Speaker 1: Get in test with technology with text stuff from com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and today we're gonna talk to you guys about something secret,
Speaker 1: super duper secret, like above top secret secret. And we're
Speaker 1: talking about Lockheed skunk Works. So skunk works has become
Speaker 1: sort of a term that lots of different companies use,
Speaker 1: although it is proprised area. Yeah, so not officially do
Speaker 1: they use it, but skunk works has come to mean
Speaker 1: like a a division or a project within a company
Speaker 1: that is not hampered by bureaucracy, red tape, you know. There,
Speaker 1: it's people given the freedom to works. Uh yeah, the
Speaker 1: black ops kind of things that like the X Files
Speaker 1: really enjoys 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. But before
Speaker 1: we get into skunk works, we really need to just
Speaker 1: give a quick overview of Lockheed Martin. Now, Lockheed Martin
Speaker 1: as 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: nine 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 nine, they founded
Speaker 1: the Alco Hydro Aeroplane Company, which later they decided to
Speaker 1: call the Lockheed Aircraft Company UM. And they were really
Speaker 1: specializing early on in building fast sea planes that established
Speaker 1: many speed and distance records for overwater flights. So, uh,
Speaker 1: these guys all were at the very beginning. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: talking like airplanes had barely existed when these companies started
Speaker 1: making stuff, not fall out of the sky. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: And uh so it's funny. I like, I was reading
Speaker 1: up on some of the engineers, and I kept coming
Speaker 1: across names that I recognized, like Donald Douglas and James
Speaker 1: McDonald which anyone who's flown a lot starts to recognize
Speaker 1: these names because we have aircraft named after them. Um.
Speaker 1: And both companies were absolutely instrumental in in defining what
Speaker 1: the early airplane industry was. And also they were really
Speaker 1: instrumental in helping the US military get its place in
Speaker 1: an error combat. Right Without Without the engineers who would
Speaker 1: come out of these companies, I don't think that we
Speaker 1: would have done as well in um, several of the
Speaker 1: wars that we've participated in. Yeah, not to mention just
Speaker 1: commercial flight, because a lot of the developments that we
Speaker 1: would have coming to the military flights would end up
Speaker 1: being used in commercial aspects. Now, when we talk about
Speaker 1: skunk works, were mostly talking about military because it's really
Speaker 1: the top secret stuff. Uh. And we'll get more into that.
Speaker 1: Before we get into get that far, we should talk
Speaker 1: about some other early stuff at Lockheed. For example, in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty, Lockheed built a prototype two seater pursuit aircraft
Speaker 1: fighter called the XP nine hundred, and the US military
Speaker 1: he ended up purchasing the prototype and redesignated it the
Speaker 1: y P twenty four, and eventually they ordered five why
Speaker 1: one P twenty four fighters and four why one A
Speaker 1: nine attack aircraft. Now here's the fun thing about this podcast.
Speaker 1: Y'all gonna be lettle letters and numbers. It's it's pretty unavoidable.
Speaker 1: I I think that probably what's going to happen is
Speaker 1: Jonathan is going to read those out. I am going
Speaker 1: to say the nice nickname that someone has come up
Speaker 1: for these things, and then we will proceed to call
Speaker 1: it that nickname forever and ever and ever. Right, and
Speaker 1: I don't have a nickname for these, so I'm just
Speaker 1: calling him Bob. Bob was never actually built. Because here's
Speaker 1: the thing that so the U. S Military had ordered
Speaker 1: aircraft from Lockheed, but there was something else that happened
Speaker 1: right around nineteen thirty, little thing called the Great Depression, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, guys, wasn't so great. Pretty pretty crappy.
Speaker 1: Now it's a pretty crappy depression. It was huge F
Speaker 1: minus would not would not buy from again. No, no, yes,
Speaker 1: I do not recommend um. Yeah. So great Depression obviously
Speaker 1: was a devastating economic, uh global economic disaster. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: Lockheed itself would go into bankruptcy in nineteen thirty 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 safed them, 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 had done a lot of damage, and
Speaker 1: so that that plan to build those early aircraft with
Speaker 1: the military fell through. So that would not be the
Speaker 1: first 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: of 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: that's pretty fast for the for it's time. Obviously, aircraft
Speaker 1: today leave that in the dust. But right well, we're
Speaker 1: still talking about engines that use moving parts and not turbines.
Speaker 1: We're talking for pellers. Yeah, yeah, this this is before
Speaker 1: the jet era. So ninety eight, Lockheed had the Model
Speaker 1: fourteen Super Electra, which was a plane that ended up
Speaker 1: breaking the speed record for circling the globe. It only
Speaker 1: took three days, nineteen hours and fourteen minutes to get
Speaker 1: all the way around the Earth. And uh yeah, and
Speaker 1: of course it was piloted by a famous crazy guy, right,
Speaker 1: Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes. It's got to be difficult piloting
Speaker 1: and electra when you've got boxes on your hands and
Speaker 1: feet the whole time, and you know, especially if you
Speaker 1: don't want to upset the jars of urine that you
Speaker 1: have in the back. Howard Hughes was crazy, y'all. I
Speaker 1: imagine he did not bring I actually think this was
Speaker 1: I don't imagine that that was actually the same. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure that by nine he wasn't quite uh showing
Speaker 1: the the real symptoms of his later kind of disturbing behavior.
Speaker 1: You know, he became a hermit, a recluse, But that
Speaker 1: was later on. I think he was still you know,
Speaker 1: he pretty much had it together that point. At any rate.
Speaker 1: In um, that's that's when we're going to really get
Speaker 1: started on these big military contracts. Right. Yeah, that's when
Speaker 1: the US Army Air Corps, which was the predecessor for
Speaker 1: the United States Air Force UH decided to ask for
Speaker 1: a new jet fighter and they kind of put out
Speaker 1: the world a jet fighter period. I mean, okay, that
Speaker 1: the things is that previously the Army had kind of
Speaker 1: rejected development of these propellerless jet engines in the thirties
Speaker 1: because they didn't think it could be done until the
Speaker 1: Germans went and did it, right, and then they said, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, I guess we need some of let's
Speaker 1: do some of those things. So they kind of put
Speaker 1: out the request for proposal asking various companies to put
Speaker 1: forth their their proposed solution to this, and Lockeed wanted
Speaker 1: to throw its hat in the ring, and they decided
Speaker 1: that the best way to to innovate quickly would be
Speaker 1: to create a special division within Lockheed that was not
Speaker 1: going to have to answer to the corporate level at
Speaker 1: the same kind of bureau addic process that everyone else
Speaker 1: had to write, and that would wind up being the
Speaker 1: 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 flower 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: but it was all very secretive. You know, all the
Speaker 1: projects 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 Works. Yes s k
Speaker 1: O n K. It was a kind of a play
Speaker 1: full misspelling of skunk because it's it was a couple
Speaker 1: of country bumpkins who ran this um this this uh
Speaker 1: still well it's not even a still really, because it
Speaker 1: wasn't moonshine they were making. They were making Kickapoo juice,
Speaker 1: and Kickapoo juice was made out of pretty much anything
Speaker 1: they could get their hands on, and it was supposed
Speaker 1: to be up to including skunks moose. The moose were
Speaker 1: very popular because they would say lacks body, so they
Speaker 1: would go knock a body unconscious to throw it into
Speaker 1: the mix. And uh yeah, kickapoo juice was supposed to
Speaker 1: be the most powerful alcohol. And dog Patch. Dog Patch,
Speaker 1: by the way, is the location where Little Abner takes place. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, but but so so this engineer answered the
Speaker 1: phone like like, hello, this is Skunk Works because it
Speaker 1: was stuck and and it's stuck and and eventually, um,
Speaker 1: I believe after the Little Abner lawyers gave them a call,
Speaker 1: they changed it officially to Skunk Works. Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: would happen later. That would happened later. They so they
Speaker 1: started trying to develop a jet plane based around a
Speaker 1: jet engine that had was not developed at Lockheed. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was it was developed by the British is called
Speaker 1: the Goblin. And before they really got down to designing this,
Speaker 1: Kelly came out. Kelly Johnson came out and kind of
Speaker 1: laid down the law. He sort of came up with
Speaker 1: a philosophy. He was thirty three years old at the time,
Speaker 1: which is just incredible to me. Yeah, it's a young
Speaker 1: man who comes up with fourteen guiding principles, rules and
Speaker 1: practices or what they're called. And we're not gonna read
Speaker 1: out all fourteen, but I've got six of them I
Speaker 1: would like to. Yeah. Yeah, So they're this pretty much
Speaker 1: is just kind of the overview of how skunk Works
Speaker 1: business gets done in order for them to do it
Speaker 1: expediently at the quality they wanted. So number one was
Speaker 1: the skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control
Speaker 1: of his program in all aspects. He should report to
Speaker 1: a division president or higher, meaning that Kelly wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure that he had the authority to make the
Speaker 1: decisions he needed to make in order to deliver upon
Speaker 1: the these incredibly lucrative contracts and uh. And he felt
Speaker 1: that if he had to dance around all these corporate levels,
Speaker 1: that 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 Rule number three is
Speaker 1: the number of people having any connection with the project
Speaker 1: must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a
Speaker 1: small number of good people ten to twenty compared to
Speaker 1: 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 tell you,
Speaker 1: you tell like twenty five people a secret, that secret
Speaker 1: is gonna get out eventually. But if you tell two thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred people that secret, that secret, you might as
Speaker 1: well not even make the secret in the first place.
Speaker 1: That's why I don't tell anyone my secrets, especially podcast
Speaker 1: as you can't trust us. Yeah, I'll tell you guys
Speaker 1: a secret. Number five is there must be a minimum
Speaker 1: number of reports required, but important work must be recorded thoroughly. Again,
Speaker 1: this was to cut down the bureaucratic approach that didn't
Speaker 1: have to keep on making reports over and over, taking
Speaker 1: time away from actually doing the work. But he did
Speaker 1: say that it's important that we record what we do
Speaker 1: because accountability still has to be maintained. You can't just
Speaker 1: have no accountability whatsoever. That would be a disaster. As well.
Speaker 1: Number twelve, there must be mutual trust between the military
Speaker 1: project organization and the contractor, the very close cooperation in
Speaker 1: liaison on a day to day basis that this cuts
Speaker 1: down misunderstanding and correspondence to an absolute minimum, again cutting
Speaker 1: out all that interference. Number thirteen. Access by outsiders to
Speaker 1: the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled by
Speaker 1: appropriate security measures. This would actually come into a really
Speaker 1: important story later on in skunk Works where people who
Speaker 1: genuinely wanted to help we're not allowed on the premises
Speaker 1: and it ended up destroying a project in the process.
Speaker 1: Number fourteen is because only a few people will be
Speaker 1: used in engineering and most other areas, ways must be
Speaker 1: provided to reward good performances by pay, not based on
Speaker 1: the number of personnel supervised. I think this was Kelly's
Speaker 1: way of saying, I wants to get my money, y'all
Speaker 1: Shakespeare to get paid, yeah, Because you know, this is
Speaker 1: essentially saying I might have these really small teams that
Speaker 1: I've asked for, but don't base my pay on how
Speaker 1: many people I oversee. Based my pay on the results
Speaker 1: that we get, which which we mostly include. Because we
Speaker 1: were a little bit entertained by by all of these
Speaker 1: like really imported. I mean, these these kind of business
Speaker 1: structures have been used throughout corporate America and the world
Speaker 1: exactly since the inception of skunk Works, but tacked onto
Speaker 1: the end like get dudes paycheck, yes, which you know,
Speaker 1: t again makes sense because it's not just it's not
Speaker 1: just Kelly here, we're poking fun at Kelly, but honestly
Speaker 1: referred to anyone who was a project leader, right because
Speaker 1: again and if your project is incredibly important but it
Speaker 1: has fewer people on it then say a typical project
Speaker 1: in the main branch of Lockheed, you don't want that
Speaker 1: to count against you. So that was he was really
Speaker 1: looking out for his people. So even though we're making
Speaker 1: light of it, he was. He was actually he was
Speaker 1: 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. It 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 you know, they were going to be working on
Speaker 1: super secret projects for the military, so they considered themselves
Speaker 1: a potential target. So this was really kind of a
Speaker 1: practical approach to trying to minimize that the chance that
Speaker 1: they would be hit by some enemy aircraft carrying bombs.
Speaker 1: So they actually went to great pains to to disguise
Speaker 1: their campus. Now, the very first jet that they started
Speaker 1: working on, the one that had that Goblin jet engine
Speaker 1: from the British, was designated the XP eight E jet fighter.
Speaker 1: So the team started work on that in nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: four months before they were officially awarded the contract for
Speaker 1: the project. And it would turn out that this apparently
Speaker 1: was sort of yeah, that was essentially the military would say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, we sure could use an an aircraft
Speaker 1: that does this, this, and this, and the skull corks
Speaker 1: would a we could do that for you know, we
Speaker 1: might whip something up. They shake hands and then skunk
Speaker 1: work goes out and pours a lot of time, money,
Speaker 1: and effort into developing it, and then months later the
Speaker 1: contract comes through. Oh yeah, yeah with it with the
Speaker 1: understanding that eventually the money would come. And you know,
Speaker 1: this was partially due to the or largely I think
Speaker 1: due to the cleverness and machinations of Kelly Johnson, because
Speaker 1: he uh he also in stated himself as the only
Speaker 1: person who would get to talk to Air Force officers
Speaker 1: and CIA agents. Um, yeah, there's a great everything comes
Speaker 1: through him, which you know, which really streamlines the process exactly. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you had that and puts 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, and 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. But
Speaker 1: we've got a lot more we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: as far as skunk Works goes. Before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Alright.
Speaker 1: So ninety three they got that contract. Ninety four they
Speaker 1: delivered the x P eighty 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. Yeah,
Speaker 1: by a full week. They delivered it a week ahead
Speaker 1: of schedule. Uh. And the jet fighter would eventually become
Speaker 1: known as the Lockheed P eighty Shooting Star. And that
Speaker 1: 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 Two, absolutely, Um,
Speaker 1: we're we're helped out by the creation of this vehicle. Right,
Speaker 1: It's just that they weren't designed to do actual military
Speaker 1: work yet, Like they couldn't fly a combat mission. They
Speaker 1: weren't outfitted for that, and it wouldn't happen until after
Speaker 1: the conclusion of World War Two. They would be used
Speaker 1: later in the Korean War. Yes, so you might wonder
Speaker 1: what looks like, Well, it's a single theater, single theater jet.
Speaker 1: It's pretty simple, like a basic jet design that if
Speaker 1: you can imagine what a fighter jet looks like, it
Speaker 1: looks like a small version of that. That's what it
Speaker 1: was by night. So a little four years later they
Speaker 1: developed the T thirty three T Bird, which is also
Speaker 1: known as the T thirty three Shooting Star, which is
Speaker 1: mostly used at least in the United States. Was mostly
Speaker 1: used as a training aircraft. It was meant to get
Speaker 1: pilots who had had experience with propeller aircraft who actually
Speaker 1: get jet aircraft r This was a brand new way
Speaker 1: of flying, and very few people had any expertise in it,
Speaker 1: apart from those crazy test pilots who lived on adrenaline
Speaker 1: and are a totally different species as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1: I'm a Nedraline junkie myself, but I cannot imagine living
Speaker 1: that lifestyle where like what you're strapping me into this
Speaker 1: thing goes you know twice the speed of sound. Let's
Speaker 1: do it. No, a roller coaster adrenaline is great, Yeah,
Speaker 1: actual death adrenaline. That's a little more than I can handle.
Speaker 1: But yeah. So the first flight was piloted by Tony Lavier,
Speaker 1: who would end up piloting lots of different test aircraft
Speaker 1: for Lockheed um and it remained in service for a
Speaker 1: long time in the United States as training aircraft. In
Speaker 1: a few parts of the world it's still used as
Speaker 1: training aircraft, and a few places even weaponized it, making
Speaker 1: it a combat aircraft, which was never used in the
Speaker 1: United States for that purpose. It was mainly there just
Speaker 1: as a training vehicle. But some places in the world
Speaker 1: have purchased T thirty three's and used them for for
Speaker 1: combat jets. They they are. They are slightly overmatched, I
Speaker 1: would say, by most modern jets, but but but still,
Speaker 1: I mean a solid piece of machinery. It was a
Speaker 1: little bit longer than the T, than the than the right,
Speaker 1: and had a second seat right, which makes sense because
Speaker 1: it was used for training. Had a second seat with
Speaker 1: instrumentation and control, so kind of like you know, if
Speaker 1: you've ever taken one of those driving courses where the
Speaker 1: car has two sets of brakes and maybe even two
Speaker 1: steering wheels. Yeah, so in that case it's kind of similar. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, it was used still used in some
Speaker 1: parts of the world, mostly for training. Nineteen fifty they
Speaker 1: came out with the F ninety four, which was also
Speaker 1: developed I called the Starfire, right it was. It was
Speaker 1: also developed off of the T Yes, that's right, and
Speaker 1: it was meant to be faster and more maneuverable than
Speaker 1: the P E D turned out. It was not that
Speaker 1: that was the intent. It did not quite turn out
Speaker 1: that way, but it was meant to kind of match
Speaker 1: against Soviet aircraft. At this time, we're getting into the
Speaker 1: Cold War, and so you had this escalation on both
Speaker 1: sides of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the
Speaker 1: United States building all sorts of things. I mean, this
Speaker 1: would also be what fueled the Space race, uh, shortly
Speaker 1: after this time period we're talking about right now. So
Speaker 1: they wanted to have something that was a little more
Speaker 1: capable of going up against Soviet aircraft, which tended to
Speaker 1: be smaller, less complex, and far faster and more maneuverable
Speaker 1: 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 they were enemy territory. They placed
Speaker 1: restrictions to make sure that the technology wouldn't fall into
Speaker 1: enemy hands. Yeah, which would come. And you know, it
Speaker 1: turns out that's an important consideration because, as we'll see
Speaker 1: with some later aircraft, there were instances where certain aircraft
Speaker 1: were shot down and there was a real worry that
Speaker 1: that technology was now going to fall into enemy hands
Speaker 1: and that any advantage the United States might have had
Speaker 1: would be lost as a result. So that's why they
Speaker 1: were very careful about where it could fly. It did
Speaker 1: enter combat in the Korean War. Uh. There's a site
Speaker 1: called Military Factory that has a great article about the
Speaker 1: Starfire and said that it just didn't outperform the P
Speaker 1: A D when it came to combat situations, but it
Speaker 1: was able to uh inter combat with aircraft at night
Speaker 1: because that radar was so sensitive that the crew aboard
Speaker 1: the Starfire could navigate and find targets and fire upon
Speaker 1: them just using the instrumentation while not using visuals. So
Speaker 1: that's 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 nineteen fifty one, the X seven Kingfisher. 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. Ramjet being a type of engine that
Speaker 1: doesn't use moving parts. It takes an air at in
Speaker 1: this case subsonic speeds and then using the pressure of
Speaker 1: of the motion of the aircraft um it compresses that
Speaker 1: air to create combustion. Hence that missile like design. I mean,
Speaker 1: the entire body of the aircraft is essentially an airflow device. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of these days we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: do like a full episode about jet engines ramjet engines,
Speaker 1: talk about the differences and why uh you know, some
Speaker 1: are are sub sonic, some are supersonic, some are hypersonic.
Speaker 1: But that that's such a huge topic to really get
Speaker 1: into that it would this this series would go like
Speaker 1: five episodes. So loved you that that's it's yeah, so
Speaker 1: the yeah, it's pretty cool stuff. And so what was
Speaker 1: funny about this thing was it was all meant to
Speaker 1: allow the United States to test anti missile systems, right.
Speaker 1: It was to give a target that anti missile systems
Speaker 1: could aim at and fire at in an attempt to
Speaker 1: bring it down safely without having an actual missile with
Speaker 1: an actual payload flying around. Um. It also had a
Speaker 1: very long nose that ended in a like a needle
Speaker 1: like projection. Uh. The idea being that when it was
Speaker 1: when its fuel was spent, it would parachute down and
Speaker 1: the needle would would land nose down in the desert,
Speaker 1: and and that that would kind of cushion in a way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's 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 um so fast and agile. The anti missile systems
Speaker 1: didn't hit it that frequently. It was very few hits
Speaker 1: that were scored in the program overall. And because that
Speaker 1: doesn't look so good to the military, like, well, our
Speaker 1: anti missile systems are are terrible. That's not a that's
Speaker 1: not a fun thing to say, all right, It wound
Speaker 1: up being a little bit of an embarrassment. I think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they 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. But you're far more generous
Speaker 1: than Iland. Uh So nineteen fifty four, there's I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna mention this briefly because it will come into play.
Speaker 1: We're actually doing this in two parts. This this uh
Speaker 1: show about Lockheed and so this is part the first part,
Speaker 1: but this is going to come into play in the
Speaker 1: second part. Lacke develops the x C one Hercules YEP,
Speaker 1: which was a four engine turboprop aircraft used in military transport. Now,
Speaker 1: the original Hercules there wasn't that much innovative about it
Speaker 1: other than the fact that they could carry a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. It was an enormous cargo plane. But there's
Speaker 1: some stuff that they add to it a couple of
Speaker 1: decades later that make it pretty um terrifying. But what
Speaker 1: the hook about that? When I get to it? So
Speaker 1: nineteen the Also in nineteen fifty four they developed the
Speaker 1: F one oh four Starfighter. Yeah, so, um now I'm
Speaker 1: starting to think of like transformers at this point, and
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 all right, go ahead, Sorry,
Speaker 1: well 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 kilometers per out pretty fast. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: also you know, it was specifically designed to go into
Speaker 1: battle against Soviet miggs at least, if ever we were
Speaker 1: 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 interceptor. 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 aircraft. So it's a specific type of jet fighter.
Speaker 1: Wasn't really designed to have any kind of ground operations,
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. And uh it
Speaker 1: was operated mainly by the Air Force and the Air
Speaker 1: National Guard, and NASA had a few because they wanted
Speaker 1: to use them for supersonic test flights, because they had
Speaker 1: this crazy idea about sending people up into outer space,
Speaker 1: I know. And it turns out that if you want
Speaker 1: to make sure that your human beings can survive the trip,
Speaker 1: you might want to do some supersonic tests first, because
Speaker 1: you're gonna be going pretty fast. Yeah. Yeah, So it
Speaker 1: was really important there and about undred actually more than
Speaker 1: were produced overall, but only seven thirty 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. YEP.
Speaker 1: And UH, the way this whole program started was Kelly
Speaker 1: went to Korea and started talking 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 those Soviet maigs that they have, they want those.
Speaker 1: So that was kind of the idea that that fed
Speaker 1: into the development of the Starfighter. The thing that weirds
Speaker 1: me out about this craft is that had this had
Speaker 1: this downward facing ejection seat, so rather than than than
Speaker 1: popping up and away. And I understand that probably I've
Speaker 1: read that it was something about the shape of the
Speaker 1: tail or the height of the tail that might have
Speaker 1: made clearance difficult exactly, but nonetheless, sending me screaming straight
Speaker 1: downwards out of a plane just sounds like and not
Speaker 1: dropped right shot shot because you are in because your
Speaker 1: jet may be in danger of exploding, so you have
Speaker 1: to have these explosive charges that project your your seat
Speaker 1: in a particular direction. In this case, that direction was
Speaker 1: straight down, so that you would the bottom of the
Speaker 1: jet would open up and you would be shot down
Speaker 1: in your objector seat to clear the plane. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I am strangely enough not the only person who found
Speaker 1: this kind of weird. The Germans had a really interesting
Speaker 1: nickname for it. Yeah, that nickname would be vit vin Macher,
Speaker 1: which means the widow maker. Yes, the widow maker. They
Speaker 1: said that it was an incredibly dangerous aircraft and that uh,
Speaker 1: that there were that you were more likely to have
Speaker 1: a malfunction or some other kind of accident in it
Speaker 1: in operation rather than ever getting shot down in combat.
Speaker 1: That it was just an unreliable aircraft, and that there
Speaker 1: were some big, big problems with it. Germany was not
Speaker 1: the only country to say that. Now, there were other
Speaker 1: countries that said that something like fifty of the aircraft
Speaker 1: they lost fift of all the ones they had due
Speaker 1: to operational accidents. Yeah, um not. Nonetheless, it would win
Speaker 1: a Call Your Trophy in which is an award presented
Speaker 1: annually by the National Aeronautics Association for achievement in either
Speaker 1: aeronautics or astronautics. And it's it's a pretty big deal.
Speaker 1: Like Lackie 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. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: all depended on whom you us, right. There were some
Speaker 1: who said the Starfighter was an inherently dangerous vehicle that
Speaker 1: was poorly constructed and in fact alleged that Lockheed had
Speaker 1: bribed officials in order to win the contract to make
Speaker 1: a thing. But then there were other places that said, no,
Speaker 1: we've never lost a single aircraft due to some sort
Speaker 1: of operational error, so it all depended on you know,
Speaker 1: who was doing the flying. I guess, uh, so it
Speaker 1: certainly is controversial. Then there's the the RB sixty nine Neptune.
Speaker 1: You know, here's the crazy thing about the Neptune. There
Speaker 1: are two different types of neptunes. Okay, so the U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy has neptunes, and these neptunes are maritime, uh surveillance,
Speaker 1: not even surveillance. They just they just they monitor and
Speaker 1: fly over oceans looking. Yeah, it's just patrol, right, that's
Speaker 1: all it is. Um So it's not necessarily like a
Speaker 1: heavy combat type thing. It just does these patrols. Well, this,
Speaker 1: this Neptune was designed to look like the Navy's Neptune,
Speaker 1: but instead of being operated by the Navy, they were
Speaker 1: operated by the CIA, central Intelligence Agency in the United States.
Speaker 1: I just want to take a moment to say thank
Speaker 1: you to all the men and women in the CIA
Speaker 1: who always try very hard to keep us safe, and
Speaker 1: uh promise I'll be good. So the c I as
Speaker 1: obviously one of those organizations known for being super secret.
Speaker 1: I mean that's one. It's that's their job. That is
Speaker 1: literally their job. Yeah, the the espionage is high up there.
Speaker 1: They are all about material surveillance, which means like direct surveillance,
Speaker 1: whereas the n s A, the National Security Agency which
Speaker 1: we've talked about before, is all about electronic surveillance and
Speaker 1: signal surveillance. So c I A Uh, they wanted to
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to do some surveillance missions with aircraft,
Speaker 1: and uh there there were so many of these of
Speaker 1: these Navy neptunes in use that they were like, you know,
Speaker 1: if we just built something that looks like a Navy neptune,
Speaker 1: people will be It's it's like a you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a Navy, it's Navy aircraft. Yeah, corolla, it's everywhere, right,
Speaker 1: no 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 c I said, yop, and
Speaker 1: the Navy said you can't. You can't paint your plane
Speaker 1: to look like our planes. So they look like from
Speaker 1: a from a just a from a body standpoint, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they look identical. They are identical to these other and
Speaker 1: the other types are designated P two V seven Neptunes.
Speaker 1: That's the Navy's aircraft. The c I A is the
Speaker 1: RB sixty nine. So they look from a superficial level identical.
Speaker 1: Although each of those seven planes that was built that
Speaker 1: were built for the CIA by hand, but hand it
Speaker 1: looks different and is outfitted with different equipment. They could
Speaker 1: do different things, like one of the things they would
Speaker 1: occasionally do is drop leaflets on two countries to try
Speaker 1: and promote you know, resistant and propaganda 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 wasn't necessary, but none of
Speaker 1: them ever entered combat. I believe someone were shot down,
Speaker 1: but none of them I think went into a combat mission. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Out of the seven that were built for the CIA,
Speaker 1: five of them have been lost, either shot down or
Speaker 1: we don't know, or at least we don't know. We
Speaker 1: don't know, Johnathan and I don't know. No one has
Speaker 1: told us. Yeah, there's no public information about what happened.
Speaker 1: Like one of them disappeared over China, for example, and
Speaker 1: there's no information that is publicly available about the fate
Speaker 1: of that aircraft, although actually technically the fate of the
Speaker 1: other two is not known to the public as well.
Speaker 1: Is that right? The two the two surviving ones, we
Speaker 1: don't know where they are. They could be doing anything
Speaker 1: right now. I think they're with Ben boll And and and
Speaker 1: Alex Trebat. Yeah. Probably those men and Black have to
Speaker 1: get around somehow, right, So we don't know what those
Speaker 1: two surviving aircraft are doing, but we have our suspicions. Uh,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five, now here's where we're gonna end. Because
Speaker 1: this is also a big, big year for Lockeed skunk
Speaker 1: Works and for the spy industry in the United States,
Speaker 1: surveillance reconnaissance. This is when Lockeed built the U two
Speaker 1: A Angel the or the YouTube the first YouTube plane.
Speaker 1: So tech stuff has done a full episode about the
Speaker 1: U two spy plane, So if you want to hear
Speaker 1: all about it, I recommend you go back. Yeah, go
Speaker 1: listen to that. That was published on March nineteenelve and
Speaker 1: was called tech Stuff Spies on the YouTube. So we've
Speaker 1: got a lot more information about the entire process of
Speaker 1: developing the YouTube, as well as some of the other
Speaker 1: aircraft that we will be talking about in our next episode.
Speaker 1: But this was big. It was a joint operation between
Speaker 1: the CIA, the Air Force, and and Lockheed of course, right,
Speaker 1: so because it was c i A, it was it
Speaker 1: was called a black operation, meaning it was ultra secret.
Speaker 1: And the reason why the CIA got involved, well the
Speaker 1: United States, you know, the President kind of wanted to
Speaker 1: have these spy planes, but Congress could oversee the budgets
Speaker 1: the Air Force. Yeah, the budget for the Air Force.
Speaker 1: So Congress is like scrutinizing all the money that's going
Speaker 1: through to the military, and the President says, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd really like to be able to build these planes,
Speaker 1: but I can't do it through Congress because they're not
Speaker 1: going to play ball. What if I had the CIA
Speaker 1: the secret agency who the governance of which is a
Speaker 1: mystery to almost everybody apart from the people who are
Speaker 1: actually running things. Stuff they don't want you to know. Um,
Speaker 1: how don't we have them build it instead? So it
Speaker 1: falls under the CIA's budget, which was classified. People in
Speaker 1: Congress could not see what the money went to. They
Speaker 1: knew that money was going to the CIA, but they
Speaker 1: no idea where it was going. Beyond that. Only only
Speaker 1: a small number of government officials knew anything about the
Speaker 1: project at the time, right. So that project being the
Speaker 1: development of the YouTube plane, which is an incredible aircraft.
Speaker 1: It's still in service today. Um, there's still quite a
Speaker 1: few in the fleet. And essentially what does is it
Speaker 1: flies it really high altitudes, like seventy thousand feet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so twenty one kilometers that's that's almost twice the the
Speaker 1: operating the normal jet engine like a passenger gener that's
Speaker 1: about right. Yeah, So it's about twice as high as
Speaker 1: any of those. And the idea was that at that
Speaker 1: altitude the YouTube could fly over radar and not be detected.
Speaker 1: It also would be out of reach of any air
Speaker 1: ground to air missiles or fighters, So in other words,
Speaker 1: they could just stay up out of reach and spy
Speaker 1: on whoever they wanted, and then there would be no
Speaker 1: repercussions at least directly to that aircraft for the time being.
Speaker 1: That would change pretty quickly. I mean, the whole industry
Speaker 1: technology was moving forward very quickly, and especially you know
Speaker 1: as as part of the space race. Everything was developing
Speaker 1: very fast, right, I guess space race wasn't really kicked
Speaker 1: off quite yet. It was the early days were I mean,
Speaker 1: there were there were people thinking about it, but not
Speaker 1: a lot of action had happened in nine yet. But
Speaker 1: this was definitely another another notch in the belt for
Speaker 1: the United States in that Cold War, you know, another
Speaker 1: thing that they could not brag about because they didn't
Speaker 1: want anyone to know that they had them. But uh,
Speaker 1: and and these would end up being tested at a
Speaker 1: facility called Groom Lake, also known as Area fifty one.
Speaker 1: And that's the subject I want to do an episode about.
Speaker 1: But wait, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm looking out the window.
Speaker 1: I'm getting a little sign it's about time to wrap
Speaker 1: up this episode, Lauren. Um, So, I guess, uh, I
Speaker 1: guess uh. Apparently I gotta go and get coffee with
Speaker 1: this person. Okay, So in the meantime, Guys, if you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future topics of tech stuff, I
Speaker 1: highly recommend that you write to us quickly. UH. That
Speaker 1: address is tech stuff at Discovery dot com. You can
Speaker 1: also give us one minute. You can give us a
Speaker 1: message on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumbler. We are tech Stuff
Speaker 1: hs W at all of those and Lauren the very least.
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