Article by Jay Miller
This article appeared in the October 1993 issue of Code One Magazine.
During early 1943, as a result of prescient jet engine design work by chief engineer Hall Hibbard and conducted by Lockheed’s Nate Price and the then little-known Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson, the Army Air Force’s H. H. “Hap” Arnold drafted Lockheed to design and build a jet fighter to counter the rapid technology advances then taking place in Nazi Germany. On 17 June 1943, the Air Force formally approved what was to become Lockheed’s first jet aircraft-the US Air Force’s XP-80. That day is considered the birth date of the Skunk Works.
The security surrounding the project and the expeditious manner in which the aircraft was to be designed and built meant that most of the bureaucratic norms for new aircraft design and manufacture could be circumvented. Hibbard, Johnson, Willis Hawkins, Art Viereck, Donald Palmer, and a team that eventually totaled 128 went to work immediately constructing a jet fighter. The schedule was severe. The jet-powered aircraft was to make its first flight within 180 days after the project started.
The deadline was met. On 8 January 1944, Lockheed’s Milo Burcham piloted the XP-80 (nicknamed Lulu Belle) into the air for the first time at Muroc Army Air Field (now Edwards AFB) about seventy miles northeast of Los Angeles.
This year, the Skunk Works looks back proudly on fifty years of the most innovative accomplishments in aerospace engineering ever recorded. To celebrate the milestone, the company has pulled the wraps off some of its lesser-known historically significant projects.
Skunk Works aircraft, though relatively few in number, have heralded exceptional advances in technology and performance. Some of these aircraft set world speed and altitude records nearly twenty-five years ago-records unassailable by any known conventional winged aircraft in the world today.
Aircraft built or designed directly under the Skunk Works umbrella include the XP-80, the family of U-2 aircraft, the JetStar, the little-known CL-400, the A-12, the YF-12, the D-21, the SR-71, Have Blue, the F-117, and the YF-22. Peripheral programs conceived, manufactured, or influenced by the Skunk Works philosophy include the Model 75 Saturn, the Model 89 Constitution, the T-33 and T2V family, the F-94 Starfire family, the XF-90, the XFV-1, the R7V-2/YC-121F, the X-7, the RB-69, the YC-130 Hercules, and the XF-104 Starfighter. Many other aircraft were modified or upgraded as part of normal Skunk Works subcontract business, including RB-57s, P2V/P-2 Neptunes, and a variety of types for foreign air forces.
Picking a selection of photos that adequately summarizes the best work of an organization as long-lived and innovative as the Skunk Works is tough task. Any list would have to contain what has become known unofficially as the Blackbird family, which includes the world-renowned SR-71 and its A-12 and YF-12 predecessors. The forty-eight Blackbirds represent the only production jet-propelled aircraft in history capable of routinely cruising at speeds in excess of Mach 3 (over 2,000 mph) and at altitudes above 80,000 feet. They hold numerous world records, including that for absolute speed of 2,193 mph and the absolute sustained altitude of 85,069 feet.
The list also would have to contain the U-2 that, in its U-2R variant, remains in front-line operational service nearly four decades after the original U-2 first flew in 1955. Capable of cruising at altitudes above 75,000 feet, the aircraft remains the highest flying subsonic aircraft in the world. It is probably the world’s best manned reconnaissance platform.
Lesser known, but equally innovative, are the two Have Blue prototypes, the world’s first dedicated testbeds for low-observables technologies and the archetypes for the F-117 stealth fighter-another product of the Skunk Works.
These and the long list of other Skunk Works aircraft represent a proud legacy. This fifty years of aerospace leadership merits acknowledgment and applause.
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