Kelly

M
ANY OF YOU
, exclusive of true aviation buffs, who pick up this book may wonder who is “Kelly” Johnson? Simply to say that he is one of the most honored and highly successful aeronautical engineers, designers, and builders of aircraft of his or any other time is a fact that is only partially documented by some fifty awards and honors appended to this story. Webster defines genius as “extraordinary intellectual power especially as manifested in creative activity.” Though Kelly would deny it, the description fits him to a T.

Aviation, however, is not all or perhaps even the most important element of this story. It is an essential ingredient and backdrop to the unique and insightful story of the man himself that covers a broad spectrum of interest to a wide range of readers. While the story is understated, the reader should be aware of the engineer’s penchant for letting the facts, without emphasis or embellishment, speak for themselves.

I first met Kelly in September of 1945, and later had the distinct pleasure, privilege—and education—of working with him and the “Skunk Works” on an almost daily basis for eleven-plus years from 1955 through 1966. This carried us from almost the inception of the U-2, which incidentally was one of the great bargains the American taxpayer ever realized, to the YF-12, the interceptor that should have been built but wasn’t, and the first four years of the SR-71, the almost unbelievable “Black Bird”—among other projects. It was a unique and productive experience for me and most regrettably one that may never be repeated
for this country. Simply put, Kelly’s real legacy is not nearly so much what he has accomplished, but much more how it was done. That is, generally outside—and in many cases in spite of—the so-called regular “system.”

The U-2 and SR-71 are two examples of Skunk Works programs that came in on schedule and under contract costs. Still, despite disclaimers, the Skunk Works, Kelly’s brainchild—once described by Sen. Sam Nunn as a truly unique national asset and former Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard as a national treasure—to all intents and purposes has ceased to exist. This is an inexcusable and needless loss for the American taxpayer. Thoughtful readers will question the why of this, as well they should.

This and a great deal more is here in the story of an extraordinary man who certainly has had more than his share of it all.

C
LARENCE L. “KELLY” JOHNSON
is the designer of the world’s highest-performance aircraft—the big bold “Blackbirds,” the SR-71 and YF-12—that were flying secretly at three times the speed of sound while other experts still were insisting that it was not feasible; and the graceful, glider-like U-2, which can attain altitudes admitted to be “above 80,000 feet.”

He designed America’s first operational jet fighter, the F-80 Shooting Star. His dramatic twin-boomed P-38 Lightning fighter-interceptor of World War II was the first aircraft to encounter the phenomenon of “compressibility” as the wing’s leading edge built up supersonic air turbulence. He has contributed to the design of more than 40 aircraft, more than half being his original design.

He holds every aircraft design award in the industry, some for the second and third time: the National Medal of Science; the National Security Medal; and the Medal of Freedom, the highest civil honor the President of the United States can bestow.

His “Skunk Works” at Lockheed—more formally, Advanced Development Projects—is recognized worldwide as unique in its record for turning out “breakthrough” designs in minimal time and with maximum security. “Be quick, be quiet, be on time,” are Kelly’s watchwords.

When the Russians in 1960 exhibited to the public in Red Square the wreckage of the aircraft they billed as the U-2 in which they had downed Francis Gary Powers, Kelly’s response
to press query when shown the photo was typically direct and dramatic: “Hell, no,” the aircraft designer barked. “That’s no U-2.”

With wife Nancy Johnson, during 1983’s presentation by President Ronald Reagan of the National Security Medal
.

The Russians had downed the U-2, untouchable for years at its high altitude on reconnaissance flights over Russian territory; but Kelly blew their act. A designer who went into the factory and participated in every phase of design and development as well as production, he recognized immediately that the mangled parts the Russians had displayed were not from any U-2.

Controversy is nothing new to this much honored engineer.

In his first day as a just-graduated engineer on the job that was to last 44 years, he told his employers that the new, all-metal aircraft with which they planned to challenge the air transport field was unstable! While such instability was commonly
accepted in aircraft of the 1930s, the young engineer stubbornly refused to accede to the view of the professors with whom he had performed wind tunnel tests on the model at the University of Michigan. They were willing to accept the imperfections. Kelly was not. He was right, of course. The reworked result was the first in the long line of twin-tailed Lockheed transports that would make the company’s name known around the world in the 1930s and ’40s. This characteristic behavior soon earned him the nickname, “the Old Goat,” among the Lockheed engineering staff.

Kelly always held to his principles.

He advised the U.S. Navy in the early ’50s that a vertically-rising aircraft for which his company had a development contract was unsafe, with the limited engine power then available, and should be abandoned.

He refused to go ahead with a hydrogen-powered aircraft—ahead of its time in the late ’50s—and he turned back a development contract after initial work indicated the plane would be a “wide-bodied dog,” in the words of his successor at ADP.

He returned to the U.S. government approximately $2 million saved on the $20 million U-2 contract, having produced an extra six aircraft for the same money intended to cover 20 aircraft.

“I have known what I wanted to do ever since I was 12,” Johnson says.

Now officially retired, he continues in an advisory capacity at Lockheed, where he maintains an office in the “Skunk Works.” He still works to a busy schedule, though not always now beginning at his once customary 6 a.m., the better to communicate with East Coast military offices operating with a three-hour headstart.

This book is not intended to be a history of aviation nor a documentation of specific aircraft development. It is the personal reflection of one man in his time.

N
ORTHERN MICHIGAN IN MID-WINTER
is harsh, cold country to a young immigrant seeking to carve out a new life. My father didn’t choose it intentionally.

In the year 1882, at age 24, he left the small city of Malmo in his native Sweden for a better life in the United States, leaving behind his intended bride, Christine Anderson. Sweden had universal military service. Peter Johnson was about to be conscripted into the army, and he did not want to carry a gun.

He had saved $600 with which he intended to buy a farm in Nebraska. His future would be in the fertile plains of the Midwest.

He got as far as Chicago before he found that all was not opportunity in the “new world.” There Peter fell in with bad company, some fellows ready to take advantage of an unworldly foreigner literally just off the boat. He paid them his $600, thinking he had bought the farm he wanted in Nebraska. His new friends put him on a train headed, instead, for upper Michigan. He got off at Marquette. It was winter and awfully cold, he thought, for Nebraska.

When the truth became obvious, he was faced with the need to support himself in a strange country. He was a mason by trade, but the only work available there in midwinter was on the railroad, laying ties. That’s what he did for a time until he could make connections with a local construction company and work again as a bricklayer.