Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech and it is time for
Speaker 1: a classic episode of tech Stuff. This episode originally aired
Speaker 1: on November two, thousand thirteen. It is titled Sniffing Out
Speaker 1: skunk Works Part One, which I guess is a hint
Speaker 1: of what next week's classic episode is going to be.
Speaker 1: Skunk Works is a fun little catch all phrase these
Speaker 1: days for secret R and D facilities within different companies,
Speaker 1: although it originally had a very specific designation, let's listen
Speaker 1: in it's people given the freedom. This is black ops
Speaker 1: kind of things that like the X Files really and
Speaker 1: was talking about. Yeah, so, but it can be anything, right,
Speaker 1: Like we've got another episode that we just did, the
Speaker 1: Google Loon, which really that's part of Google X, which
Speaker 1: in a way is kind of a skunk works for Google.
Speaker 1: It's top secret, super advanced research. Perhaps less top secret
Speaker 1: than the stuff that Lockheed skunk Works has been working on,
Speaker 1: because they tend to be working on contracts for the
Speaker 1: US government, yes, and specifically the military exactly. So We're
Speaker 1: talking about stuff that is, at least on some level,
Speaker 1: meant to protect people rights, meant to protect real human lives,
Speaker 1: and therefore secrecy is important to maintain that. Before we
Speaker 1: get into skunk works, we really need to just give
Speaker 1: a quick overview of Lockheed Martin. Now, Lockheed Martin as
Speaker 1: an entity is relatively recent the past couple of decades,
Speaker 1: but both Lockheed and Martin have existed since the beginning
Speaker 1: of the century. Yeah, nineteen twelve August sixteen, that's when
Speaker 1: Glenn L. Martin, who was a pilot and someone who
Speaker 1: would who built his own planes, had his first flight
Speaker 1: back in nineteen o nine, but in nineteen twelve, that's
Speaker 1: when he formed the Glenn L. Martin Company in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and he was building planes there. On December nineteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve, two brothers Alan and Malcolm Lockheed, who also
Speaker 1: were in the process of building their own aircraft, although
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have their first flight until nineteen thirteen, they
Speaker 1: founded the Alco Hydro Aeroplane Company, which later they decided
Speaker 1: to call the Lockheed Aircraft Company UM. And they were
Speaker 1: really specializing early on in building fast sea planes that
Speaker 1: established many speed and distance records for overwater flights. So, uh,
Speaker 1: these guys all were at the very beginning. We're talking
Speaker 1: like airplanes had barely existed when these companies started making stuff,
Speaker 1: not fall out of the sky, right And uh So
Speaker 1: it's funny. I like, I was reading up on some
Speaker 1: of the engineers, and I kept coming across names that
Speaker 1: I recognized, like Donald Douglas and James McDonald. Anyone who's
Speaker 1: flown a lot starts to recognize these names because we
Speaker 1: have aircraft named after them. Um, and both companies were
Speaker 1: absolutely instrumental in in defining what the early airplane industry was.
Speaker 1: And also they were really instrumental in helping the US
Speaker 1: military get its place in an error combat. Right Without
Speaker 1: Without the engineers who would come out of these companies,
Speaker 1: I don't think that we would have done as well
Speaker 1: in um several of the wars that we've participated in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not to mention just commercial flight, because a lot of
Speaker 1: the developments that we would have coming to the military
Speaker 1: flights would end up being used in commercial aspects. Now,
Speaker 1: when we talk about skunk works, were mostly talking about
Speaker 1: military because it's really the top secret stuff. Uh, And
Speaker 1: we'll get more into that before we get into get
Speaker 1: that far, we should talk about some other early stuff
Speaker 1: at Lockheed. For example, in nineteen thirty, Lockheed built a
Speaker 1: prototype two seater pursuit air craft fighter called the XP
Speaker 1: nine hundred, and the US military ended up purchasing the
Speaker 1: prototype and redesignated it the y P twenty four, and
Speaker 1: eventually they ordered five why one P twenty four fighters
Speaker 1: and four why one A nine attack aircraft. Now here's
Speaker 1: the fun thing about this podcast. Y'all gonna be lettle
Speaker 1: letters and numbers. It's it's pretty unavoidable. I I think
Speaker 1: that probably what's going to happen is Jonathan is going
Speaker 1: to read those out. I am going to say the
Speaker 1: nice nickname that someone has come up with these things,
Speaker 1: and then we will proceed to call it that nickname
Speaker 1: forever and ever and ever. Right, And I don't have
Speaker 1: a nickname for these, so I'm just calling them Bob.
Speaker 1: Bob was never actually built. Because here's the thing that
Speaker 1: so the U. S Military had ordered aircraft from Lockheed,
Speaker 1: but there was something else that happened right around nineteen
Speaker 1: little thing called the Great Depression, which, by the way, guys,
Speaker 1: wasn't so great, pretty pretty crappy, No it's a pretty
Speaker 1: crappy depression. It was huge F minus would not would
Speaker 1: not buy from again, No, no, yes, do not recommend um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So great depression obviously was a devastating economic global economic disaster. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Luckheed itself would go into bankruptcy in ninety two,
Speaker 1: they go into bankruptcy. They were only bankrupt for five
Speaker 1: whole days. After that, a group of investors kind of
Speaker 1: swooped in and safe from, didn't it. Yep, yep. They
Speaker 1: poured enough money to keep the company going. But those
Speaker 1: five days, I mean, the fact that Lockeed had been
Speaker 1: struggling so for so long and then had finally gone
Speaker 1: into bankruptcy had done a lot of damage. And so
Speaker 1: that that plan to build those early aircraft for the
Speaker 1: military fell through. So that would not be the first
Speaker 1: aircraft order that Lockheed would really fulfill for the military.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't too much longer after that that they
Speaker 1: would manage to do it. Seven. Uh. There was an
Speaker 1: important team led by how Hibberd and assisted by someone
Speaker 1: who will become incredibly important in this podcast one, Clarence
Speaker 1: Kelly Johnson. Yeah, and they were designing a new type
Speaker 1: a fighter using twin engines. Called the XP thirty eight,
Speaker 1: which eventually would be called the P thirty eight Lightning,
Speaker 1: and it is awesome. It's been called the most maneuverable
Speaker 1: and furthermore, the most beautiful plane in the Allied Forces
Speaker 1: and in what would become the Allied Forces in World
Speaker 1: War Two. It was if you've never seen a picture
Speaker 1: of this, you need to look for the the P
Speaker 1: thirty eight Lightning. Uh. It is is a particularly striking design.
Speaker 1: It's it's these kind of jets for kids who are
Speaker 1: my age. I'm gonna show my age here in second,
Speaker 1: the kids my age who grew up in the realm
Speaker 1: of G. I. Joe. And that was a big cartoon
Speaker 1: on television. If you look at the law of the
Speaker 1: vehicle designs from G. I. Joe you can see a
Speaker 1: lot of it has has drawn inspiration from these early aircraft,
Speaker 1: these very classic things, right. Um. Furthermore, it was an
Speaker 1: impressive feed for the time, capable of speeds of four
Speaker 1: miles per hour, which is about six per hour. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty fast for the for it's time. Obviously, aircraft
Speaker 1: today leave that in the dust. But right we're still
Speaker 1: talking about engines that use moving parts and not turbines.
Speaker 1: We're talking propellers. Yeah, yeah, this this is before the
Speaker 1: jet era. So eight, Lockheed had the Model fourteen Super Electra,
Speaker 1: which was a plane that ended up breaking the speed
Speaker 1: record for circling the globe. It only took three days,
Speaker 1: nineteen hours and fourteen minutes to get all the way
Speaker 1: around the Earth. And uh yeah, and of course it
Speaker 1: was piloted by a famous crazy guy, right, Howard Hughes.
Speaker 1: Howard Hughes. It's got to be difficult piloting and electra
Speaker 1: when you've got boxes on your hands and feet the
Speaker 1: whole time, and you know, especially if you don't want
Speaker 1: to upset the jars of urine that you have in
Speaker 1: the back. Howard Hughes was crazy, y'all. I imagine he
Speaker 1: did not bring the jars. But I actually think this
Speaker 1: was I don't imagine that that was actually the same.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that by he he wasn't quite uh
Speaker 1: showing the the real symptoms of his later kind of
Speaker 1: disturbing behavior. You know, he became a hermit, a recluse,
Speaker 1: but that was later on. I think he was still,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty much had it together at that point.
Speaker 1: At any rate. In three um, that's that's when we're
Speaker 1: going to really get started on these big military contracts. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's when the US Army Air Corps, which was the
Speaker 1: predecessor for the United States Air Force, decided to ask
Speaker 1: for a new jet fighter and they kind of put
Speaker 1: out the word a jet fighter period. I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: that the thing is is that previously the Army had
Speaker 1: kind of rejected development of these propellerless jet engines in
Speaker 1: the thirties because they didn't think it could be done
Speaker 1: until the Germans went and did it, right, and then
Speaker 1: they said, well, you know what, we need some of
Speaker 1: let's do some of those things. So they kind of
Speaker 1: put out the request for a proposal, asking various companies
Speaker 1: to put forth their their proposed solution to this, and
Speaker 1: Lockeed wanted to throw its hat in the ring, and
Speaker 1: they decided that the best way to to innovate quickly
Speaker 1: would be to create a special division within Lockheed that
Speaker 1: was not going to have to answer to the corporate
Speaker 1: level at the same kind of bureaucratic process that everyone
Speaker 1: else had to write and that would wind up being
Speaker 1: the basis of the skunk Works ideology for forever until now. Right. So,
Speaker 1: originally it was called, you know, the official official name
Speaker 1: is the Lockheed Advanced Development Projects and then later it
Speaker 1: was renamed officially to Advanced Development Programs a d P.
Speaker 1: But it's official nickname, which like we said, it's it's trademarked.
Speaker 1: It's got a logo is of course, skunk Works. And
Speaker 1: the logo, by the way, is a skunk. It's it's
Speaker 1: the cutest little skunk that has ever adorned machines war
Speaker 1: It's just about almost as cute as flour from Bambi,
Speaker 1: but not quite but close. And so you might wonder,
Speaker 1: why the heck would they be called skunk Works? Where's
Speaker 1: that name come from? Okay, So the story goes that
Speaker 1: when when this division was first started up, they you know,
Speaker 1: it was wartime, Lockheed did not have any room on
Speaker 1: their main floors for this new division. So they started up,
Speaker 1: uh Mr Clarence Kelly Johnson UM bought a circus tent
Speaker 1: and set it up somewhere like I imagine, in a
Speaker 1: parking lot on the property of this facility and UM
Speaker 1: and it happened to be next to a plastics manufacturing
Speaker 1: plant which was really quite stinky yep. And so that
Speaker 1: stinky odor ended up completely saturating that circus tent, making
Speaker 1: it a very smelly place. And you know, but but
Speaker 1: it was all very secretive. You know. All the projects
Speaker 1: that they were working on are really the one project,
Speaker 1: this jet engine project that they were working on. It
Speaker 1: couldn't be talked about. And so they were told when
Speaker 1: they answered phones to to not say what they were
Speaker 1: doing or give any kind of indication. And supposedly when
Speaker 1: one engineer answered a phone, he he made this joke.
Speaker 1: And and this joke is a little bit out of
Speaker 1: my reach personally, having never read the comic strip Little Abner,
Speaker 1: Um this this is one of those newspaper comics from
Speaker 1: the time. Um. But apparently in in this comic strip
Speaker 1: there was something called the skunk Work. Yes s k
Speaker 1: o in k. It was a kind of a playful
Speaker 1: misspelling of skunk because it's it was a couple of
Speaker 1: country bumpkins who ran this um this this uh still
Speaker 1: well it's not even a still really, because it wasn't
Speaker 1: moonshine they were making. They were making Kickapoo juice, and
Speaker 1: Kickapoo juice was made out of pretty much anything they
Speaker 1: could get their hands on, and it was supposed to
Speaker 1: be the most including skunks up doing, including skunks moose.
Speaker 1: The moose were very popular because they would say lacks body,
Speaker 1: so they would go knock a body unconscious to throw
Speaker 1: it into the mix. And uh yeah, kickapoo juice was
Speaker 1: supposed to be the most powerful alcohol. And dog Patch.
Speaker 1: Dog Patch, by the way, is the location where Little
Speaker 1: Abner takes place. Okay, alright, but but so so this
Speaker 1: engineer answered the phone like like, hello, this is Skunk
Speaker 1: Works because it was stucky and and it's stuck and
Speaker 1: and eventually, um, I believe after the Little Abner lawyers
Speaker 1: gave them a call, they changed it officially to Skunk Works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that would happen later. That was happened later. They
Speaker 1: so they started trying to develop a jet plane based
Speaker 1: around a jet engine that had was not developed at Lockheed.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was it was developed by the British.
Speaker 1: It's called the Goblin. And before they really got down
Speaker 1: to designing this, Kelly came out. Kelly Johnson came out
Speaker 1: and kind of laid down the law. He sort of
Speaker 1: came up with a philosophy. He was thirty three years
Speaker 1: old at the time, which is just incredible to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a young man who comes up with fourteen guiding principles, rules,
Speaker 1: and practices are what they're called. And we're not gonna
Speaker 1: read out all fourteen, but I've got six of them
Speaker 1: I would like to. Yeah. Yeah, So they're this pretty
Speaker 1: much is just kind of the overview of how skunk
Speaker 1: Works business gets done in order for them to do
Speaker 1: it expediently at the quality they wanted. So number one
Speaker 1: was the skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete
Speaker 1: control of his program in all aspects. He should report
Speaker 1: to a division president or higher, meaning that Kelly wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure that he had the authority to make
Speaker 1: the decisions he needed to make in order to deliver
Speaker 1: upon these incredibly lucrative contracts and uh. And he felt
Speaker 1: that if he had to dance around all these corporate levels,
Speaker 1: it would slow things down and they would lose. So
Speaker 1: he said, we can't have that. So that's rule number one. Uh,
Speaker 1: we'll skip over a couple of the rule number three.
Speaker 1: He's the number of people having any connection with the
Speaker 1: project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use
Speaker 1: a small number of good people ten to twenty compared
Speaker 1: to the so called normal systems. So these are really small,
Speaker 1: nimble teams, and that was important for multiple reasons. One again,
Speaker 1: he wanted to be able to move quickly, and the
Speaker 1: more voices you have than you know you might have,
Speaker 1: and it just slows everything down. And also because these
Speaker 1: projects were top secret, it's a lot easier to keep
Speaker 1: a secret if you keep the number of people who
Speaker 1: know it to a small minimum. Yeah, i'll tell you. You
Speaker 1: You tell like twenty five people a secret, that secret
Speaker 1: is going to get out eventually. But if you tell
Speaker 1: two thousand, five hundred people that secret, that secret, they
Speaker 1: might as well not even make the secret in the
Speaker 1: first place. That's why I don't tell anyone my secrets,
Speaker 1: especially podcasts. He can't trust us. Yeah, i'll tell you
Speaker 1: as a secret. Number five is there must be a
Speaker 1: minimum number of reports required, but important work must be
Speaker 1: recorded thoroughly. Again, this was to cut down the bureaucratic
Speaker 1: approach that I didn't have to keep on making reports
Speaker 1: over and over, taking time away from actually doing the work.
Speaker 1: But he did say that it's important that we record
Speaker 1: what we do because accountability still has to be maintained.
Speaker 1: You can't just have no accountability whatsoever. That would be
Speaker 1: a disaster as well. Number twelve, there must be mutual
Speaker 1: trust between the military project organization and the contractor, the
Speaker 1: very close cooperation in liaison on a day to day
Speaker 1: basis that this cuts down misunderstanding and correspondence to an
Speaker 1: absolute minimum, again cutting out all that interference. Number thirteen.
Speaker 1: Access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must
Speaker 1: be strictly controlled by appropriate security measures. This would actually
Speaker 1: come into a really important story later are on in
Speaker 1: skunk works where people who genuinely wanted to help we're
Speaker 1: not allowed on the premises and it ended up destroying
Speaker 1: a project in the process. Number four team is because
Speaker 1: only a few people will be used in engineering and
Speaker 1: most other areas, ways must be provided to reward good
Speaker 1: performances by pay, not based on the number of personnel supervised.
Speaker 1: I think this was Kelly's way of saying, I wants
Speaker 1: to get my money, y'all, and Shakespeare got to get paid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Because you know, this is essentially saying I might have
Speaker 1: these really small teams that I've asked for, but don't
Speaker 1: base my pay on how many people I oversee. Based
Speaker 1: my pay on the results that we get, which which
Speaker 1: we mostly include. Because we were a little bit entertained
Speaker 1: by by all of these like really imported. I mean
Speaker 1: these these kind of business structures have been used throughout
Speaker 1: corporate America and the world exactly since the inception of
Speaker 1: skunk Works, but tacked onto the end like get dudes paycheck, yes,
Speaker 1: which you know, until again makes sense because it's not
Speaker 1: just it's not just Kelly here, we're poking at Kelly,
Speaker 1: but honestly referred to anyone who was a project leader,
Speaker 1: right because again, if your project is incredibly important but
Speaker 1: it has fewer people on it then say a typical
Speaker 1: project in the main branch of Lockheed, you don't want
Speaker 1: that to count against you. So that was he was
Speaker 1: really looking out for his people. So even though we're
Speaker 1: making light of it, he was he was actually he
Speaker 1: was being very thoughtful exactly. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: practicality was overall the thing of this that the mantra
Speaker 1: of the entire operation is is quick, quiet, and quality. Yep,
Speaker 1: he wants all three of those things. That has to
Speaker 1: be secret, it has to be done on schedule, and
Speaker 1: it has to be uh you know, has to meet
Speaker 1: the qualifications that the military laid out. In fact, that
Speaker 1: was another one of his rules was that let's be
Speaker 1: really clear about what the expectations are so that we
Speaker 1: can meet them and not waste time on things that
Speaker 1: are not important to whatever the expectations are. So yeah,
Speaker 1: top secret operation. In fact, employees were not allowed to
Speaker 1: talk about what they were working on with anyone who
Speaker 1: wasn't on their project team. So even other people who
Speaker 1: are working in skunk Works at the time, you were
Speaker 1: not allowed to talk about what it was you were
Speaker 1: working on if that person wasn't also on that project.
Speaker 1: So um, this one carry over to one of the
Speaker 1: great testing facilities that would come into existence about a
Speaker 1: decade later. We'll mention it a couple of times, but
Speaker 1: it's one of my favorite subjects that I still I'm
Speaker 1: determined to do an episode on sometime in the future. Anyway, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's almost as though we continually get prevented from doing it.
Speaker 1: I know, it's some kind of shadowy forces, almost like
Speaker 1: some gentlemen wearing black suits will occasionally show up outside
Speaker 1: of the offices of How Stuff Works and say you
Speaker 1: really don't want to talk about that, namely Alex Trebec
Speaker 1: and Jesse Ventura sometimes sometimes been Bowlen, and you think,
Speaker 1: like I thought he was on our side, but no,
Speaker 1: he's working for the man anyway. So another thing that
Speaker 1: we can mention is that the secrecy went beyond just
Speaker 1: you know, don't talk about it, right. They went so
Speaker 1: far as to start to disguise the buildings themselves. Right, Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had decoy buildings and they would cover some of
Speaker 1: them or all of them in camouflage and netting and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Yeah, because you know, Pearl Harbor demonstrated
Speaker 1: the value of being able to hide potential high value targets,
Speaker 1: and now they were going to be working on super
Speaker 1: secret projects for the military, so they considered themselves a
Speaker 1: potential target. So this was really kind of a practical
Speaker 1: approach to trying to minimize that the chance that they
Speaker 1: would be hit by some enemy aircraft carrying bombs. So
Speaker 1: they actually went to great pains to to disguise their campus. Now,
Speaker 1: the very first jet that they started working on, the
Speaker 1: one that had that Goblin jet engine from the British,
Speaker 1: was designated the XP eight e jet fighter. So the
Speaker 1: team started work on that in nineteen forty three, four
Speaker 1: months before they were officially awarded the contract for the project.
Speaker 1: And it would turn out that this apparently was sort of. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was essentially the military would say, hey, you know what,
Speaker 1: we sure could use a an aircraft that does this,
Speaker 1: this and this, and the skunk Works would say, we
Speaker 1: could do that for you. Yeah, you know, we might
Speaker 1: whip something up. They shake hands, and then skunk Works
Speaker 1: goes out and pours a lot of time, money, and
Speaker 1: effort into developing it. And then months later the contract
Speaker 1: comes through. Oh yeah, yeah with it with the understanding
Speaker 1: that eventually the money would come. And you know, this
Speaker 1: was partially due to the or largely I think due
Speaker 1: to the cleverness and machinations of Kelly Johnson because he
Speaker 1: uh he also stated himself as the only person who
Speaker 1: would get to talk to Air Force officers and CIA agents.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, there's a great everything comes through him, which
Speaker 1: you know, which really streamlines the process exactly. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you had that and put him up as a as
Speaker 1: a reliable He was the central voice. I mean, it
Speaker 1: meant that you weren't going to get mixed messages because
Speaker 1: everything was going through one source. I also have a
Speaker 1: fun little thing I can talk about and a little
Speaker 1: bit about about what it was like to go along
Speaker 1: with Kelly on one of these meetings with the CIA.
Speaker 1: I've heard him referred to as like W. C. Fields
Speaker 1: without the sense of humor. Yeah, in this case, it
Speaker 1: was more about the links they went to to try
Speaker 1: and prevent being overheard, which I thought was amusing. Jonathan
Speaker 1: from here breaking in to say, we're going to be
Speaker 1: back at skunk Works in just a second, but first
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break alright. Soe they got that contract,
Speaker 1: they delivered the XP eight Lulu Bell prototype jet fighter. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was only a hundred and forty three days after
Speaker 1: that kind of handshake deal had occurred. It was just
Speaker 1: under five months and a little bit earlier than planned.
Speaker 1: Yea by a full week. They delivered it a week
Speaker 1: ahead of schedule. Uh. And the jet fighter would eventually
Speaker 1: become known as the Lockheed P eighty Shooting Star. And
Speaker 1: that was the very first jet fighter used by the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army Air Forces. So some of the bombers that were
Speaker 1: operating in Europe during the tail end of World War
Speaker 1: Two absolutely um where we're helped out by the creation
Speaker 1: of this vehicle. Right, It's just that they weren't designed
Speaker 1: to do actual military work yet, Like they couldn't fly
Speaker 1: a combat mission. They weren't outfitted for that, and it
Speaker 1: wouldn't happen until after the conclusion of World War Two.
Speaker 1: They would be used later in the Korean War. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you might wonder what it looks like. Well, it's
Speaker 1: a single theater, single theater jet. It's pretty simple, like
Speaker 1: a basic jet design that if you can imagine what
Speaker 1: a fighter jet looks like, it looks like a small
Speaker 1: version of that. That's why it was by so A
Speaker 1: little four years later they developed the T thirty three
Speaker 1: T Bird, which is also known as the T thirty
Speaker 1: three Shooting Star, which is mostly used at least in
Speaker 1: the United States, was mostly used as a training aircraft.
Speaker 1: It was meant to get pilots who had had experience
Speaker 1: with propeller aircraft to actually jet aircraft. Right. This is
Speaker 1: a brand new way of flying, and very few people
Speaker 1: had any expertise in it, apart from those crazy test
Speaker 1: pilots who lived on adrenaline and are a totally different species.
Speaker 1: As far as I'm concerned, I'm a Nedraline junkie myself
Speaker 1: that I cannot imagine living that lifestyle where you like,
Speaker 1: when you're strapping me into this thing, goes, you know,
Speaker 1: twice the speed of sound. Let's do it. No roller
Speaker 1: coaster adrenaline is great. Yeah, actual death adrenaline. It's a
Speaker 1: little more than I can handle. But yeah. So the
Speaker 1: first flight was piloted by Tony Lavier, who would end
Speaker 1: up piloting lots of different test aircraft for Lockheed um
Speaker 1: and it remained in service for a long time in
Speaker 1: the United States as training aircraft. In a few parts
Speaker 1: of the world it's still used as training aircraft, and
Speaker 1: a few places even weaponized it, making it a combat aircraft,
Speaker 1: which was never used in the United States for that purpose.
Speaker 1: It was mainly there just as a training vehicle, but
Speaker 1: some places in the world have purchased T thirty three's
Speaker 1: and use them for for combat jets. They they are
Speaker 1: they are slightly overmatch, i would say, by most modern jets,
Speaker 1: but but but still, I mean a solid piece of machinery.
Speaker 1: It was a little bit longer than the T, than
Speaker 1: the than the right and had a second seat right,
Speaker 1: which makes sense because it was used for training. Had
Speaker 1: a second seat with instrumentation and control, so kind of
Speaker 1: like you know, if you've ever taken one of those
Speaker 1: driving courses where the car has two sets of brakes
Speaker 1: and maybe even two steering wheels. Yeah, so in that
Speaker 1: case it's kind of similar. So, like I said, I
Speaker 1: was used still used in some parts of the world,
Speaker 1: mostly for training. Nineteen fifty they came out with the
Speaker 1: F ninety four, which was also developed called the Starfire,
Speaker 1: right it was. It was also developed off of their
Speaker 1: three though. Yes, that's right, and it was meant to
Speaker 1: be faster and more maneuverable than the P A D.
Speaker 1: Turned out it was not that was the intent. It
Speaker 1: did not quite turn out that way, but it was
Speaker 1: meant to kind of match against Soviet aircraft. After this time,
Speaker 1: we're getting into the Cold War and so you had
Speaker 1: this escalation on both sides of the Cold War, the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union and the United States building all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: I mean, this would also be what fueled the space race, uh,
Speaker 1: shortly after this time period we're talking about right now.
Speaker 1: So they wanted to have something that was a little
Speaker 1: more capable of going up against Soviet aircraft, which tended
Speaker 1: to be smaller, less complex, and far faster and more
Speaker 1: maneuverable than the United States version. So that was the idea.
Speaker 1: It was a it was a twin cedar aircraft and
Speaker 1: supposedly had very powerful instrumentation, including radar that would allow
Speaker 1: them to detect potential targets from quite a far away away.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was so sensitive and so advanced that
Speaker 1: the United States government did not really want pilots flying
Speaker 1: the F ninety four for enemy territory. They placed restrictions
Speaker 1: to make sure that the technology wouldn't fall into enemy hands. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which would come. And you know, it turns out that's
Speaker 1: an import in consideration because as we'll see with some
Speaker 1: later aircraft, there were instances where certain aircraft were shot
Speaker 1: down and there was a real worry that that technology
Speaker 1: was now going to fall into enemy hands and that
Speaker 1: any advantage the United States might have had would be
Speaker 1: lost as a result. So that's why they were very
Speaker 1: careful about where it could fly. It did in her
Speaker 1: combat in the Korean War. Uh. There's a site called
Speaker 1: Military Factory that has a great article about the Starfire
Speaker 1: and said that it just didn't outperform the p A
Speaker 1: D when it came to combat situations, but it was
Speaker 1: able to uh inter combat with aircraft at night because
Speaker 1: that radar was so sensitive that the crew aboard the
Speaker 1: Starfire could navigate and find targets and fire upon them
Speaker 1: just using the instrumentation while not using visuals. So that's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing, and they called it a stop gap aircraft.
Speaker 1: Like the idea was that until we can develop something better,
Speaker 1: this is what we're going to use in the interim,
Speaker 1: and by the late nineteen fifties it gets phased out.
Speaker 1: Now that brings us up to an interesting test vehicle
Speaker 1: in N one, the X seven King Fisher. So this
Speaker 1: test vehicle is different from other test vehicles. This was
Speaker 1: not This was not really a vehicle so much as
Speaker 1: an aircraft. It was it was not meant to carry
Speaker 1: people at all. What was meant to do was to
Speaker 1: mimic a missile. It essentially was a missile, but without
Speaker 1: any kind of payload. So the idea was that they
Speaker 1: would launch one of these from like a B twenty
Speaker 1: nine or a B fifty and it would go into
Speaker 1: ramjet operation. Right. A ramjet being a type of engine
Speaker 1: that doesn't use moving parts. It takes an air at
Speaker 1: in this case subsonic speeds and then using the pressure
Speaker 1: of of the motion of the aircraft um it compresses
Speaker 1: that air to create combustion. Hence that missile like design.
Speaker 1: I mean the entire body of the aircraft is essentially
Speaker 1: an airflow device. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, one of these
Speaker 1: days we're gonna have to do like a full episode
Speaker 1: about jet engines ramjet engines, talk about the differences and
Speaker 1: why you know, some are are sub sonic, some are supersonic,
Speaker 1: some are hypersonic. But that that's such a huge topic
Speaker 1: to really get into that it would this this series
Speaker 1: would go like five episodes, So I'd love to know
Speaker 1: that it's Yeah, so the yeah, it's pretty cool stuff.
Speaker 1: And so what was funny about this thing was it
Speaker 1: was all meant to allow the United States to test
Speaker 1: anti missile systems, right. It was to give a target
Speaker 1: that anti missile systems could aim at and fire at
Speaker 1: in an attempt to bring it down safely without having
Speaker 1: an actual missile with an actual payload flying around. Um.
Speaker 1: It also had a very long nose that ended in
Speaker 1: a like a needle like projection. Uh. The idea being
Speaker 1: that when it was when its fuel was spent, it
Speaker 1: would parachute down and the needle would would land nose
Speaker 1: down in the desert, and and that that would kind
Speaker 1: of cushion in a way. Yeah, it would fall. It's
Speaker 1: like kind of like a dart falling into the dirt.
Speaker 1: Like the idea being that it would suspend itself, you know,
Speaker 1: from this needle, and therefore the fins on this thing
Speaker 1: wouldn't get damaged in the fall. And it turned out
Speaker 1: that that was handy because it was hardly ever shot down.
Speaker 1: That was the problem was that apparently the Kingfisher was
Speaker 1: a bit too good at what it did, and it
Speaker 1: was so fast and agile, the anti missile systems didn't
Speaker 1: hit it that frequently. It was very few hits that
Speaker 1: were scored in the program overall. And because that doesn't
Speaker 1: look so good to the military, like, well, our anti
Speaker 1: missile systems are are terrible. That's not that's not a
Speaker 1: fun thing to say, right. It wounded up being a
Speaker 1: little bit of an embarrassment. I think, Yeah, so they
Speaker 1: scrapped the program because obviously that's the right choice, Like,
Speaker 1: our missiles can't hit this thing, let's scrap it. Let's
Speaker 1: redefine the rules so that we can we can win. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't think that's I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not a military expert. I just don't think that's how
Speaker 1: winning works. I I think that really the issue is
Speaker 1: that it was the incorrect technology for the project for
Speaker 1: for for for its purpose. We'll return to sniffing out
Speaker 1: skunk Works Part one in just a moment, but first
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. So nineteen fifty four, there's
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna mention this briefly because it will come
Speaker 1: into play. We're actually doing this in two parts. This
Speaker 1: this uh show about Lockheed, and so this is part
Speaker 1: the first part, but this is going to come into
Speaker 1: play in the second part. Lockheed develops the x C
Speaker 1: one Hercules YEP, which was a four engine turboprop aircraft
Speaker 1: used in military transport. Now, the original Hercules, there wasn't
Speaker 1: that much innovative about it other than the fact that
Speaker 1: they could carry a lot of stuff. It was an
Speaker 1: enormous cargo plane. But there's some stuff that they add
Speaker 1: to it a couple of decades later that make it
Speaker 1: pretty um terrifying. But with the hook about that when
Speaker 1: I get to it. So nineteen the Also in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four they developed the F one oh four Starfighter. Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: now I'm starting to think of like transformers at this point.
Speaker 1: So I know it's stars scream and transforms. Don't write
Speaker 1: to me. I know it's Star scream. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: it's starting to get get that feel. So Starfighter, it's
Speaker 1: a single engine supersonic interceptor and alright, go ahead. Sorry,
Speaker 1: well no, no no, I was just gonna say that this
Speaker 1: was it was the first MAC two aircraft, which means
Speaker 1: it travels at speeds of one miles per hour or
Speaker 1: about two thousand, four fifty kilometers per out pretty fast. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's also you know, it was specifically designed to go
Speaker 1: into battle against Soviet miggs at least, if ever we
Speaker 1: were to go into combat with the Soviet Union. The MiGs.
Speaker 1: The miggs were incredibly maneuverable, so this was sort of
Speaker 1: our answer to the Soviet miggs aircraft. Um. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and an intercepter. That's what an interceptor is,
Speaker 1: in case you're wondering. Is a specific kind of jet
Speaker 1: fighter that's designed to do air to air combat, so
Speaker 1: not just other fighters but also bombers and other types
Speaker 1: of air craft. So it's a specific type of jet fighter.
Speaker 1: Wasn't really designed to have any kind of ground operation,
Speaker 1: so you wouldn't be using this to fire against ground
Speaker 1: forces necessarily. Um. It has a really weird look to it.
Speaker 1: It's very long, and the wings look pretty stubby compared
Speaker 1: to the body of the jets, so it just it
Speaker 1: looks like a rocket with some thin stuck to the
Speaker 1: side and a cockpit in it, and there's a person
Speaker 1: in there. This is this is going to be another
Speaker 1: one of those um ramjet based engines. Yeah, and uh.
Speaker 1: It was operated mainly by the Air Force and the
Speaker 1: Air National Guard and a NASA had a few because
Speaker 1: they wanted to use them for supersonic test flights, because
Speaker 1: they had this crazy idea about sending people up into
Speaker 1: outer space, I know. And it turns out that if
Speaker 1: you want to make sure that your human beings can
Speaker 1: survive the trip, you might want to do some supersonic
Speaker 1: tests first, because you're gonna be going pretty fast. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it was really important there and about dred actually
Speaker 1: more than were produced overall, but only eight of those
Speaker 1: were made by Lockheed. Everything else was licensed to other manufacturers. Right.
Speaker 1: They would be retired by the mid nineteen seventies, but
Speaker 1: would continue or by the US anyway, but would continue
Speaker 1: to serve in various air forces until about two thousand four.
Speaker 1: And uh. The way this whole program started was Kelly
Speaker 1: went to Korea and started telling to us pilots and said, okay,
Speaker 1: what is it that you need in order? What do
Speaker 1: you want? What if you could build your own aircraft,
Speaker 1: what what would you want? And they said, we want
Speaker 1: it less complex, smaller, and faster. Essentially, they're saying, you
Speaker 1: know the Soviet maigs that they have, want those. So
Speaker 1: that was kind of the idea that that fed into
Speaker 1: the development of the Starfighter. The thing that weirds me
Speaker 1: out about this craft is that had this had this
Speaker 1: downward facing ejection seat, so rather than than than popping
Speaker 1: up and away. And I understand that probably I've read
Speaker 1: that it was something about the shape of the tail
Speaker 1: or the side of the tail, and that might have
Speaker 1: made clearance difficult exactly, but nonetheless sending me screaming straight
Speaker 1: down arns out of a plane just sounds like and
Speaker 1: and not dropped right shot shot because you were in
Speaker 1: because your jet may be in danger of exploding, so
Speaker 1: you have to have these explosive charges that project your
Speaker 1: your seat in a particular direction. In this case, that
Speaker 1: direction was straight down, so that you would the bottom
Speaker 1: of the jet would open up and you would be
Speaker 1: shot down in your ejectors seat to clear the plane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I am, strangely enough, not the only person who
Speaker 1: found this kind of weird. The Germans had a really
Speaker 1: interesting nickname for it. Yeah, that nickname would be vit
Speaker 1: vin Macher, which means the widow maker. Yes, the widow maker.
Speaker 1: They said that it was an incredibly dangerous aircraft and
Speaker 1: that uh, that there were that you were more likely
Speaker 1: to have a malfunction or some other kind of accident
Speaker 1: in it in the operation rather than ever getting shot
Speaker 1: down in combat. That it was just an unreliable aircraft,
Speaker 1: and that there were some big, big problems with it.
Speaker 1: Germany was not the only country to say that. Now,
Speaker 1: there were other countries that said that's something like fifty
Speaker 1: of their aircraft they lost of all the ones they
Speaker 1: had due to operational accidents. Yeah, um not. Nonetheless, it
Speaker 1: would win a Callier Trophy in which is an award
Speaker 1: presented annually by the National Aeronautics Association for achievement in
Speaker 1: either aeronautics or astronautics. And it's it's a pretty big deal.
Speaker 1: Like Lockheed Martin would win six of these over the
Speaker 1: course of their tenure um up until today. But you know,
Speaker 1: so it was a big important craft, Yeah, and a
Speaker 1: little bit shotting. Yeah, it all depended on whom you us. Right,
Speaker 1: there were some who said the Starfighter was an inherently
Speaker 1: dangerous vehicle that was poorly constructed and in fact alleged
Speaker 1: that Lockheed had bribed officials in order to win the
Speaker 1: contract to make a thing. But then there were other
Speaker 1: places that said, no, we've never lost a single aircraft
Speaker 1: due to some sort of operational error. So it all
Speaker 1: depended on you know, who was doing the flying. I guess. Uh,
Speaker 1: so it certainly is controversial. Then there's the the RB
Speaker 1: sixty nine Neptune. You know, here's the crazy thing about
Speaker 1: the neptune. There are two different types of neptunes. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the U. S. Navy has neptunes, and these neptunes
Speaker 1: are maritime, uh surveillance, not even surveillance. They just they
Speaker 1: just they monitor and fly over oceans looking at Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just patrol, right, and that's all it is. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's not necessarily like a heavy combat type thing.
Speaker 1: It just it does these patrols. Well, this this Neptune
Speaker 1: was designed to look like the Navy's Neptune, but instead
Speaker 1: of being operated by the Navy, they were operated by
Speaker 1: the CIA Central Intelligence Agency in the United States. I
Speaker 1: just want to take a moment to say thank you
Speaker 1: to all the men and women in the CIA who
Speaker 1: always try very hard to keep us safe and uh
Speaker 1: promise I'll be good. So the c I as obviously
Speaker 1: one of those organizations known for being super secret. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's why it's their job. That is literally their job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the espionage is high up there. They are all about
Speaker 1: material surveillance, which means like direct surveillance, whereas the n
Speaker 1: s A, the National Security Agency, which we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: is all about electronic surveillance and signal surveillance. So c
Speaker 1: I A, Uh, they wanted to have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: do some surveillance missions with aircraft, and uh there were
Speaker 1: there were so many of these of these Navy neptunes
Speaker 1: in use that they were like, you know, if we
Speaker 1: just built something that looks like a Navy neptune, people
Speaker 1: will be It's it's like a you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: a Navy, it's Navy aircraft. Yeah, it's everywhere, right, no
Speaker 1: one's going to pay any attention. We're perfectly fun. Well,
Speaker 1: we can hide in plane site. The Navy said, hey,
Speaker 1: hang on there, buddy, if one of those planes is
Speaker 1: shot down, that means you're going to blame us, the U. S. Navy,
Speaker 1: because you're not going to come forward and say that
Speaker 1: was our plane. And the CIA said, yop, and the
Speaker 1: Navy said you can't. I can't paint your look like
Speaker 1: our planes. So they look like from a from a
Speaker 1: just a from a body standpoint, Yeah, they look identical.
Speaker 1: They are identical to these other and the other types
Speaker 1: are designated P two V seven Neptunes. That's the Navy's aircraft.
Speaker 1: The c I A is the RB sixty nine. So
Speaker 1: they look from a superficial level identical. Although each of
Speaker 1: those seven planes that was built that were built for
Speaker 1: the CIA by hand by hand, it looks different and
Speaker 1: is outfitted with different equipment for different They could do
Speaker 1: different things, like one of the things they would occasionally
Speaker 1: do is drop leaflets on two countries to try and
Speaker 1: promote you know, resistance and then propagand exactly. Um, so
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't always some sort of actual direct
Speaker 1: combat issue. So uh, there were a couple that had
Speaker 1: some sidewinder missiles, so there were a couple that were
Speaker 1: ready for combat if it was necessary, but none of
Speaker 1: them ever entered combat. I believe, well, someone were shot down,
Speaker 1: but none of them I thinking to went into a
Speaker 1: combat mission. Yeah. Out of the seven that were built
Speaker 1: for the c I A, five of them have been
Speaker 1: lost either shot down or we don't know, or at
Speaker 1: least we don't know. We don't know, Jonathan and I
Speaker 1: don't know. No one has told us. Yeah, there's no
Speaker 1: public information about what happened. Like one of them disappeared
Speaker 1: over China, for example, and there's no information that is
Speaker 1: publicly available about the fate of that aircraft, although actually
Speaker 1: technically the fate of the other two is not known
Speaker 1: to the public as well. Is that right? The two
Speaker 1: the two surviving ones, we don't know where they are.
Speaker 1: They could be doing anything right now. I think they're
Speaker 1: with Ben Bolland and Alex treat you. Probably those men
Speaker 1: and Black have to get around somehow, right, So we
Speaker 1: don't know what those two surviving aircraft are doing, but
Speaker 1: we have our suspicions. Ninety five. Now here's where we're
Speaker 1: gonna end. Because this is also a big, big year
Speaker 1: for Lockeed skunk Works and for the spy industry in
Speaker 1: the United States, surveillance reconnaissance. This is when lockeed built
Speaker 1: the U to a Angel, the or the YouTube the
Speaker 1: first YouTube plane. So tech Stuff has done a full
Speaker 1: episode about the U two spy plane, So if you
Speaker 1: want to hear all about it, I recommend you go back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go listen to that. That was published on March nineteen
Speaker 1: and was called tech Stuff Spies on the YouTube. So
Speaker 1: we've got a lot more information about the entire process
Speaker 1: of developing the YouTube as well as some of the
Speaker 1: other aircraft that we will be talking about in our
Speaker 1: next episode. But this was big. It was a joint
Speaker 1: operation between the CIA, the Air Force, and and Lockheed
Speaker 1: of course, right, so because it was c i A
Speaker 1: it was it was called a black operation, meaning it
Speaker 1: was ultra secret. And the reason why the CIA got involved,
Speaker 1: well the United States, you know, the President kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to have these spy planes, but Congress could oversee
Speaker 1: the budgets the Air Force. Yeah, the budget for the
Speaker 1: Air Force. So Congress is like scrutinizing all the money
Speaker 1: that's going through to the military, and the President says,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd really like to be able to build
Speaker 1: these planes, but I can't do it through Congress because
Speaker 1: they're not going to play ball. What if I had
Speaker 1: the c I A the secret agency who the governance
Speaker 1: of which is a mystery to almost everybody, apart from
Speaker 1: the people who are actually running things. Stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. Um, how do we have them
Speaker 1: build it instead? So it falls under the CIA's budget,
Speaker 1: which was classified. People in Congress could not see what
Speaker 1: the money went to. They knew that money was going
Speaker 1: to the CIA, but they had no idea where it
Speaker 1: was going. Beyond that, only only a small number of
Speaker 1: government officials knew anything about the project at the time. Right.
Speaker 1: So that project being the development of the YouTube plane,
Speaker 1: which is an incredible aircraft. It's still in service today. Um,
Speaker 1: there's still quite a few in the fleet. And essentially
Speaker 1: what does is it flies it really high altitudes, like
Speaker 1: seventy thousand feet yea, so twenty one kilometers that's that's
Speaker 1: almost twice the the operating the normal jet engine like
Speaker 1: a passenger gen that's about right. Yeah, So it's about
Speaker 1: twice as high as any of those. And the idea
Speaker 1: was that at that altitude the YouTube could fly over
Speaker 1: radar and not be detected. It also would be out
Speaker 1: of reach of any air ground to air missiles. Or fighters,
Speaker 1: So in other words, they could just stay up out
Speaker 1: of reach and spy on whoever they wanted, and then
Speaker 1: there would be no repercussions at least directly to that aircraft.
Speaker 1: For the time being. That concludes our first part of
Speaker 1: a two part episode about skunk Works. We will return
Speaker 1: next week to conclude that too, partner skunk Works in general.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things that I could do probably
Speaker 1: half a dozen episodes about UH and not even scratch
Speaker 1: the surface. But if you guys have suggestions for things
Speaker 1: I should cover in tech Stuff, whether it's really too secret,
Speaker 1: R and D projects or not, reach out to me
Speaker 1: on Twitter. The handle is tech stuff H s W
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Y. Text
Speaker 1: Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
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