:03:44,646 --> 01:03:47,171
and he would do
these bets with people.

1184
01:03:47,214 --> 01:03:50,174
He would bet them a quarter,
and, you know,

1185
01:03:50,217 --> 01:03:53,481
it was a really big deal
if you won a bet against Kelly,

1186
01:03:53,525 --> 01:03:55,048
because he would
pay you the quarter.

1187
01:03:55,092 --> 01:03:57,616
You know, he would admit
that he was wrong,

1188
01:03:57,659 --> 01:04:00,271
but it would just
very rarely ever happen.

1189
01:04:00,314 --> 01:04:03,274
And so he paid Ben Rich
a quarter

1190
01:04:03,317 --> 01:04:06,886
and admitted that he was wrong.

1191
01:04:06,930 --> 01:04:11,021
Narrator:
Our plane would be called
the F-117 Nighthawk.

1192
01:04:11,064 --> 01:04:12,979
The prototype
got off the ground,

1193
01:04:13,023 --> 01:04:15,329
but much work still remained.

1194
01:04:15,373 --> 01:04:19,507
This would be the first
completely stealth aircraft

1195
01:04:19,551 --> 01:04:21,596
and also be
the first jet fighter

1196
01:04:21,640 --> 01:04:25,949
Skunk Works built
in over 20 years.

1197
01:04:25,992 --> 01:04:33,565
The 117 has a radar signature
less than a BB on a radar.

1198
01:04:33,608 --> 01:04:36,481
So you get anything over a BB,
you'll pick it up.

1199
01:04:36,524 --> 01:04:37,874
Let me give you an example.

1200
01:04:44,097 --> 01:04:46,491
If I accthat would bet a nut
ipicked up by radar.

1201
01:04:46,534 --> 01:04:47,927
So, you're sitting there saying,

1202
01:04:47,971 --> 01:04:49,668
"Wow. We're making
all these airplanes.

1203
01:04:49,711 --> 01:04:52,845
How do I know a manufacturing
guy didn't drop a nut?"

1204
01:04:52,889 --> 01:04:56,109
So that's the concern.

1205
01:04:56,153 --> 01:04:58,851
Jacobsen: When the F-117
Nighthawk came along,

1206
01:04:58,895 --> 01:05:00,374
I mean, it was so secret

1207
01:05:00,418 --> 01:05:02,855
and it was so important
to keep it secret,

1208
01:05:02,899 --> 01:05:06,815
they gave it its own test-flight
facility out in Tonopah,

1209
01:05:06,859 --> 01:05:09,993
which is on the far skirts
of the Nevada test site,

1210
01:05:10,036 --> 01:05:14,562
and it became known
as Area 52.

1211
01:05:14,606 --> 01:05:18,566
And they built a whole setup
specifically for the F-117.

1212
01:05:23,093 --> 01:05:25,617
Feest: I was flying the F-15
at Langley Air Force Base,

1213
01:05:25,660 --> 01:05:27,358
and my squadron commander
called me in

1214
01:05:27,401 --> 01:05:30,056
and shut the door and said,
"Hey, are you interested

1215
01:05:30,100 --> 01:05:34,321
in going to fly
at the 4450th test group?"

1216
01:05:34,365 --> 01:05:35,975
None of us knew
what was going on,

1217
01:05:36,019 --> 01:05:37,455
but we knew
there was something

1218
01:05:37,498 --> 01:05:40,240
highly classified and different.

1219
01:05:40,284 --> 01:05:43,156
I decided to go.

1220
01:05:43,200 --> 01:05:45,463
After you've checked out,
they put you in a room

1221
01:05:45,506 --> 01:05:47,291
and they turn on a projector

1222
01:05:47,334 --> 01:05:51,208
and they show you pictures
of the F-117 for the first time.

1223
01:05:51,251 --> 01:05:54,733
And, usually, the first comment
is, "That thing flies?"

1224
01:05:54,776 --> 01:05:57,301
Because it doesn't look
very aerodynamic.

1225
01:05:59,738 --> 01:06:03,002
Morgenfeld:
First test flight was my
first flight in the F-117.

1226
01:06:03,046 --> 01:06:06,266
So, what scared me more
than anything isn't so much

1227
01:06:06,310 --> 01:06:11,968
that something could happen
physically to hurt me.

1228
01:06:12,011 --> 01:06:14,753
It's the fact that we work
very hard on airplanes

1229
01:06:14,796 --> 01:06:17,190
to eliminate
single-point failures,

1230
01:06:17,234 --> 01:06:19,105
and the airplanes
are very redundant.

1231
01:06:19,149 --> 01:06:21,107
And you walk out
to the airplane --

1232
01:06:21,151 --> 01:06:22,804
I am a single-point failure.

1233
01:06:22,848 --> 01:06:25,503
If I goon it, I've ruined it
for a lot of people,

1234
01:06:25,546 --> 01:06:28,549
and it's very much
a team effort.

1235
01:06:28,593 --> 01:06:31,248
Brown:
The idea of a pilot, you know,

1236
01:06:31,291 --> 01:06:36,731
first flying an F-117
was pretty scary to me.

1237
01:06:36,775 --> 01:06:38,951
I mean, at 4:30 in the morning,

1238
01:06:38,995 --> 01:06:41,040
they'd be stuck
into the cockpit.

1239
01:06:41,084 --> 01:06:42,911
They open the hangar doors.

1240
01:06:42,955 --> 01:06:47,046
There are no lights
anywhere on the airfield.

1241
01:06:47,090 --> 01:06:49,831
And they tell the guy,
"Okay, you taxi out there,

1242
01:06:49,875 --> 01:06:53,226
turn right, 1/2 mile,
you get to the main runway,

1243
01:06:53,270 --> 01:06:56,229
turn right again, take off."

1244
01:06:56,273 --> 01:06:59,537
So you're taking off
on a runway in the dark.

1245
01:06:59,580 --> 01:07:02,540
"Oh, by the way, don't worry
about the control system.

1246
01:07:02,583 --> 01:07:05,847
It's completely disconnected
from all the controls.

1247
01:07:05,891 --> 01:07:07,632
It just goes to a computer,

1248
01:07:07,675 --> 01:07:10,243
and the computer operates
the controls

1249
01:07:10,287 --> 01:07:13,029
because the airplane's
basically unstable.

1250
01:07:13,072 --> 01:07:14,900
Good luck. You'll be fine."

1251
01:07:18,208 --> 01:07:21,298
Feest: You get acclimated
to totally night-flying.

1252
01:07:21,341 --> 01:07:22,821
We had flight surgeons
and doctors

1253
01:07:22,864 --> 01:07:24,388
that monitored what we did

1254
01:07:24,431 --> 01:07:27,434
and decided that
we had to do certain things

1255
01:07:27,478 --> 01:07:30,089
to be able to fly at night
and sleep during the day.

1256
01:07:30,133 --> 01:07:34,093
So at Tonopah,
we had room-darkening shades.

1257
01:07:34,137 --> 01:07:37,401
They Velcroed black
across our windows.

1258
01:07:37,444 --> 01:07:38,924
So when we were in there
during the day,

1259
01:07:38,967 --> 01:07:41,231
you couldn't tell
what time of day it was.

1260
01:07:41,274 --> 01:07:43,755
They also had a rule
that, at night,

1261
01:07:43,798 --> 01:07:45,800
after flying,
we had to be in our rooms

1262
01:07:45,844 --> 01:07:48,281
before the sun came up,
because the doctors said,

1263
01:07:48,325 --> 01:07:50,327
"If the sun came up,
your mind would go,

1264
01:07:50,370 --> 01:07:52,111
'Oh, something's wrong here.'"

1265
01:07:52,155 --> 01:07:54,287
All of us are
daytime creatures.

1266
01:07:54,331 --> 01:07:57,812
We don't usually live
in the black world.

1267
01:07:57,856 --> 01:08:01,120
When you consider
that there were something

1268
01:08:01,164 --> 01:08:06,560
like 10,000 people
that worked on the F-117

1269
01:08:06,604 --> 01:08:12,218
and they all kept
this secret for 21 years,

1270
01:08:12,262 --> 01:08:18,094
that's a remarkable piece
of American history.

1271
01:08:18,137 --> 01:08:22,446
On August 6th, in response to
the unprovoked Iraqi invasion

1272
01:08:22,489 --> 01:08:24,361
of Kuwait,
I ordered the deployment

1273
01:08:24,404 --> 01:08:28,495
of U.S. military forces to Saudi
Arabia and the Persian Gulf.

1274
01:08:28,539 --> 01:08:31,803
Iraq's brutality, aggression,

1275
01:08:31,846 --> 01:08:34,675
and violations
of international law

1276
01:08:34,719 --> 01:08:37,722
cannot be allowed to succeed.

1277
01:08:37,765 --> 01:08:43,162
President Bush made the decision
to deploy 42 F-117s

1278
01:08:43,206 --> 01:08:47,775
from Tonopah, Nevada,
to Saudi Arabia.

1279
01:08:50,387 --> 01:08:54,086
I'd been briefed on the F-117
for a number of years,

1280
01:08:54,130 --> 01:08:55,305
and when it was deployed,

1281
01:08:55,348 --> 01:08:56,654
you just had
this sick feeling

1282
01:08:56,697 --> 01:08:58,177
it was actually
going to be used,

1283
01:08:58,221 --> 01:09:01,267
that you're going to go to war.

1284
01:09:01,311 --> 01:09:03,443
Mullins: A good friend of mine,
Al Whitley,

1285
01:09:03,487 --> 01:09:06,185
who was full colonel --

1286
01:09:06,229 --> 01:09:09,188
On the first night of the war,

1287
01:09:09,232 --> 01:09:10,842
Whitley and one
of his young pilots

1288
01:09:10,885 --> 01:09:12,539
were walking out to get
in their airplanes.

1289
01:09:12,583 --> 01:09:14,759
They were both going to Baghdad.

1290
01:09:14,802 --> 01:09:18,850
The pilot said to Whitley,
"I hope this  works."

1291
01:09:34,431 --> 01:09:37,695
Narrator:
I had been convinced that
stealth was the technology

1292
01:09:37,738 --> 01:09:42,221
that will change the character
of aerial warfare.

1293
01:09:42,265 --> 01:09:45,529
If the enemy can't see
the aircraft with radar,

1294
01:09:45,572 --> 01:09:47,966
he can't hit it.

1295
01:09:48,009 --> 01:09:52,579
The role of the 117
in the Gulf War

1296
01:09:52,623 --> 01:09:56,844
was to wipe out the whole
command-and-control system

1297
01:09:56,888 --> 01:10:01,153
of Iraq,
flying night missions.

1298
01:10:01,197 --> 01:10:06,071
The design of the F-117
was to be the first ones in.

1299
01:10:08,160 --> 01:10:11,946
We were told what the F-117
radar cross-section was,

1300
01:10:11,990 --> 01:10:14,514
how it would perform,

1301
01:10:14,558 --> 01:10:18,301
so we had to trust
the engineers to Skunk Works.

1302
01:10:18,344 --> 01:10:21,826
But I can tell you, flying
the first night of Desert Storm,

1303
01:10:21,869 --> 01:10:23,654
we're not sure, as pilots,

1304
01:10:23,697 --> 01:10:28,441
whether or not the stealth
technology's going to work.

1305
01:10:28,485 --> 01:10:36,014
On the first night of the war,
well, I felt an --

1306
01:10:36,057 --> 01:10:38,669
Every time I think about this,

1307
01:10:38,712 --> 01:10:42,847
I felt an emotional attachment
to these guys.

1308
01:10:42,890 --> 01:10:47,025
This was their first-ever
combat mission -- ever.

1309
01:10:51,508 --> 01:10:55,425
I used to go spend nights
with them at Tonopah,

1310
01:10:55,468 --> 01:11:01,300
so I knew these people
and had become personal friends.

1311
01:11:09,439 --> 01:11:14,095
We promised them a lot,
and we'd never proved it.

1312
01:11:14,139 --> 01:11:15,923
It's one thing to test
an airplane on a range

1313
01:11:15,967 --> 01:11:17,534
where you measure this stuff.

1314
01:11:17,577 --> 01:11:19,840
It's another thing to go
to Baghdad at night.

1315
01:11:24,367 --> 01:11:26,151
Feest:
The first night of Desert Storm,

1316
01:11:26,194 --> 01:11:30,068
I was chosen to lead
the first attack.

1317
01:11:30,111 --> 01:11:32,505
It was 1,000 miles
from our base to Baghdad,

1318
01:11:32,549 --> 01:11:36,204
so these were long missions.

1319
01:11:36,248 --> 01:11:38,685
We took off that night
the way we practiced --

1320
01:11:38,729 --> 01:11:40,774
no lights on the airplanes.

1321
01:11:40,818 --> 01:11:43,168
We found our tankers.

1322
01:11:47,259 --> 01:11:50,741
We would top off with fuel
and, at a designated time,

1323
01:11:50,784 --> 01:11:54,484
stealth up our aircraft,
bringing in the antennas

1324
01:11:54,527 --> 01:11:58,009
so that you could no longer
talk to anybody or hear anybody.

1325
01:11:58,052 --> 01:12:02,274
Once we did that, we're gone.

1326
01:12:02,318 --> 01:12:05,321
I had the first target,
so my only goal right now

1327
01:12:05,364 --> 01:12:07,888
was to find that target
and hit it at the time

1328
01:12:07,932 --> 01:12:10,326
they wanted me to hit it.

1329
01:12:10,369 --> 01:12:11,979
I found the target.

1330
01:12:14,286 --> 01:12:16,984
The weapons-bay doors
automatically open.

1331
01:12:17,028 --> 01:12:20,031
I pickle off the bomb.

1332
01:12:20,074 --> 01:12:22,512
The doors slam shut.

1333
01:12:30,215 --> 01:12:32,217
I looked back
over my left shoulder,

1334
01:12:32,260 --> 01:12:34,437
and when I looked back,

1335
01:12:34,480 --> 01:12:38,223
I always described it as looking
at a giant fireworks display.

1336
01:12:41,792 --> 01:12:44,098
This was anti-aircraft
artillery.

1337
01:12:44,142 --> 01:12:47,363
I noticed it was coming at me,
so I thought,

1338
01:12:47,406 --> 01:12:49,365
"I'm getting out of here
as fast as I can."

1339
01:12:53,978 --> 01:12:56,197
Man: We have to go to Baghdad.
We're going to Bernard Shaw.

1340
01:12:56,241 --> 01:12:58,635
Shaw:
Something is happening outside.

1341
01:12:58,678 --> 01:13:01,115
People are shooting
towards the sky,

1342
01:13:01,159 --> 01:13:04,989
and they are not aware or cannot
see what they're shooting at.

1343
01:13:05,032 --> 01:13:07,731
This is extraordinary.

1344
01:13:07,774 --> 01:13:09,428
We're being told
to get off this platform

1345
01:13:09,472 --> 01:13:12,039
and get inside
into the air-raid sh--

1346
01:13:12,083 --> 01:13:15,608
Holliman:
We still have seen no signs
of any airplanes coming in here.

1347
01:13:15,652 --> 01:13:20,787
All we're seeing is the
Iraqi response from the ground.

1348
01:13:20,831 --> 01:13:23,399
I have a statement by the
President of the United States.

1349
01:13:23,442 --> 01:13:26,663
The liberation of Kuwait
has begun.

1350
01:13:26,706 --> 01:13:31,407
When they broke in and said that
the first attacks had happened,

1351
01:13:31,450 --> 01:13:36,542
I knew that the Skunk Works jets
were in doing their job.

1352
01:13:36,586 --> 01:13:38,762
Just prayed that everybody
made it home safe.

1353
01:13:38,805 --> 01:13:42,287
Five months ago, Saddam Hussein
started this cruel war

1354
01:13:42,330 --> 01:13:43,941
against Kuwait.

1355
01:13:43,984 --> 01:13:47,640
Tonight, the battle
has been joined.

1356
01:13:47,684 --> 01:13:50,600
The U.S. air strike was almost
certainly designed to begin

1357
01:13:50,643 --> 01:13:53,385
with these stealth fighters.

1358
01:13:53,429 --> 01:13:55,474
Feest:
The sky over Baghdad was lit up.

1359
01:13:55,518 --> 01:13:57,215
I thought about the guys
that were flying with me

1360
01:13:57,258 --> 01:13:58,956
that night and I thought,

1361
01:13:58,999 --> 01:14:02,699
"Those going into Baghdad
are going to have it tough."

1362
01:14:02,742 --> 01:14:04,570
Cappucio: The pilots on the 117
were very dicey.

1363
01:14:04,614 --> 01:14:08,008
"Are they shooting at me?
We know they're shooting."

1364
01:14:08,052 --> 01:14:12,622
The question gets to be,
"Why is the pattern so erratic?"

1365
01:14:12,665 --> 01:14:17,496
Baghdad air defenses could not
see that aircraft coming.

1366
01:14:17,540 --> 01:14:19,411
Why? Because it was stealth.

1367
01:14:22,849 --> 01:14:25,722
All hell has broken loose
because they are just firing

1368
01:14:25,765 --> 01:14:29,508
stuff up in the air
pretty much regardless,

1369
01:14:29,552 --> 01:14:33,643
you know,
not knowing where anybody is.

1370
01:14:33,686 --> 01:14:36,689
The only way they knew the 117s
were overhead

1371
01:14:36,733 --> 01:14:38,474
was things started blowing up.

1372
01:14:43,391 --> 01:14:46,482
It was a harrowing experience,
and I thought it was unique

1373
01:14:46,525 --> 01:14:48,396
that I was able
to make it through there.

1374
01:14:48,440 --> 01:14:50,834
And now I snapped
the aircraft back

1375
01:14:50,877 --> 01:14:53,532
to head back to Saudi Arabia.

1376
01:14:53,576 --> 01:14:57,057
I had a list of all 12 pilots
flying in that first go,

1377
01:14:57,101 --> 01:15:00,147
and I wanted to hear them
all check in.

1378
01:15:00,191 --> 01:15:02,541
I checked in my wingman,
and he answered.

1379
01:15:02,585 --> 01:15:04,064
And then as we rejoined,

1380
01:15:04,108 --> 01:15:05,979
I heard other pilots
checking in,

1381
01:15:06,023 --> 01:15:09,592
and I checked off the names
as their call signs were read.

1382
01:15:09,635 --> 01:15:11,594
And right before approaching
my tanker,

1383
01:15:11,637 --> 01:15:14,292
I looked down and I had a check
mark next to every call sign,

1384
01:15:14,335 --> 01:15:17,121
so I knew everybody was
coming home that first night.

1385
01:15:17,164 --> 01:15:19,515
Our 12 aircraft came back.

1386
01:15:19,558 --> 01:15:24,128
There was not one single thing
wrong with any of those planes.

1387
01:15:24,171 --> 01:15:27,348
We all realized,
"This stealth technology works."

1388
01:15:32,745 --> 01:15:36,575
The F-117 made up
approximately 2.5%

1389
01:15:36,619 --> 01:15:39,535
of the total Allied Air Force
that was there,

1390
01:15:39,578 --> 01:15:41,537
and they would wind up
taking out about 40%

1391
01:15:41,580 --> 01:15:44,801
of the high-value targets.

1392
01:15:44,844 --> 01:15:48,369
Their value can't be overstated.

1393
01:15:48,413 --> 01:15:50,937
Feest: We flew 1,271 sorties
in Desert Storm

1394
01:15:50,981 --> 01:15:54,158
and never got touched
by anything.

1395
01:15:54,201 --> 01:15:57,727
Statistically, nobody had ever
seen anything like this before.

1396
01:15:57,770 --> 01:16:02,601
The F-117 was a really
major factor

1397
01:16:02,645 --> 01:16:05,212
in the success
in the First Gulf War.

1398
01:16:07,432 --> 01:16:11,828
The accuracy was
just unprecedented.

1399
01:16:11,871 --> 01:16:16,484
The airplane did exactly
what it was supposed to do.

1400
01:16:16,528 --> 01:16:19,836
Bush: Six weeks since the start
of Operation Desert Storm,

1401
01:16:19,879 --> 01:16:22,969
our military objectives are met.

1402
01:16:23,013 --> 01:16:25,232
Kuwait is liberated.

1403
01:16:25,276 --> 01:16:27,147
Iraq's army is defeated.

1404
01:16:30,890 --> 01:16:33,806
Feest:
The 117 had proved its worth
to the American public,

1405
01:16:33,850 --> 01:16:35,634
and after we got home,

1406
01:16:35,678 --> 01:16:37,114
one of the stories
we all would tell

1407
01:16:37,157 --> 01:16:42,162
is how this aircraft
saved our lives.

1408
01:16:42,206 --> 01:16:44,861
We all came home
because of the engineers.

1409
01:16:44,904 --> 01:16:48,734
The engineers that built
this aircraft built it right.

1410
01:16:48,778 --> 01:16:51,345
Brown: With anything
that you do like that,

1411
01:16:51,389 --> 01:16:53,521
you always have it
at the back of your mind,

1412
01:16:53,565 --> 01:16:55,480
you know,
did you think of everything?

1413
01:16:55,523 --> 01:16:58,962
And we were
very pleasantly surprised

1414
01:16:59,005 --> 01:17:01,138
that we didn't have
a single casualty

1415
01:17:01,181 --> 01:17:04,663
in either of the Gulf Wars.

1416
01:17:04,707 --> 01:17:06,578
You know, you put that much
of your heart and soul

1417
01:17:06,622 --> 01:17:09,450
and time away from your family
and everything into something,

1418
01:17:09,494 --> 01:17:11,888
it's kind of heartwarming
to see it come to fruition

1419
01:17:11,931 --> 01:17:16,675
and that everything you'd done
had a good ending to it.

1420
01:17:16,719 --> 01:17:19,591
Mullins: The bottom line is --
it changed the nature

1421
01:17:19,635 --> 01:17:23,943
of military combat aircraft
permanently.

1422
01:17:23,987 --> 01:17:27,599
Stealth was the most important
technological change

1423
01:17:27,643 --> 01:17:30,297
in military combat aircraft

1424
01:17:30,341 --> 01:17:32,604
since the introduction
of the jet engine.

1425
01:17:35,563 --> 01:17:37,827
Jacobsen:
Before stealth technology,

1426
01:17:37,870 --> 01:17:40,568
war planners
used to think about,

1427
01:17:40,612 --> 01:17:43,746
"How many aircraft do we need

1428
01:17:43,789 --> 01:17:47,575
to take out
a certain enemy facility?"

1429
01:17:47,619 --> 01:17:51,971
After stealth, it was,
"How many facilities do we want

1430
01:17:52,015 --> 01:17:55,409
to take out
with a single aircraft?"

1431
01:17:55,453 --> 01:17:58,804
Narrator:
It proved again our axiom.

1432
01:17:58,848 --> 01:18:01,894
If you have a good man
and let him go,

1433
01:18:01,938 --> 01:18:05,768
he'll really perform.

1434
01:18:05,811 --> 01:18:09,597
My own life
has come full circle,

1435
01:18:09,641 --> 01:18:12,949
but if God should
call me tonight,

1436
01:18:12,992 --> 01:18:16,082
I will have had more
than my share of it all.

1437
01:18:28,355 --> 01:18:31,576
In the '90s, because of
the evident success

1438
01:18:31,619 --> 01:18:33,534
of stealth aircraft
in the Gulf War,

1439
01:18:33,578 --> 01:18:36,363
the Skunk Works really
became famous in a sense.

1440
01:18:36,407 --> 01:18:37,800
People started asking, you know,

1441
01:18:37,843 --> 01:18:39,323
"Where did these airplanes
come from?"

1442
01:18:39,366 --> 01:18:41,978
And then, you know,
the Skunk Works was it.

1443
01:18:42,021 --> 01:18:45,459
Then Ben Rich publishes a book
about the development of stealth

1444
01:18:45,503 --> 01:18:49,725
and a longer history
of the Skunk Works.

1445
01:18:49,768 --> 01:18:53,293
And the book is a real gift
to our family,

1446
01:18:53,337 --> 01:18:56,470
because I learned a lot
about his career.

1447
01:18:56,514 --> 01:18:58,081
We knew he was an engineer,

1448
01:18:58,124 --> 01:19:00,170
and we knew
he worked for Lockheed.

1449
01:19:00,213 --> 01:19:01,606
That was, you know --

1450
01:19:01,649 --> 01:19:05,262
But details, you know,
I did not know.

1451
01:19:05,305 --> 01:19:07,394
And my sister --
I remember her looking at me

1452
01:19:07,438 --> 01:19:09,875
and saying, you know,
"Dad worked on that?"

1453
01:19:13,357 --> 01:19:15,359
Westwick:
And this book was a best-seller,

1454
01:19:15,402 --> 01:19:17,361
and Skunk Works becomes
kind of a buzzword

1455
01:19:17,404 --> 01:19:19,406
in corporate-management circles,

1456
01:19:19,450 --> 01:19:21,626
and every company has to go out
and form their own Skunk Works,

1457
01:19:21,669 --> 01:19:23,193
which is where you do
these kind of secret,

1458
01:19:23,236 --> 01:19:25,630
you know,
cutting-edge projects.

1459
01:19:25,673 --> 01:19:30,461
Other aerospace companies have
their equivalent of Skunk Works.

1460
01:19:30,504 --> 01:19:32,376
Westwick:
Boeing has its Phantom Works,

1461
01:19:32,419 --> 01:19:35,509
which is basically
a Skunk Works knock-off.

1462
01:19:35,553 --> 01:19:41,428
But they don't have 75 years
of lessons learned

1463
01:19:41,472 --> 01:19:47,608
and the continuous record
of technological breakthroughs.

1464
01:19:47,652 --> 01:19:50,394
A lot of the future technologies

1465
01:19:50,437 --> 01:19:53,527
are being worked on
by the Skunk Works right now.

1466
01:19:56,574 --> 01:19:58,619
Crawford: They're constantly
working on other things

1467
01:19:58,663 --> 01:20:00,099
that have other missions.

1468
01:20:00,143 --> 01:20:01,448
You just don't know about it.

1469
01:20:01,492 --> 01:20:04,364
You have no need to know.

1470
01:20:04,408 --> 01:20:06,497
Romig: People used to ask me
all the time,

1471
01:20:06,540 --> 01:20:08,455
"What's Skunk Works working on?"
And I would --

1472
01:20:08,499 --> 01:20:10,806
I kind of stopped
once we got to the F-117,

1473
01:20:10,849 --> 01:20:13,460
and people would say,
"What are you doing now?
Oh, you're doing nothing."

1474
01:20:13,504 --> 01:20:15,549
And the answer is,
"Of course we're doing a lot.

1475
01:20:15,593 --> 01:20:17,769
Ask me in 25 years. I'll
tell you what we were doing."

1476
01:20:22,469 --> 01:20:25,342
Jacobsen: What is known to
the public about Skunk Works

1477
01:20:25,385 --> 01:20:30,695
is maybe 10% of the actual work

1478
01:20:30,738 --> 01:20:34,133
that Skunk Works
has done so far.

1479
01:20:34,177 --> 01:20:36,875
But there's also another thing
that I found

1480
01:20:36,919 --> 01:20:41,097
so interesting
learning about the Skunk Works.

1481
01:20:41,140 --> 01:20:43,882
The U-2 is still flying today.

1482
01:20:43,926 --> 01:20:47,146
So when you think about that,
it's remarkable.

1483
01:20:47,190 --> 01:20:49,888
It's never been retired.

1484
01:20:49,932 --> 01:20:51,847
There's been an effort
to develop

1485
01:20:51,890 --> 01:20:54,240
an unmanned aerial vehicle
called the Global Hawk

1486
01:20:54,284 --> 01:20:57,113
and others that could
actually replace the U-2,

1487
01:20:57,156 --> 01:20:59,942
but each time
it's about to be retired

1488
01:20:59,985 --> 01:21:01,552
and finally put to rest,

1489
01:21:01,595 --> 01:21:04,424
if you will,
there's a recognition

1490
01:21:04,468 --> 01:21:09,603
that what it provides is
still uniquely worth preserving.

1491
01:21:09,647 --> 01:21:13,694
In Iraq and in Afghanistan,
there were some specific battles

1492
01:21:13,738 --> 01:21:16,175
in which the U-2
was very, very useful, again,

1493
01:21:16,219 --> 01:21:19,483
because of the precision
of its optics

1494
01:21:19,526 --> 01:21:23,966
and the resolution
of the cameras.

1495
01:21:24,009 --> 01:21:26,577
It is still very, very useful.

1496
01:21:34,628 --> 01:21:37,893
Justice:
For me, it was the place to work
because of the legacy

1497
01:21:37,936 --> 01:21:41,592
with these incredible
flying machines.

1498
01:21:41,635 --> 01:21:43,507
The Skunk Works
created airplanes

1499
01:21:43,550 --> 01:21:47,467
that changed world history.

1500
01:21:47,511 --> 01:21:49,948
What makes the Blackbird
special to me is --

1501
01:21:49,992 --> 01:21:56,433
it is this piece of sculpture
that is sinister-looking,

1502
01:21:56,476 --> 01:22:01,307
it is purposeful-looking,
and it draws out an emotion.

1503
01:22:01,351 --> 01:22:05,442
For me, it's a blend
of excitement and pride

1504
01:22:05,485 --> 01:22:09,098
and awe that such a machine
even exists.

1505
01:22:12,057 --> 01:22:13,754
Carpenter: Kelly Johnson --
he always considered

1506
01:22:13,798 --> 01:22:15,626
the SR his greatest achievement

1507
01:22:15,669 --> 01:22:18,107
of all the airplanes
that he had developed,

1508
01:22:18,150 --> 01:22:21,458
starting in the '30s
until he retired.

1509
01:22:21,501 --> 01:22:24,243
Trimble:
The retirement of the SR-71

1510
01:22:24,287 --> 01:22:27,333
took place just a few months
before he died.

1511
01:22:27,377 --> 01:22:29,596
The Air Force, to sort of say
"thank you"

1512
01:22:29,640 --> 01:22:32,121
to the people
of the Skunk Works,

1513
01:22:32,164 --> 01:22:34,427
took one
of the remaining aircraft

1514
01:22:34,471 --> 01:22:37,387
and did a flyby
over the runway at Burbank.

1515
01:22:39,824 --> 01:22:42,827
Law:
And I know that Ben had gone
to a hospital to get Kelly,

1516
01:22:42,870 --> 01:22:47,223
and Ben said he really
didn't talk very much.

1517
01:22:47,266 --> 01:22:49,616
Trimble: Ben Rich
picked up Kelly in a car

1518
01:22:49,660 --> 01:22:55,448
and drove him out to the runway
at Burbank to see the SR-71.

1519
01:22:55,492 --> 01:22:57,146
They kept the windows up.

1520
01:22:57,189 --> 01:22:59,017
They didn't let the employees
come to see him,

1521
01:22:59,061 --> 01:23:02,847
because they knew he may not
even know who they were.

1522
01:23:02,890 --> 01:23:05,415
There was some level of dementia
that he lived with

1523
01:23:05,458 --> 01:23:08,940
that got worse
and worse and worse.

1524
01:23:08,984 --> 01:23:12,857
But then, when he heard
those engines of the SR-71,

1525
01:23:12,900 --> 01:23:14,685
he responded.

1526
01:23:20,865 --> 01:23:22,693
And, all of a sudden,
he came alive.

1527
01:23:25,087 --> 01:23:28,177
He knew something special
was happening.

1528
01:23:46,282 --> 01:23:48,936
Then it wasn't too long
after that he died.

1529
01:23:51,026 --> 01:23:53,941
Beard: Aircraft designer
Clarence "Kelly" Johnson died

1530
01:23:53,985 --> 01:23:56,509
today at the age of 80
after a long illness.

1531
01:23:56,553 --> 01:23:59,382
Johnson helped to design
more than 40 advanced aircraft

1532
01:23:59,425 --> 01:24:00,905
during his long career
at Lockheed.

1533
01:24:00,948 --> 01:24:02,994
He organized Lockheed's
Skunk Works unit

1534
01:24:03,038 --> 01:24:05,779
and worked on
the SR-71 Blackbird, the U-2,

1535
01:24:05,823 --> 01:24:07,868
and the F-104 Starfighter.

1536
01:24:07,912 --> 01:24:09,348
During his long career
in aviation,

1537
01:24:09,392 --> 01:24:11,785
Johnson received
three presidential citations,

1538
01:24:11,829 --> 01:24:15,137
including the Medal of Freedom.

1539
01:24:15,180 --> 01:24:18,879
Carpenter:
I equated the time I was able
to spend with Kelly Johnson

1540
01:24:18,923 --> 01:24:21,882
equivalent to the privilege of
being able to fly the airplane

1541
01:24:21,926 --> 01:24:26,409
because he was such a giant
in his industry.

1542
01:24:26,452 --> 01:24:29,673
He was the Leonardo da Vinci
of aviation.

1543
01:24:29,716 --> 01:24:32,110
His designs -- so unique.

1544
01:24:32,154 --> 01:24:35,331
The guy's a genius.

1545
01:24:35,374 --> 01:24:39,422
He combined really extraordinary
technical knowledge

1546
01:24:39,465 --> 01:24:42,860
with equally extraordinary
leadership capacity.

1547
01:24:42,903 --> 01:24:44,601
Kelly Johnson never,
in a sense,

1548
01:24:44,644 --> 01:24:47,169
got the credit
that he was certainly due

1549
01:24:47,212 --> 01:24:50,389
because of the covert nature
of what was being done,

1550
01:24:50,433 --> 01:24:53,262
but was not one, I don't think,
who cared about that.

1551
01:24:53,305 --> 01:24:56,134
He was devoted to, as we say,

1552
01:24:56,178 --> 01:25:00,138
a mission larger than self
that was of enormous importance,

1553
01:25:00,182 --> 01:25:02,706
and he and his team
performed near-miracles

1554
01:25:02,749 --> 01:25:04,490
with cutting-edge work.

1555
01:25:06,884 --> 01:25:09,104
Narrator:
To do something spectacular

1556
01:25:09,147 --> 01:25:11,367
required unconventional methods.

1557
01:25:13,412 --> 01:25:15,632
It is amazing
what can be accomplished

1558
01:25:15,675 --> 01:25:18,113
when no one cares
who gets the credit.

1559
01:25:20,376 --> 01:25:24,380
You do what's right by
sticking to your convictions,

1560
01:25:24,423 --> 01:25:26,251
and you'll do okay.

1561
01:25:37,480 --> 01:25:40,004
Like a lot of 12-year-old kids
in the 1920s,

1562
01:25:40,047 --> 01:25:43,529
Clarence "Kelly" Johnson liked
drawing pictures of airplanes.

1563
01:25:43,573 --> 01:25:46,706
Unlike those kids, Kelly Johnson
never stopped drawing planes.

1564
01:25:46,750 --> 01:25:48,621
I think it'd be
a long, long time

1565
01:25:48,665 --> 01:25:50,188
before we have an airplane

1566
01:25:50,232 --> 01:25:54,714
that has higher performance
than the SR-71.

1567
01:25:54,758 --> 01:25:58,196
So we may be seeing, here, the
highest-speed military airplane

1568
01:25:58,240 --> 01:26:02,244
that there will be around
for a long time.

1569
01:26:02,287 --> 01:26:04,289
This is Dennis Quaid
with "An American Portrait."