0 00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:15,000 YoubetCash.vip Agen Judi Online Aman & Terpercaya 1 00:00:06,571 --> 00:00:08,878 Blitz: When you have a super-secretive base 2 00:00:08,921 --> 00:00:11,315 in the middle of the desert, 3 00:00:11,359 --> 00:00:14,101 there is more than meets the eye. 4 00:00:16,842 --> 00:00:23,632 Jacobsen: These incredibly nerdy engineers are really James Bond. 5 00:00:23,675 --> 00:00:25,503 Petraeus: Skunk Works originally started out 6 00:00:25,547 --> 00:00:30,160 as a highly secret bunch of revolutionary thinkers. 7 00:00:30,204 --> 00:00:32,075 Mullin: Skunk Works was hidden within 8 00:00:32,119 --> 00:00:35,948 the Lockheed California company. 9 00:00:35,992 --> 00:00:39,126 Justice: The Skunk Works created these incredible flying machines 10 00:00:39,169 --> 00:00:42,520 that fundamentally changed history. 11 00:00:42,564 --> 00:00:45,393 Trimble: Area 51 was created for the U-2. 12 00:00:45,436 --> 00:00:47,134 That was the aircraft that discovered 13 00:00:47,177 --> 00:00:49,092 the missile sites on Cuba. 14 00:00:49,136 --> 00:00:52,226 That's when the Cuban Missile Crisis started. 15 00:00:52,269 --> 00:00:55,403 Gilliland Jr.: The Blackbird is probably the most popular airplane. 16 00:00:55,446 --> 00:00:57,883 People like the fastest, the highest, 17 00:00:57,927 --> 00:01:00,886 and it helped end the Cold War. 18 00:01:00,930 --> 00:01:02,671 Law: In the Gulf War, 19 00:01:02,714 --> 00:01:06,631 the Nighthawk changed combat aircraft permanently. 20 00:01:06,675 --> 00:01:08,329 Justice: The Skunk Works created airplanes 21 00:01:08,372 --> 00:01:10,722 that changed world history. 22 00:01:10,766 --> 00:01:13,116 Jacobsen: These guys are really 23 00:01:13,160 --> 00:01:16,815 at the nexus of mystery, intrigue. 24 00:01:18,339 --> 00:01:22,082 Secrets are built in into the American military. 25 00:01:38,446 --> 00:01:42,014 Narrator: For years, I had to live in the shadows. 26 00:01:42,058 --> 00:01:45,931 See, that's what we did back then. 27 00:01:45,975 --> 00:01:50,414 I led a top-secret organization called the Skunk Works. 28 00:01:50,458 --> 00:01:52,155 Funny name, I know. 29 00:01:52,199 --> 00:01:55,071 I'll get to that later. 30 00:01:55,115 --> 00:01:59,380 My men made the airplanes that kept America safe. 31 00:01:59,423 --> 00:02:02,209 I'm Kelly Johnson, and for years, 32 00:02:02,252 --> 00:02:07,779 I was more than happy that very few knew my name. 33 00:02:07,823 --> 00:02:11,348 He's a figure in American military history 34 00:02:11,392 --> 00:02:13,655 that more people should know, but the CIA 35 00:02:13,698 --> 00:02:15,309 and the United States government did not want the public 36 00:02:15,352 --> 00:02:18,225 to know his name. 37 00:02:18,268 --> 00:02:20,618 People weren't supposed to know about Kelly Johnson. 38 00:02:23,926 --> 00:02:25,188 Narrator: As head of Skunk Works, 39 00:02:25,232 --> 00:02:28,017 I wrote near daily in a logbook, 40 00:02:28,060 --> 00:02:31,760 making a record of my thoughts, plans, and ideas. 41 00:02:31,803 --> 00:02:34,110 It was my personal journal, 42 00:02:34,154 --> 00:02:39,159 hidden from the public until now. 43 00:02:39,202 --> 00:02:42,510 Westwick: These mythical logbooks, I've seen pages out of them. 44 00:02:42,553 --> 00:02:45,687 They're kind of the holy grail of aerospace historians 45 00:02:45,730 --> 00:02:48,255 because here is a detailed log of one of the iconic 46 00:02:48,298 --> 00:02:50,300 aircraft designers of the 20th century. 47 00:02:50,344 --> 00:02:52,128 But I've never seen a full round of them 48 00:02:52,172 --> 00:02:55,131 because I think a lot of them are still classified. 49 00:02:55,175 --> 00:02:57,220 Narrator: The Skunk Works is a concentration 50 00:02:57,264 --> 00:03:01,268 of a few good people solving problems far in advance 51 00:03:01,311 --> 00:03:03,792 and at a fraction of the cost of other groups 52 00:03:03,835 --> 00:03:06,621 in the aircraft industry. 53 00:03:06,664 --> 00:03:10,581 Almost all of what we did was classified. 54 00:03:10,625 --> 00:03:14,411 We designed our first spy plane during a very different time 55 00:03:14,455 --> 00:03:19,460 in American history, when America was in the Cold War. 56 00:03:19,503 --> 00:03:22,593 The origins of the Cold War manifested in the late 1940s, 57 00:03:22,637 --> 00:03:24,291 early 1950s. 58 00:03:24,334 --> 00:03:27,990 The first big blowup was in 1949. 59 00:03:28,033 --> 00:03:30,775 The Soviets explode their first atomic bomb. 60 00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:40,394 All of a sudden, America and the Soviets 61 00:03:40,437 --> 00:03:42,483 have this nuclear capability. 62 00:03:42,526 --> 00:03:45,399 This arms race ensues. 63 00:03:45,442 --> 00:03:47,662 They were boasting and bragging 64 00:03:47,705 --> 00:03:51,187 that they had missiles being pumped out like sausages. 65 00:03:51,231 --> 00:03:53,363 They had bombers. 66 00:03:53,407 --> 00:03:55,104 Painter: And everybody is scared that, 67 00:03:55,147 --> 00:03:56,453 "Oh, my God, they've got so many bombers. 68 00:03:56,497 --> 00:03:57,846 They're going to fly over the North Pole, 69 00:03:57,889 --> 00:03:59,151 and they're going to bomb the United States 70 00:03:59,195 --> 00:04:01,632 into, you know, Never Never Land." 71 00:04:01,676 --> 00:04:04,418 Lockheed Jr. And it was simply a fact of life. 72 00:04:04,461 --> 00:04:08,639 There was a possibility that the threats and the desire 73 00:04:08,683 --> 00:04:12,817 expressed for world domination by the Soviet Union 74 00:04:12,861 --> 00:04:15,516 could turn into a nuclear conflict. 75 00:04:15,559 --> 00:04:19,302 It was implicit in all of the air drills 76 00:04:19,346 --> 00:04:21,913 that we did as children in grade school. 77 00:04:25,395 --> 00:04:28,833 The American government was desperate to find out 78 00:04:28,877 --> 00:04:33,621 how strong the Soviets were, and it was very difficult 79 00:04:33,664 --> 00:04:35,840 to get information out of the Soviet Union. 80 00:04:35,884 --> 00:04:39,148 They were a closed society. 81 00:04:39,191 --> 00:04:42,282 The CIA could not get any human spies on the ground 82 00:04:42,325 --> 00:04:43,587 in the Soviet Union. 83 00:04:43,631 --> 00:04:44,849 I mean, it was called the Iron Curtain 84 00:04:44,893 --> 00:04:46,155 for a real reason, you know? 85 00:04:46,198 --> 00:04:47,983 It was impenetrable. 86 00:04:48,026 --> 00:04:51,421 Cappuccio: What Eisenhower was impressed with was data. 87 00:04:51,465 --> 00:04:53,510 "I need to see what they're doing. 88 00:04:53,554 --> 00:04:55,425 I have to see that data. I have to..." 89 00:04:55,469 --> 00:04:57,384 And it has to be of a quality that says, 90 00:04:57,427 --> 00:05:00,212 "That is a tank and not a 2-ton truck. 91 00:05:00,256 --> 00:05:04,652 That is a missile and not a pipe." 92 00:05:04,695 --> 00:05:11,223 And the President authorized these incredibly nerdy engineers 93 00:05:11,267 --> 00:05:16,359 to create this spy plane that can fly high enough 94 00:05:16,403 --> 00:05:23,279 to be out of the line of fire of Soviet surface-to-air missiles. 95 00:05:23,323 --> 00:05:26,326 Narrator: The year was 1955. 96 00:05:26,369 --> 00:05:28,676 Previously, Skunk Works had designed 97 00:05:28,719 --> 00:05:31,766 two successful jet fighters for the government, 98 00:05:31,809 --> 00:05:36,031 the Shooting Star and the Starfighter. 99 00:05:38,686 --> 00:05:41,819 Planes could soar to 50,000 feet. 100 00:05:41,863 --> 00:05:45,475 We needed an airplane that could go 70,000 feet, 101 00:05:45,519 --> 00:05:48,391 out of range of them Russian missiles. 102 00:05:48,435 --> 00:05:51,307 And from that height, we needed to capture images 103 00:05:51,351 --> 00:05:54,179 as tiny as my typewriter. 104 00:05:54,223 --> 00:05:56,573 That was the first reconnaissance aircraft 105 00:05:56,617 --> 00:06:00,969 built from the ground up, capturing secrets in the sky. 106 00:06:01,012 --> 00:06:05,147 We called it the U-2. 107 00:06:05,190 --> 00:06:07,192 Powers Jr. Up until the U-2, 108 00:06:07,236 --> 00:06:08,890 there was no reconnaissance aircraft. 109 00:06:08,933 --> 00:06:11,936 It was a modified bomber with a camera. 110 00:06:11,980 --> 00:06:14,635 The U-2 was the first plane to be specifically designed 111 00:06:14,678 --> 00:06:16,376 to fly over foreign countries 112 00:06:16,419 --> 00:06:18,943 to take pictures to gather intelligence 113 00:06:18,987 --> 00:06:23,383 for review here by the United States. 114 00:06:23,426 --> 00:06:26,211 With the U-2, you wanted high altitude. 115 00:06:26,255 --> 00:06:29,040 That was going to be the way you survived. 116 00:06:29,084 --> 00:06:31,652 Well, if you want high altitude, 117 00:06:31,695 --> 00:06:34,176 then you got to have light weight, 118 00:06:34,219 --> 00:06:36,134 so you do severe things. 119 00:06:36,178 --> 00:06:39,224 Like, on the U-2, you have one main landing gear 120 00:06:39,268 --> 00:06:41,401 in the middle of the fuselage on the bottom. 121 00:06:41,444 --> 00:06:44,839 You don't have two or more landing gears. 122 00:06:44,882 --> 00:06:48,495 Jacobsen: This was a plane that had to be so incredibly light 123 00:06:48,538 --> 00:06:51,628 to get up to 70,000 feet. 124 00:06:51,672 --> 00:06:54,196 I mean, the skin on the aircraft was something like 125 00:06:54,239 --> 00:06:57,373 0.02 inches. 126 00:06:57,417 --> 00:06:59,070 Painter: In the camera system, they actually had 127 00:06:59,114 --> 00:07:02,770 two 9-inch reels of film, and they counter-rotated 128 00:07:02,813 --> 00:07:06,469 so that the weight between the two reels was always the same. 129 00:07:06,513 --> 00:07:08,166 It was that critical on that aircraft 130 00:07:08,210 --> 00:07:11,039 to keep the weight in balance. 131 00:07:11,082 --> 00:07:13,911 Narrator: Everything we did had to be secretive, 132 00:07:13,955 --> 00:07:17,959 even within our own parent company, Lockheed. 133 00:07:18,002 --> 00:07:19,917 During the 1950s, 134 00:07:19,961 --> 00:07:23,486 it was one of the top airplane manufacturers in the world. 135 00:07:23,530 --> 00:07:25,793 Skunk Works was a subdivision, 136 00:07:25,836 --> 00:07:29,579 yet very few within the company knew what we were doing. 137 00:07:32,190 --> 00:07:35,063 Mullin: Skunk Works was physically in Burbank, 138 00:07:35,106 --> 00:07:40,590 and it was hidden within the Lockheed California company. 139 00:07:40,634 --> 00:07:44,333 I had been with Lockheed well over 20 years, 140 00:07:44,376 --> 00:07:49,207 and I knew very little about the Skunk Works. 141 00:07:49,251 --> 00:07:51,732 Justice: The Skunk Works itself was a secret for a long time. 142 00:07:51,775 --> 00:07:54,386 When I hired in, I was not allowed to tell people 143 00:07:54,430 --> 00:07:56,693 I worked for the Skunk Works. 144 00:07:56,737 --> 00:07:59,348 Law: When I first went to Lockheed, I didn't know a thing about it, 145 00:07:59,391 --> 00:08:02,177 and everybody that was there says, 146 00:08:02,220 --> 00:08:04,179 "If you're a good engineer, maybe you'll get to go over 147 00:08:04,222 --> 00:08:06,703 to the Skunk Works some day." 148 00:08:06,747 --> 00:08:09,924 As it turned out, when I did go over to the Skunk Works, 149 00:08:09,967 --> 00:08:14,537 it was a different world. 150 00:08:14,581 --> 00:08:18,280 Number one, you would not talk about your work to anybody, 151 00:08:18,323 --> 00:08:19,847 including your wife. 152 00:08:19,890 --> 00:08:21,892 They could fire you if you told somebody 153 00:08:21,936 --> 00:08:24,068 you worked for the Skunk Works. 154 00:08:24,112 --> 00:08:26,288 Cappuccio: The second thing is, you had to be investigated 155 00:08:26,331 --> 00:08:30,988 to make sure you were an honest, loyal, trustworthy citizen. 156 00:08:31,032 --> 00:08:34,035 The fact that there was an organized approach 157 00:08:34,078 --> 00:08:37,952 by the Soviets to have spies here was a fact of life. 158 00:08:37,995 --> 00:08:40,737 There were, undoubtedly, hostile agents that were trying 159 00:08:40,781 --> 00:08:45,394 to steal the intellectual property, as we would say today, 160 00:08:45,437 --> 00:08:49,093 or understand what it is that was being developed. 161 00:08:49,137 --> 00:08:50,573 Simple things like, 162 00:08:50,617 --> 00:08:52,923 "Watch the guy on the Xerox machine. 163 00:08:52,967 --> 00:08:55,491 Make sure he only replaces the cartridge, 164 00:08:55,535 --> 00:08:58,755 not put a camera in it." 165 00:08:58,799 --> 00:09:01,149 Law: Russians and Chinese had ships out in the water, 166 00:09:01,192 --> 00:09:02,977 and they could tap your phone calls, 167 00:09:03,020 --> 00:09:05,457 and, you know, everything was just getting to the point 168 00:09:05,501 --> 00:09:07,285 where you couldn't trust anybody, 169 00:09:07,329 --> 00:09:11,420 so they started giving lie-detector tests. 170 00:09:11,463 --> 00:09:13,161 "Has anybody contacted you on this? 171 00:09:13,204 --> 00:09:16,033 Has anybody asked you this?" 172 00:09:16,077 --> 00:09:18,819 Another thing everyone was afraid of was a honeypot, 173 00:09:18,862 --> 00:09:23,388 and the honeypot is literally like a female paramour, 174 00:09:23,432 --> 00:09:26,914 a Russian spy who would try to seduce 175 00:09:26,957 --> 00:09:30,613 a male worker at the Skunk Works and try and then, 176 00:09:30,657 --> 00:09:35,270 in pillow talk, get this information from them. 177 00:09:35,313 --> 00:09:39,404 The environment that created the U-2, they wanted to truly 178 00:09:39,448 --> 00:09:40,928 protect the fact that the airplane 179 00:09:40,971 --> 00:09:42,973 was even in development. 180 00:09:43,017 --> 00:09:44,888 Kelly had money delivered to his house, 181 00:09:44,932 --> 00:09:47,325 the payments for the contract. 182 00:09:47,369 --> 00:09:50,633 They set up front companies to buy equipment, 183 00:09:50,677 --> 00:09:52,853 anything they could do to mask the fact 184 00:09:52,896 --> 00:09:55,812 that an airplane was in development. 185 00:09:55,856 --> 00:09:58,902 Narrator: We needed a place to build the U-2, 186 00:09:58,946 --> 00:10:01,644 somewhere completely off the grid, 187 00:10:01,688 --> 00:10:05,387 not the kind of place you could find on a map. 188 00:10:05,430 --> 00:10:08,825 Jacobsen: They have to find a base that is so secret 189 00:10:08,869 --> 00:10:10,958 that no one will know what they're doing, 190 00:10:11,001 --> 00:10:14,831 so Kelly Johnson and the CIA's Richard Bissell 191 00:10:14,875 --> 00:10:18,443 start flying over the American west, 192 00:10:18,487 --> 00:10:20,402 and where do they wind up? 193 00:10:20,445 --> 00:10:24,406 Inside the middle of the Nevada Test Site 194 00:10:24,449 --> 00:10:26,713 where the Atomic Energy Commission 195 00:10:26,756 --> 00:10:31,065 just so happens to be setting off nuclear bombs. 196 00:10:33,067 --> 00:10:35,330 I mean, I'm talking mushroom cloud and all 197 00:10:35,373 --> 00:10:37,941 outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. 198 00:10:37,985 --> 00:10:41,641 It's impossible to imagine now, but this was going on 199 00:10:41,684 --> 00:10:44,948 in the 1950s, and they think to themselves, 200 00:10:44,992 --> 00:10:48,473 "No one is going to follow us here." 201 00:10:48,517 --> 00:10:52,869 So, they partition off a segment of the Nevada Test Site 202 00:10:52,913 --> 00:10:56,786 specifically for this aircraft, 203 00:10:56,830 --> 00:10:58,745 and the reason it's chosen in particular 204 00:10:58,788 --> 00:11:02,139 is because it's an old, dry lake bed, 205 00:11:02,183 --> 00:11:04,620 and it's extraordinarily flat, 206 00:11:04,664 --> 00:11:09,669 and that's what they need for a sort of natural runway. 207 00:11:09,712 --> 00:11:12,367 And it's called Groom Lake, 208 00:11:12,410 --> 00:11:15,675 and now we know Groom Lake to be Area 51. 209 00:11:31,603 --> 00:11:33,867 Petraeus: Well, Area 51, of course, in the 1950s, 210 00:11:33,910 --> 00:11:36,304 this is so isolated. 211 00:11:36,347 --> 00:11:38,132 A lot of activity could be conducted there 212 00:11:38,175 --> 00:11:40,569 without folks seeing it. 213 00:11:40,612 --> 00:11:44,965 Narrator: Base location has been decided as Site II, 214 00:11:45,008 --> 00:11:47,924 for which the government will accept my proposed name 215 00:11:47,968 --> 00:11:51,101 of "Paradise Ranch." 216 00:11:51,145 --> 00:11:52,973 Justice: The Paradise Ranch name was given to it 217 00:11:53,016 --> 00:11:55,976 to try to make it sound better. 218 00:11:56,019 --> 00:12:00,894 There is just nothing there, and in the days of the U-2, 219 00:12:00,937 --> 00:12:03,766 it's a few trailers that are set up, 220 00:12:03,810 --> 00:12:05,855 so you can imagine there wasn't really a lot of 221 00:12:05,899 --> 00:12:07,465 air-conditioning or anything. 222 00:12:07,509 --> 00:12:10,425 This is rough working conditions. 223 00:12:10,468 --> 00:12:13,994 Jacobsen: One of the lead physicists out there told me 224 00:12:14,037 --> 00:12:16,344 one of his most acute memories 225 00:12:16,387 --> 00:12:18,694 was looking across the way and being like, "What is that?" 226 00:12:18,738 --> 00:12:22,959 and realizing that it was a coyote chasing a rabbit, 227 00:12:23,003 --> 00:12:26,354 but they were both walking. 228 00:12:26,397 --> 00:12:28,878 Painter: One of the little not-so-good features was 229 00:12:28,922 --> 00:12:30,619 Yucca Flats was still detonating 230 00:12:30,662 --> 00:12:32,926 nuclear weapons, so every once in a while, 231 00:12:32,969 --> 00:12:34,971 everybody had to get out of town, 232 00:12:35,015 --> 00:12:36,581 and they'd have to wait two or three weeks, 233 00:12:36,625 --> 00:12:38,496 and they'd go back in with the Geiger counters 234 00:12:38,540 --> 00:12:43,110 and make sure it was safe, and they'd go back to work. 235 00:12:44,851 --> 00:12:47,462 Jacobsen: You can imagine how glamorous it must seem, 236 00:12:47,505 --> 00:12:50,247 but if you go back in time to 1955, 237 00:12:50,291 --> 00:12:53,729 the reality of the situation was that it was a bunch 238 00:12:53,773 --> 00:12:59,474 of engineers, test pilots, and CIA officers. 239 00:12:59,517 --> 00:13:04,609 It was an extremely tiny project in terms of need to know. 240 00:13:04,653 --> 00:13:08,700 There was the President, and there was only 200 people 241 00:13:08,744 --> 00:13:12,704 working out at Area 51 to get this U-2 aloft. 242 00:13:12,748 --> 00:13:16,404 And then, back in the old days, we flew up there from Burbank, 243 00:13:16,447 --> 00:13:18,536 and the first time you went up to the test site, 244 00:13:18,580 --> 00:13:20,321 you had to sit in a part of the airplane 245 00:13:20,364 --> 00:13:23,150 with the windows blocked 246 00:13:23,193 --> 00:13:25,456 so that you couldn't see where you were going, 247 00:13:25,500 --> 00:13:28,633 but once you got up there and filled out your paperwork 248 00:13:28,677 --> 00:13:30,418 to get the badge that you had to have 249 00:13:30,461 --> 00:13:32,072 when you were on the site, 250 00:13:32,115 --> 00:13:33,725 then you could sit in any part of the airplane 251 00:13:33,769 --> 00:13:34,988 where there was a window. 252 00:13:35,031 --> 00:13:36,903 It was fun. 253 00:13:36,946 --> 00:13:39,253 I hate to say this, but we got to fly over the craters 254 00:13:39,296 --> 00:13:41,995 that were in the ground up in north of Las Vegas 255 00:13:42,038 --> 00:13:43,779 where they were doing all the atomic tests. 256 00:13:43,823 --> 00:13:45,912 You could see these big cavities and things. 257 00:13:50,438 --> 00:13:53,397 The U-2 was pushing the boundaries 258 00:13:53,441 --> 00:13:56,009 of what we knew how to do, 259 00:13:56,052 --> 00:14:00,404 but this was absolutely critical. 260 00:14:00,448 --> 00:14:01,884 This was at a time where -- 261 00:14:01,928 --> 00:14:03,930 And we knew the Soviets were working 262 00:14:03,973 --> 00:14:05,583 on these nuclear weapons. 263 00:14:05,627 --> 00:14:06,976 There was even reports 264 00:14:07,020 --> 00:14:09,631 that they had a nuclear-powered bomber, 265 00:14:09,674 --> 00:14:12,112 but we didn't have any way to verify. 266 00:14:12,155 --> 00:14:14,201 We didn't have satellites then. 267 00:14:14,244 --> 00:14:15,767 Narrator: We worked night and day 268 00:14:15,811 --> 00:14:18,596 perfecting the U-2 at Area 51. 269 00:14:18,640 --> 00:14:23,471 Sleep -- that was just something we all dreamt about. 270 00:14:23,514 --> 00:14:25,603 Airplane essentially completed. 271 00:14:25,647 --> 00:14:27,779 Terrifically long hours. 272 00:14:27,823 --> 00:14:30,173 Everybody almost dead. 273 00:14:46,711 --> 00:14:50,063 We did everything we could to keep the U-2 top-secret, 274 00:14:50,106 --> 00:14:52,543 but there were times civilians spotted 275 00:14:52,587 --> 00:14:55,198 the plane soaring in the sky. 276 00:14:55,242 --> 00:14:57,592 Luckily, the reports coming in were sightings 277 00:14:57,635 --> 00:15:01,204 of unidentified flying objects. 278 00:15:01,248 --> 00:15:05,426 Man: I'm getting some reports from the tower, radio tower, 279 00:15:05,469 --> 00:15:08,429 and several radar sites about the UFO. 280 00:15:10,779 --> 00:15:15,653 During the testing of the U-2, people saw these "UFOs," 281 00:15:15,697 --> 00:15:19,570 and 50% of all sightings in the '50s and '60s 282 00:15:19,614 --> 00:15:22,008 were because of Skunk Works aircraft. 283 00:15:22,051 --> 00:15:28,971 The CIA had a whole bureau to deal with U-2/UFO sightings 284 00:15:29,015 --> 00:15:33,715 because it was such a common thing to have happen 285 00:15:33,758 --> 00:15:36,413 whereby someone would see something up in the sky 286 00:15:36,457 --> 00:15:38,198 that was completely inexplicable. 287 00:15:38,241 --> 00:15:41,027 I mean, the U-2 -- the wings are so long in it, 288 00:15:41,070 --> 00:15:43,725 it almost looks like a flying cross, 289 00:15:43,768 --> 00:15:46,467 and people just couldn't comprehend 290 00:15:46,510 --> 00:15:48,251 what could fly up that high. 291 00:15:51,385 --> 00:15:54,170 Justice: You know, imagine that you're a commercial airliner pilot 292 00:15:54,214 --> 00:15:57,086 and you're up at about 38,000 or 40,000 feet. 293 00:15:57,130 --> 00:15:58,827 You're pretty high. 294 00:15:58,870 --> 00:16:03,005 You know that military jets go to about 50,000 feet. 295 00:16:03,049 --> 00:16:06,313 And then you see something way above you. 296 00:16:06,356 --> 00:16:09,011 It is way above 50,000 feet. 297 00:16:09,055 --> 00:16:11,883 So now you see this very light-colored thing 298 00:16:11,927 --> 00:16:14,016 at twice your altitude. 299 00:16:14,060 --> 00:16:16,192 What conclusion are you going to draw? 300 00:16:16,236 --> 00:16:18,455 After one year's investigation, 301 00:16:18,499 --> 00:16:22,024 I believe that the flying saucers seen by veteran airline 302 00:16:22,068 --> 00:16:26,898 and Air Force pilots are objects from another planet. 303 00:16:26,942 --> 00:16:29,553 Narrator: At Area 51, we did have creatures 304 00:16:29,597 --> 00:16:34,776 that seemed more than human, but they weren't space men. 305 00:16:34,819 --> 00:16:37,822 They were our test pilots. 306 00:16:37,866 --> 00:16:41,478 These men were a different breed of beings, 307 00:16:41,522 --> 00:16:45,569 and testing our machines was a test of their own mettle. 308 00:16:45,613 --> 00:16:47,919 If you go back and you say, 309 00:16:47,963 --> 00:16:49,486 when these airplanes were designed 310 00:16:49,530 --> 00:16:51,749 and you look at the tool sets to design them, 311 00:16:51,793 --> 00:16:54,578 most of them were done with simple slide rules, 312 00:16:54,622 --> 00:16:57,886 so there was a fair amount of uncertainty. 313 00:16:57,929 --> 00:17:00,410 Justice: And we're talking, you know, the mid-1950s here. 314 00:17:00,454 --> 00:17:04,327 You know, I mean, the technology was still very crude. 315 00:17:04,371 --> 00:17:07,852 Flying at that altitude, you're above most of the atmosphere. 316 00:17:07,896 --> 00:17:10,333 The air is extremely thin, and getting a jet engine 317 00:17:10,377 --> 00:17:12,248 to run up there is very difficult. 318 00:17:12,292 --> 00:17:16,644 Keeping the pilot alive is very difficult. 319 00:17:16,687 --> 00:17:19,560 Trimble: The aircraft is flying at 70,000 feet. 320 00:17:19,603 --> 00:17:23,085 Once you get above 63,000, 64,000 feet, 321 00:17:23,129 --> 00:17:25,957 if your body was exposed to the air pressure 322 00:17:26,001 --> 00:17:27,568 at that altitude, 323 00:17:27,611 --> 00:17:31,267 the blood inside your body would begin to boil. 324 00:17:31,311 --> 00:17:34,096 The human body is not designed to be exposed 325 00:17:34,140 --> 00:17:38,187 to air pressure that low, so you have to wear 326 00:17:38,231 --> 00:17:43,105 a pressurized space suit just to survive. 327 00:17:43,149 --> 00:17:46,021 Jacobsen: It took three flight surgeons to help you 328 00:17:46,065 --> 00:17:50,069 into the suit to make sure there were no rips, 329 00:17:50,112 --> 00:17:51,809 that the zipper went up the right way, 330 00:17:51,853 --> 00:17:53,898 and then you sat and you re-breathed 331 00:17:53,942 --> 00:17:57,293 pure oxygen for two hours. 332 00:17:57,337 --> 00:17:59,730 Man: High flights without free breathing would result 333 00:17:59,774 --> 00:18:02,516 in nitrogen bubbles forming in the blood, 334 00:18:02,559 --> 00:18:05,127 the painful and often fatal bends encountered 335 00:18:05,171 --> 00:18:07,477 by deep-sea divers. 336 00:18:07,521 --> 00:18:10,132 Jacobsen: What these pilots had to go through 337 00:18:10,176 --> 00:18:12,134 before they even got into the plane, 338 00:18:12,178 --> 00:18:13,614 it's just extraordinary to think about. 339 00:18:13,657 --> 00:18:15,311 That's American history. 340 00:18:15,355 --> 00:18:18,967 Petraeus: They're right on the edge of what their 341 00:18:19,010 --> 00:18:20,925 physical capacity is and, of course, 342 00:18:20,969 --> 00:18:23,754 what their aircraft's capacity is. 343 00:18:23,798 --> 00:18:25,321 This is a very rare breed 344 00:18:25,365 --> 00:18:28,542 and a very special group of Americans. 345 00:18:28,585 --> 00:18:30,674 Painter: You're essentially flying in what some pilots 346 00:18:30,718 --> 00:18:32,372 refer to as coffin's corner. 347 00:18:32,415 --> 00:18:34,461 You have about 10 knots of air speed 348 00:18:34,504 --> 00:18:36,985 from stall to going Mach 1, 349 00:18:37,028 --> 00:18:40,249 so at either end, the plane is non-flyable. 350 00:18:40,293 --> 00:18:43,165 Doing a high rate of bank turn at that altitude, 351 00:18:43,209 --> 00:18:46,212 you can't do that, either, because the wingspan is so long. 352 00:18:46,255 --> 00:18:49,563 The inside wing is stalling, and the outside wing is going Mach. 353 00:18:49,606 --> 00:18:51,521 So the pilots who flew these airplanes 354 00:18:51,565 --> 00:18:54,524 had to be extremely gifted pilots. 355 00:18:54,568 --> 00:18:56,352 Powers Jr.: You had to have the aptitude 356 00:18:56,396 --> 00:18:59,703 to fly this type of a mission and to keep quiet about it. 357 00:18:59,747 --> 00:19:03,925 Pilots were breaking the high-altitude record every day, 358 00:19:03,968 --> 00:19:07,537 yet they couldn't tell anybody about it. 359 00:19:07,581 --> 00:19:10,192 Gilliland Jr.: Why does a guy like that get into a plane 360 00:19:10,236 --> 00:19:14,892 that's never been flown before, with the possibility of death? 361 00:19:14,936 --> 00:19:18,157 Not everybody goes to work each day 362 00:19:18,200 --> 00:19:22,944 with a high possibility of being killed at the end of the day. 363 00:19:22,987 --> 00:19:24,380 Morgenfeld: I think most of us aren't 364 00:19:24,424 --> 00:19:26,687 quite that emotional about it. 365 00:19:26,730 --> 00:19:30,560 Crashes can be useful in sort of a perverse way, 366 00:19:30,604 --> 00:19:33,998 in that, "Hey, we just found out something that's wrong." 367 00:19:37,001 --> 00:19:38,873 Oh, boy, there have been so many of the guys 368 00:19:38,916 --> 00:19:41,049 that I know that have died. 369 00:19:41,092 --> 00:19:44,618 Hell, I just can't even... 370 00:19:44,661 --> 00:19:49,884 It's hard to talk about those people that have died. 371 00:19:49,927 --> 00:19:51,799 We did the best we could, and something 372 00:19:51,842 --> 00:19:56,020 that we couldn't possibly take into account happened. 373 00:19:56,064 --> 00:19:58,675 And the reason we concentrate on it so much 374 00:19:58,719 --> 00:20:00,416 is because these people's lives 375 00:20:00,460 --> 00:20:04,072 and their family's lives are on the line in our hands. 376 00:20:05,856 --> 00:20:08,250 Kelly was beyond devastated. 377 00:20:08,294 --> 00:20:10,426 He would cry. 378 00:20:13,473 --> 00:20:15,823 I mean, these guys are your friends. 379 00:20:18,347 --> 00:20:21,045 Narrator: Whenever one of our planes went down, 380 00:20:21,089 --> 00:20:23,918 I'd get a bad stomach ulcer. 381 00:20:25,528 --> 00:20:29,140 If you go into Kelly's logs, you can tell that he took 382 00:20:29,184 --> 00:20:31,317 his responsibility very, very hard. 383 00:20:31,360 --> 00:20:34,276 He suffered from stress. 384 00:20:34,320 --> 00:20:36,800 Just a few months before they delivered the U-2, 385 00:20:36,844 --> 00:20:38,324 he had a complete physical breakdown 386 00:20:38,367 --> 00:20:40,543 that almost killed him. 387 00:20:40,587 --> 00:20:45,635 Narrator: I just want to help the U.S., my people, and others. 388 00:20:45,679 --> 00:20:49,900 The sacrifices of these test pilots can't be in vain. 389 00:20:49,944 --> 00:20:52,729 And they weren't. 390 00:20:52,773 --> 00:20:55,950 Within the first year of operation, it dispelled 391 00:20:55,993 --> 00:20:57,647 the missile gap and the bomber gap. 392 00:20:57,691 --> 00:21:00,346 Because of the U-2 flights and the photographic 393 00:21:00,389 --> 00:21:02,435 reconnaissance imagery they brought home, 394 00:21:02,478 --> 00:21:05,307 America was able to prove and show internally 395 00:21:05,351 --> 00:21:08,005 that the Soviets were boasting about the missiles they had. 396 00:21:08,049 --> 00:21:11,139 They were not as far advanced as we thought they were 397 00:21:11,182 --> 00:21:13,228 or as they were bragging about. 398 00:21:15,491 --> 00:21:18,799 Narrator: We thought the Red's radar couldn't detect us, 399 00:21:18,842 --> 00:21:22,629 but we were wrong. 400 00:21:22,672 --> 00:21:25,327 Justice: The very first overflight of the Soviet Union 401 00:21:25,371 --> 00:21:29,113 was tracked on its full length, and that surprised the CIA 402 00:21:29,157 --> 00:21:31,202 and it surprised the American government. 403 00:21:31,246 --> 00:21:32,943 That was a bad thing. 404 00:21:32,987 --> 00:21:35,206 It meant that the Soviet radars were way better 405 00:21:35,250 --> 00:21:37,339 than we thought they were. 406 00:21:37,383 --> 00:21:40,951 Brown: They could pick the U-2 up, and they couldn't reach it, 407 00:21:40,995 --> 00:21:45,347 and it became obvious almost as soon as the U-2 was designed 408 00:21:45,391 --> 00:21:48,089 that it was going to become obsolete as soon as the Soviets 409 00:21:48,132 --> 00:21:51,614 had adequate surface-to-air weapons. 410 00:21:51,658 --> 00:21:56,663 In 1955, the Soviets only had one type of a missile, SA1, 411 00:21:56,706 --> 00:21:58,447 Surface-to-Air Missile 1. 412 00:21:58,491 --> 00:22:01,276 It could reach an altitude of 60,000 feet, 413 00:22:01,320 --> 00:22:04,105 but U-2s were flying at 70,000 feet, 414 00:22:04,148 --> 00:22:07,413 so for four years, they were out of harm's way. 415 00:22:07,456 --> 00:22:13,462 May 1st of 1960, my father is briefed that, upon this mission, 416 00:22:13,506 --> 00:22:15,943 there are certain targets he should overfly, 417 00:22:15,986 --> 00:22:17,814 that they're trying to get information. 418 00:22:17,858 --> 00:22:20,600 One of the targets, over Sverdlovsk, 419 00:22:20,643 --> 00:22:25,344 was to film an SA2 base, a new, improved missile base 420 00:22:25,387 --> 00:22:27,998 that a previous mission had uncovered. 421 00:22:28,042 --> 00:22:30,740 The goal of this particular flight May 1st 422 00:22:30,784 --> 00:22:35,310 was to find out if the Soviets were getting ready 423 00:22:35,354 --> 00:22:38,618 to put operational the missile base they had discovered. 424 00:22:38,661 --> 00:22:40,707 And my father found out firsthand 425 00:22:40,750 --> 00:22:42,361 that it was operational. 426 00:22:45,233 --> 00:22:47,366 Reporter: A United States Air Force plane shot down 427 00:22:47,409 --> 00:22:49,890 on Russian soil, reportedly an ultra-secret 428 00:22:49,933 --> 00:22:52,675 high-altitude reconnaissance craft. 429 00:22:52,719 --> 00:22:54,938 As the Soviet launches its most belligerent 430 00:22:54,982 --> 00:22:58,507 anti-American propaganda barrage in recent years. 431 00:22:58,551 --> 00:23:02,511 Jacobsen: And it all went back to these engineers, you know, 432 00:23:02,555 --> 00:23:04,905 with the pencils in their pocket. 433 00:23:04,948 --> 00:23:12,129 The Skunk Works are really at the nexus of history. 434 00:23:12,173 --> 00:23:15,959 At issue was nuclear war. 435 00:23:31,627 --> 00:23:35,936 Narrator: We lost airplane flown by Francis G. Powers. 436 00:23:35,979 --> 00:23:38,199 There was an immediate Russian reaction, 437 00:23:38,242 --> 00:23:42,290 and they claimed they shot down the airplane by missile. 438 00:23:42,333 --> 00:23:48,383 The political implications of the flight were extremely major. 439 00:23:48,427 --> 00:23:50,907 Justice: The aftermath of Powers being shot down 440 00:23:50,951 --> 00:23:55,477 was really interesting because he didn't report in 441 00:23:55,521 --> 00:23:58,393 or land when he was supposed to, so now you have 442 00:23:58,437 --> 00:24:00,787 the U.S. decision-makers wondering what happened. 443 00:24:00,830 --> 00:24:03,703 They picked up some of the radio reports 444 00:24:03,746 --> 00:24:05,574 that maybe something had happened to him, 445 00:24:05,618 --> 00:24:07,228 but they didn't have confirmation, 446 00:24:07,271 --> 00:24:10,405 so now you had this silence as each other waited 447 00:24:10,449 --> 00:24:14,496 to see what the other one was going to do. 448 00:24:14,540 --> 00:24:16,498 The Soviets were playing a game. 449 00:24:16,542 --> 00:24:18,805 They were trying to trap the Americans, 450 00:24:18,848 --> 00:24:22,286 so they intentionally released this fake photo 451 00:24:22,330 --> 00:24:25,986 to see what the Americans would do. 452 00:24:26,029 --> 00:24:29,250 This photograph showed a pile of wreckage, plane wreckage, 453 00:24:29,293 --> 00:24:33,559 in a field with kids and farmers around it. 454 00:24:33,602 --> 00:24:36,823 Kelly Johnson takes one look at this photo and says, 455 00:24:36,866 --> 00:24:39,042 "The rivets are not lined up correctly for a U-2," 456 00:24:39,086 --> 00:24:42,219 and that, "The fuel intake and the jet intake isn't correct. 457 00:24:42,263 --> 00:24:44,308 That's not my plane." 458 00:24:44,352 --> 00:24:48,574 Narrator: So I was given the job of insulting them to the point 459 00:24:48,617 --> 00:24:51,490 where they would show us what they had, 460 00:24:51,533 --> 00:24:56,712 because we did not know whether Powers had just defected. 461 00:24:56,756 --> 00:25:00,977 Painter: So, Kelly was brought in and made some public comments 462 00:25:01,021 --> 00:25:03,153 about what was being shown on TV, 463 00:25:03,197 --> 00:25:05,982 saying, "That's no U-2. Soviets are lying." 464 00:25:06,026 --> 00:25:07,897 Powers Jr.: As a result, all of a sudden, 465 00:25:07,941 --> 00:25:09,420 maybe they didn't shoot it down. 466 00:25:09,464 --> 00:25:10,987 Maybe there's no plane wreckage. 467 00:25:11,031 --> 00:25:12,946 Maybe the pilot died. They have no evidence. 468 00:25:12,989 --> 00:25:14,425 Release the cover stories. 469 00:25:14,469 --> 00:25:16,166 Justice: Then the U.S. announced, 470 00:25:16,210 --> 00:25:18,125 "Well, we lost tck of a weather plane. 471 00:25:18,168 --> 00:25:21,998 It may have wandered into Soviet airspace." 472 00:25:22,042 --> 00:25:24,044 And the Soviets go, "Got you." 473 00:25:24,087 --> 00:25:25,654 Powers Jr.: Premier Khrushchev comes up and says, 474 00:25:25,698 --> 00:25:28,048 "Ah, we do have the pilot. Here he is. 475 00:25:28,091 --> 00:25:31,138 Ah, we do have the wreckage. Here it is." 476 00:25:31,181 --> 00:25:34,141 The trial, guy gets stuck in a Russian prison, 477 00:25:34,184 --> 00:25:37,187 sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. 478 00:25:37,231 --> 00:25:39,625 The first three months of his captivity 479 00:25:39,668 --> 00:25:42,715 was solitary confinement. 480 00:25:42,758 --> 00:25:46,849 And then he was interrogated -- bright lights, 481 00:25:46,893 --> 00:25:50,897 long days of questioning, Mutt-and-Jeff type of scenario. 482 00:25:50,940 --> 00:25:52,899 One KGB guy would come in, 483 00:25:52,942 --> 00:25:54,770 rough and gruff, yelling and screaming, 484 00:25:54,814 --> 00:25:57,468 "You tell us everything, or we'll shoot you tomorrow." 485 00:25:57,512 --> 00:25:59,775 The next guy would come in, 486 00:25:59,819 --> 00:26:02,952 "Mr. Powers, you help us, we can help you." 487 00:26:05,389 --> 00:26:07,609 Trying to get information out of him 488 00:26:07,653 --> 00:26:11,787 by any means necessary, short of physical abuse. 489 00:26:11,831 --> 00:26:14,137 He would reveal certain things that he knew 490 00:26:14,181 --> 00:26:15,704 they could find out in the press. 491 00:26:15,748 --> 00:26:18,141 He'd keep other things secret that he knew 492 00:26:18,185 --> 00:26:21,449 that they could have no ways of finding out. 493 00:26:21,492 --> 00:26:23,146 Gilliland Jr.: Francis Gary Powers was held 494 00:26:23,190 --> 00:26:25,366 for quite a while, and then eventually, you know, 495 00:26:25,409 --> 00:26:26,976 there was the story with the "Bridge of Spies," 496 00:26:27,020 --> 00:26:29,500 you know, the movie that was done. 497 00:26:29,544 --> 00:26:31,590 Powers Jr.: February 10, 1962, 498 00:26:31,633 --> 00:26:35,071 you have two spies on each side of this bridge -- 499 00:26:35,115 --> 00:26:40,773 Rudolf Abel on the west side, my father on the east side. 500 00:26:40,816 --> 00:26:42,513 They are positively ID'd. 501 00:26:42,557 --> 00:26:45,952 They walk home to their respective freedoms. 502 00:26:45,995 --> 00:26:48,563 My father returns home to an American public 503 00:26:48,607 --> 00:26:50,826 that doesn't really know what to make of this ordeal. 504 00:26:50,870 --> 00:26:54,221 There have been misinformation and rumors in the papers 505 00:26:54,264 --> 00:26:56,571 that he had defected, that he had landed 506 00:26:56,615 --> 00:26:58,660 the plane intact, that he had spilled his guts 507 00:26:58,704 --> 00:27:00,923 and told the Soviets everything he knew 508 00:27:00,967 --> 00:27:04,057 or that he hadn't followed orders and committed suicide. 509 00:27:08,322 --> 00:27:12,152 Dad is not able to go back into the Air Force at the time. 510 00:27:12,195 --> 00:27:14,154 He's the known spy. 511 00:27:14,197 --> 00:27:18,332 If they employ him, they will be accused of employing spies. 512 00:27:18,375 --> 00:27:21,552 In the meantime, Kelly Johnson offered my dad a job 513 00:27:21,596 --> 00:27:25,861 as a Lockheed test pilot, flying U-2s. 514 00:27:25,905 --> 00:27:27,384 Justice: One of the attributes of Kelly, 515 00:27:27,428 --> 00:27:31,301 while he was a tough guy, he had a soft spot, 516 00:27:31,345 --> 00:27:34,870 and he always wanted to take care of his pilots, 517 00:27:34,914 --> 00:27:38,265 and when Francis Gary Powers came back, 518 00:27:38,308 --> 00:27:40,571 Kelly couldn't stand to see that guy on the street. 519 00:27:40,615 --> 00:27:43,009 This was a national hero, 520 00:27:43,052 --> 00:27:45,446 even though he wasn't being treated like one, 521 00:27:45,489 --> 00:27:48,231 so, yeah, Kelly gave him a job. 522 00:27:48,275 --> 00:27:50,451 Narrator: I felt for Powers. 523 00:27:50,494 --> 00:27:54,455 He and I were both now known to the public. 524 00:27:54,498 --> 00:27:58,677 After the U-2 incident, everything changed. 525 00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:01,505 It was suggested to me by security people 526 00:28:01,549 --> 00:28:04,813 that I not go to work by the same route. 527 00:28:04,857 --> 00:28:07,729 I've been told to avoid certain traffic intersections 528 00:28:07,773 --> 00:28:10,340 and watch out for big trucks. 529 00:28:10,384 --> 00:28:14,736 I slept with an automatic pistol close by. 530 00:28:14,780 --> 00:28:17,260 There were concerns, and the CIA told him 531 00:28:17,304 --> 00:28:20,568 that he needed to take precautions, 532 00:28:20,611 --> 00:28:23,571 because somebody like him was somebody who an adversary 533 00:28:23,614 --> 00:28:26,966 might want to kidnap or do something about to prevent him 534 00:28:27,009 --> 00:28:31,361 from embarrassing them with new technology again. 535 00:28:31,405 --> 00:28:35,496 It does sound paranoid, but it wasn't crazy. 536 00:28:35,539 --> 00:28:38,586 The idea behind it is that they would, like, get them 537 00:28:38,629 --> 00:28:41,720 and torture them and say, "Tell us how you built the U-2," 538 00:28:41,763 --> 00:28:45,375 but that was a very real threat because, as far as we know, 539 00:28:45,419 --> 00:28:47,595 the Soviets never got 540 00:28:47,638 --> 00:28:51,468 a spy plane over the United States. 541 00:28:51,512 --> 00:28:55,777 Narrator: The U-2 is still busy, now over Cuba. 542 00:28:55,821 --> 00:28:58,693 This aircraft took the pictures that were the basis 543 00:28:58,737 --> 00:29:01,130 for our move on Cuba. 544 00:29:01,174 --> 00:29:04,655 The images showed Soviet missiles just 90 miles 545 00:29:04,699 --> 00:29:06,745 from U.S. soil. 546 00:29:06,788 --> 00:29:09,878 That was the aircraft that discovered the missile sites 547 00:29:09,922 --> 00:29:12,489 on Cuba that weren't supposed to be there. 548 00:29:12,533 --> 00:29:14,796 That's when the Cuban Missile Crisis started. 549 00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:18,452 I have directed the continued and increased close surveillance 550 00:29:18,495 --> 00:29:20,584 of Cuba and its military buildup. 551 00:29:23,326 --> 00:29:26,460 Narrator: A U-2 was shot down over Cuba. 552 00:29:26,503 --> 00:29:30,507 They had 11 radar and missile sites turned on against him 553 00:29:30,551 --> 00:29:33,249 and repeated their success with Powers, 554 00:29:33,293 --> 00:29:35,251 except, this time, 555 00:29:35,295 --> 00:29:39,125 Major Rudolf Anderson was killed. 556 00:29:39,168 --> 00:29:42,215 It is apparent that the U-bird has just about 557 00:29:42,258 --> 00:29:47,176 reached the end of its reconnaissance capability. 558 00:29:47,220 --> 00:29:50,397 We knew we needed a new kind of airplane, 559 00:29:50,440 --> 00:29:53,226 one that was near impossible to shoot down, 560 00:29:53,269 --> 00:29:56,925 a plane unlike anything man had ever seen before, 561 00:29:56,969 --> 00:30:01,103 something so fast the human eye could barely see it in the sky. 562 00:30:24,039 --> 00:30:28,217 yearsbefore the U-2 was shot down, 563 00:30:28,261 --> 00:30:31,177 that we ought to be working on something that would go higher, 564 00:30:31,220 --> 00:30:34,093 go faster, go further. 565 00:30:34,136 --> 00:30:37,792 We'd be starting from scratch, just like the Wright brothers. 566 00:30:40,926 --> 00:30:43,232 Powers Jr.: Kelly Johnson and the Skunk Works team realized 567 00:30:43,276 --> 00:30:45,756 they had to develop some type of an airplane 568 00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:48,672 that could fly higher and faster than the U-2 569 00:30:48,716 --> 00:30:51,153 in order to avoid Soviet missiles. 570 00:30:51,197 --> 00:30:53,939 We have to design something better. 571 00:30:53,982 --> 00:30:55,897 Jacobsen: It was impossible to think about, 572 00:30:55,941 --> 00:30:58,900 but Kelly Johnson said, "We did it with the U-2. 573 00:30:58,944 --> 00:31:00,946 We can do it." 574 00:31:00,989 --> 00:31:04,601 Carpenter: We needed an airplane that flies not at 70,000 feet 575 00:31:04,645 --> 00:31:07,604 but at 85,000 feet and above. 576 00:31:07,648 --> 00:31:11,086 Instead of an airplane that flies at 450 miles an hour, 577 00:31:11,130 --> 00:31:14,785 we needed an airplane that flies at 2,100 miles an hour -- 578 00:31:14,829 --> 00:31:17,353 Mach 3-plus. 579 00:31:17,397 --> 00:31:21,836 Mach is a designation for capturing the speed of airplane 580 00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:24,665 relative to the speed of sound. 581 00:31:24,708 --> 00:31:28,582 Mach 1 is the speed of sound. 582 00:31:28,625 --> 00:31:32,325 Mach 3 means that you're covering 1 mile 583 00:31:32,368 --> 00:31:34,066 every second and a half. 584 00:31:39,506 --> 00:31:43,162 Mach 3.2, the airplane goes faster than a .30-06 bullet. 585 00:31:43,205 --> 00:31:45,991 You cannot turn the airplane in the state of Ohio 586 00:31:46,034 --> 00:31:47,731 it goes so fast. 587 00:31:49,777 --> 00:31:52,388 What made it so special and so difficult 588 00:31:52,432 --> 00:31:53,607 was that there were so many things in it 589 00:31:53,650 --> 00:31:55,522 that had never been done before. 590 00:31:55,565 --> 00:31:57,002 You know, for example, that's the first time 591 00:31:57,045 --> 00:32:00,005 we ever built anything large out of titanium. 592 00:32:00,048 --> 00:32:03,095 The decision to use titanium is traceable to 593 00:32:03,138 --> 00:32:05,271 the environment in which it flew. 594 00:32:05,314 --> 00:32:08,665 When you're traveling 2,000 miles per hour, 595 00:32:08,709 --> 00:32:11,451 the friction of the air rubbing over the airplane 596 00:32:11,494 --> 00:32:16,021 heats up the airframe to about 550 degrees Fahrenheit, 597 00:32:16,064 --> 00:32:20,025 which is about as hot as your oven can get at home. 598 00:32:20,068 --> 00:32:22,592 You could almost immediately rule out aluminum, 599 00:32:22,636 --> 00:32:26,945 because aluminum above about 370 degrees loses its strength. 600 00:32:29,860 --> 00:32:33,777 So he was driven to titanium because it's strong as steel 601 00:32:33,821 --> 00:32:36,084 and half the weight of steel, 602 00:32:36,128 --> 00:32:39,870 but we really hadn't used much of titanium. 603 00:32:39,914 --> 00:32:43,962 Narrator: To get the titanium, we went to an unlikely source -- 604 00:32:44,005 --> 00:32:45,876 our enemy. 605 00:32:45,920 --> 00:32:47,487 Carpenter: We don't have a titanium source 606 00:32:47,530 --> 00:32:50,838 in the United States, so the CIA eventually set up 607 00:32:50,881 --> 00:32:53,406 a frontal company in Europe, 608 00:32:53,449 --> 00:32:55,451 and the Russians sold us all the titanium. 609 00:32:55,495 --> 00:32:58,237 They never knew who they sold it to. 610 00:32:58,280 --> 00:33:00,935 So you had the CIA buying the materials 611 00:33:00,979 --> 00:33:02,763 that they needed for this aircraft 612 00:33:02,806 --> 00:33:05,505 so it could fly over the Soviet Union and spy on them. 613 00:33:05,548 --> 00:33:10,336 It was an incredibly ambitious aircraft to design. 614 00:33:10,379 --> 00:33:14,079 The other issue is that jet engines are really, really good, 615 00:33:14,122 --> 00:33:17,125 even up to Mach 2, Mach 2.5, 616 00:33:17,169 --> 00:33:22,826 but once they go beyond that speed, it gets very tricky. 617 00:33:22,870 --> 00:33:25,046 Westwick: For a Mach-3 flight, you have funnel just 618 00:33:25,090 --> 00:33:28,658 an amazing quantity of air through these jet engines. 619 00:33:28,702 --> 00:33:30,225 The quantity of air is like as much water 620 00:33:30,269 --> 00:33:32,010 as flows over Niagara Falls. 621 00:33:32,053 --> 00:33:34,273 That's the volume of air that you're funneling through. 622 00:33:34,316 --> 00:33:37,711 The problem is, when you're funneling that volume of air in, 623 00:33:37,754 --> 00:33:40,192 you get these shock waves in the air that prevent the air 624 00:33:40,235 --> 00:33:41,845 from actually reaching the jet engines, 625 00:33:41,889 --> 00:33:44,239 so the engine stalls, and the airplane crashes. 626 00:33:46,546 --> 00:33:49,070 Narrator: We needed a special engineer to solve 627 00:33:49,114 --> 00:33:52,073 the air-flow problem on our new plane. 628 00:33:52,117 --> 00:33:55,076 His name -- Ben Rich. 629 00:33:55,120 --> 00:33:57,687 Westwick: Ben Rich helped solve that problem 630 00:33:57,731 --> 00:34:00,690 by designing this cone in the middle of the jet engine 631 00:34:00,734 --> 00:34:03,084 that moves in and out depending on how fast you're flying, 632 00:34:03,128 --> 00:34:08,307 and that allows the aircraft to control shock waves, 633 00:34:08,350 --> 00:34:11,310 one of Ben Rich's early signature achievements. 634 00:34:11,353 --> 00:34:14,182 You're not talking about a computer that, you know, 635 00:34:14,226 --> 00:34:16,054 you can just put a couple lines of code in 636 00:34:16,097 --> 00:34:17,794 to operate the intake. 637 00:34:17,838 --> 00:34:20,536 You know, you're talking mechanical hydraulic systems 638 00:34:20,580 --> 00:34:22,495 that was very difficult to operate, 639 00:34:22,538 --> 00:34:25,759 and it was Ben's job to fix it, and he did. 640 00:34:25,802 --> 00:34:27,848 And he solved that problem without computer 641 00:34:27,891 --> 00:34:30,677 and without digital, all analog, which is a -- 642 00:34:30,720 --> 00:34:32,287 And that made him famous. 643 00:34:36,117 --> 00:34:37,727 Gilliland Jr.: I remember walking around, 644 00:34:37,771 --> 00:34:41,383 and I'd see these big 500-gallon drums, 645 00:34:41,427 --> 00:34:44,647 and they'd catch the leaking fuel. 646 00:34:44,691 --> 00:34:46,606 The airplane actually expands mid-flight 647 00:34:46,649 --> 00:34:48,912 because of the heat soak. 648 00:34:48,956 --> 00:34:51,176 They couldn't get a sealant that would really work tight, 649 00:34:51,219 --> 00:34:53,743 so what happens is, the plane leaks on the ground, 650 00:34:53,787 --> 00:34:56,094 a lot of fuel, 651 00:34:56,137 --> 00:34:58,748 but once it gets up to speed at altitude, 652 00:34:58,792 --> 00:35:02,230 the airplane tightens up, and it's tight as a drum. 653 00:35:05,494 --> 00:35:09,150 Middle of July in 1961, 654 00:35:09,194 --> 00:35:12,066 the airplane was being assembled, 655 00:35:12,110 --> 00:35:15,374 and from that time, not a very long period of time from July 656 00:35:15,417 --> 00:35:20,074 to the next February, a whole airplane was built. 657 00:35:20,118 --> 00:35:24,296 Took them on a truck, took them up to the test site. 658 00:35:24,339 --> 00:35:27,995 Narrator: At the time, the Soviets had a new ally, in Cuba. 659 00:35:28,038 --> 00:35:29,779 It seemed at any moment, 660 00:35:29,823 --> 00:35:33,043 we could be on the brink of nuclear war. 661 00:35:33,087 --> 00:35:35,829 We needed to test our new recon plane, 662 00:35:35,872 --> 00:35:37,874 and we went back to the place 663 00:35:37,918 --> 00:35:41,269 where we had our greatest success -- 664 00:35:41,313 --> 00:35:44,446 Area 51. 665 00:35:44,490 --> 00:35:46,666 Painter: Out a Groom Lake, Area 51, 666 00:35:46,709 --> 00:35:49,582 they worked on doing testing, 667 00:35:49,625 --> 00:35:52,976 which essentially turned that from a temporary area 668 00:35:53,020 --> 00:35:54,543 into a permanent facility. 669 00:35:54,587 --> 00:35:55,849 That's when they realized they needed hard, 670 00:35:55,892 --> 00:35:57,503 fast buildings. 671 00:36:19,568 --> 00:36:23,224 Narrator: In testing, while flying Mach 3.2, 672 00:36:23,268 --> 00:36:25,748 we found we could reduce the internal temperature 673 00:36:25,792 --> 00:36:30,623 by painting the plane black, hence the name Blackbird. 674 00:36:34,801 --> 00:36:39,066 There was a great deal of risk involved for everyone. 675 00:36:39,109 --> 00:36:44,289 We had to make sure the pilots didn't cook in the cockpit. 676 00:36:44,332 --> 00:36:47,640 Law: The environment that they were in, 677 00:36:47,683 --> 00:36:50,033 the minimum surface temperature around the cockpit 678 00:36:50,077 --> 00:36:53,820 was 550 degrees, and some parts of the cockpit windshield 679 00:36:53,863 --> 00:36:56,518 were up at 640 degrees Fahrenheit. 680 00:37:00,305 --> 00:37:03,612 Cappuccio: The test pilots knew the risk they were taking 681 00:37:03,656 --> 00:37:05,179 because of the nuances 682 00:37:05,223 --> 00:37:06,963 associated with propulsion ramping. 683 00:37:07,007 --> 00:37:10,619 There was always a 5%, 6% chance you'll get a shock wave 684 00:37:10,663 --> 00:37:13,143 that goes around the entire vehicle. 685 00:37:13,187 --> 00:37:15,058 And we had one, and it snapped the vehicle in hal 686 00:37:15,102 --> 00:37:17,235 It literally broke the vehicle in half. 687 00:37:17,278 --> 00:37:20,934 We lost the pilot. 688 00:37:20,977 --> 00:37:23,110 So Kelly -- he was very nervous in the beginning. 689 00:37:23,153 --> 00:37:24,677 "Did I get the calculations right? 690 00:37:24,720 --> 00:37:28,550 Did I use the right safety factors?" 691 00:37:28,594 --> 00:37:31,945 Petraeus: These are individuals who voluntarily went into 692 00:37:31,988 --> 00:37:34,774 that world understanding the risk, 693 00:37:34,817 --> 00:37:37,342 just constantly pushing the envelope, 694 00:37:37,385 --> 00:37:39,431 knowing the importance of the tasks 695 00:37:39,474 --> 00:37:41,389 in which they were engaged. 696 00:37:45,350 --> 00:37:47,830 The day of the mission, you came in about 2 1/2 hours 697 00:37:47,874 --> 00:37:49,528 before the flight. 698 00:37:49,571 --> 00:37:51,443 You had to have a physical before every flight 699 00:37:51,486 --> 00:37:53,183 that you had to pass. 700 00:37:53,227 --> 00:37:56,622 At that point, they fed you high-protein food 701 00:37:56,665 --> 00:37:59,842 to give you the energy through the flight -- steak and eggs. 702 00:37:59,886 --> 00:38:04,064 About an hour 15 prior, you donned your space suit. 703 00:38:04,107 --> 00:38:06,153 They then took you out to the airplane. 704 00:38:11,593 --> 00:38:14,030 They gave you time to taxi out to the runway. 705 00:38:18,339 --> 00:38:21,516 Your greatest sense of speed is on takeoff. 706 00:38:21,560 --> 00:38:23,257 You release the brakes. 707 00:38:23,301 --> 00:38:25,651 You light those two powerful afterburners. 708 00:38:25,694 --> 00:38:28,915 Within 20 seconds, you're going to go 4,500 feet 709 00:38:28,958 --> 00:38:32,005 and lift off doing 240 miles an hour. 710 00:38:35,487 --> 00:38:38,228 You'll climb through 20,000 feet less than 2 minutes 711 00:38:38,272 --> 00:38:40,318 from the time you release the brakes. 712 00:38:42,885 --> 00:38:46,628 Now, once you got up there, typically around 78,000 feet, 713 00:38:46,672 --> 00:38:49,370 you can see the curvature of the Earth. 714 00:38:49,414 --> 00:38:51,459 The sky above you is absolutely black, 715 00:38:51,503 --> 00:38:55,724 because 97% of the atmosphere is below you. 716 00:38:55,768 --> 00:38:58,553 At night, the sky is absolutely spectacular. 717 00:38:58,597 --> 00:39:01,817 90% of the stars you can see up there we can't see on the earth 718 00:39:01,861 --> 00:39:05,081 because the atmosphere filters them out. 719 00:39:05,125 --> 00:39:06,779 It's very quiet. 720 00:39:06,822 --> 00:39:08,215 You're in an airplane that's traveling 721 00:39:08,258 --> 00:39:09,738 at three times the speed of sound, 722 00:39:09,782 --> 00:39:13,351 so most of the sound is behind you. 723 00:39:13,394 --> 00:39:15,570 You see the Earth from a different perspective. 724 00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:28,366 Those were 11-hour-and-20-minute missions, some of them, 725 00:39:28,409 --> 00:39:31,586 so it's like the long-distance runner. 726 00:39:31,630 --> 00:39:33,588 You're not necessarily sprinting, but you've got to 727 00:39:33,632 --> 00:39:37,418 keep your energy up, so you watched your diet. 728 00:39:37,462 --> 00:39:40,290 I remember once on a mission, the night before, 729 00:39:40,334 --> 00:39:42,771 I'd had a seafood dinner. 730 00:39:42,815 --> 00:39:48,124 And I had an explosive diarrhea attack, 731 00:39:48,168 --> 00:39:51,563 one of those really interesting moments in your life. 732 00:39:51,606 --> 00:39:53,303 We had a discussion, and we kind of said, 733 00:39:53,347 --> 00:39:55,436 "Well, you know, if you don't change a baby's diapers, 734 00:39:55,480 --> 00:39:57,046 what's the worst thing that can happen? 735 00:39:57,090 --> 00:39:58,439 Maybe they'll get a rash." 736 00:39:58,483 --> 00:40:00,223 So I told my back-seater -- I said, 737 00:40:00,267 --> 00:40:01,486 "I think we can press on." 738 00:40:01,529 --> 00:40:03,444 I said, "The last thing I want 739 00:40:03,488 --> 00:40:05,403 is a message sent to the president, 740 00:40:05,446 --> 00:40:09,885 'The pilot pooped in his suit, so they had to return back.'" 741 00:40:09,929 --> 00:40:11,496 I can't remember if I got a rash, 742 00:40:11,539 --> 00:40:14,237 but they had to tear out the liner when we got back, 743 00:40:14,281 --> 00:40:17,763 and I gave our suit-maintenance people a case of beer 744 00:40:17,806 --> 00:40:21,244 for having to reconstitute my suit. 745 00:40:26,249 --> 00:40:29,905 Narrator: The Blackbird made my men go beyond their limits -- 746 00:40:29,949 --> 00:40:31,733 the men who flew 747 00:40:31,777 --> 00:40:37,652 and those who made it possible to fly, our engineers. 748 00:40:37,696 --> 00:40:40,176 To me, some of the most remarkable thing of it 749 00:40:40,220 --> 00:40:43,876 is that it was all done using logarithms 750 00:40:43,919 --> 00:40:48,097 and trig tables and Friden calculators. 751 00:40:48,141 --> 00:40:50,535 Jacobsen: It's just so remarkable to think about. 752 00:40:50,578 --> 00:40:53,320 You know, they were just looking at physics. 753 00:40:53,363 --> 00:40:56,802 They were looking at basic foundations 754 00:40:56,845 --> 00:41:00,588 of how science works. 755 00:41:00,632 --> 00:41:05,854 They simply used their minds, their imaginations, 756 00:41:05,898 --> 00:41:11,077 and their willingness to engineer a system. 757 00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:13,209 They didn't have computers. 758 00:41:13,253 --> 00:41:19,215 How could you possibly come up with such advanced technology? 759 00:41:19,259 --> 00:41:22,480 So a lot of people came to believe that the Skunk Works 760 00:41:22,523 --> 00:41:26,222 were actually reverse-engineering 761 00:41:26,266 --> 00:41:28,660 some kind of alien technology 762 00:41:28,703 --> 00:41:31,314 Kelly Johnson brought to Area 51. 763 00:41:42,543 --> 00:41:46,025 e Air Force 764 00:41:46,068 --> 00:41:48,549 in December of 1953. 765 00:41:48,593 --> 00:41:53,902 He had gone home to his ranch in California, and he looked out 766 00:41:53,946 --> 00:41:58,254 and saw something he couldn't quite understand. 767 00:41:58,298 --> 00:42:00,256 This was something that was moving at a very high rate 768 00:42:00,300 --> 00:42:03,477 of speed away from him, and he drew a little sketch 769 00:42:03,521 --> 00:42:07,307 of what the aircraft looked like. 770 00:42:07,350 --> 00:42:10,223 Narrator: I have definitely believed in the possibility 771 00:42:10,266 --> 00:42:13,487 that flying saucers exist. 772 00:42:13,531 --> 00:42:15,794 This is in spite of a good deal of kidding 773 00:42:15,837 --> 00:42:18,840 from my technical associates. 774 00:42:18,884 --> 00:42:21,843 I am now more firmly convinced than ever. 775 00:42:24,454 --> 00:42:27,545 Jacobsen: Because of this extraordinary circumstance, 776 00:42:27,588 --> 00:42:29,329 whatever it may have been, 777 00:42:29,372 --> 00:42:32,201 a lot of people came to believe that the Skunk Works 778 00:42:32,245 --> 00:42:35,988 were actually reverse-engineering 779 00:42:36,031 --> 00:42:38,120 some kind of alien technology 780 00:42:38,164 --> 00:42:41,036 Kelly Johnson brought to Area 51. 781 00:42:45,475 --> 00:42:47,347 Law: There were some people -- 782 00:42:47,390 --> 00:42:50,089 they had come up with this idea of all these weird things 783 00:42:50,132 --> 00:42:52,613 that had supposedly happened at the test site 784 00:42:52,657 --> 00:42:55,268 to do with the Blackbirds. 785 00:42:55,311 --> 00:42:58,619 Because how could you possibly come up with such 786 00:42:58,663 --> 00:43:00,403 advanced technology? 787 00:43:00,447 --> 00:43:02,405 They didn't have computers. 788 00:43:05,365 --> 00:43:07,062 Cappuccio: What about the conspiracy theories 789 00:43:07,106 --> 00:43:10,457 that the Blackbird was based on alien technology? 790 00:43:10,500 --> 00:43:14,592 They like to believe it because they can't envision 791 00:43:14,635 --> 00:43:17,769 a class of people that can think out of the box. 792 00:43:17,812 --> 00:43:19,988 There was no magic. It didn't come from anything else. 793 00:43:20,032 --> 00:43:22,948 It just came from somebody having a dream. 794 00:43:22,991 --> 00:43:27,779 If you look at Kelly's design book, it's about 20 pages. 795 00:43:27,822 --> 00:43:30,999 I was very, very interested in understanding 796 00:43:31,043 --> 00:43:35,743 how he managed to envision something so unique 797 00:43:35,787 --> 00:43:38,267 from the technology that existed at the time. 798 00:43:38,311 --> 00:43:40,879 I didn't get the magic until there was one chart 799 00:43:40,922 --> 00:43:42,663 that had a propulsion curve in it, 800 00:43:42,707 --> 00:43:46,885 and he said, "You know, I think I can get 20% higher." 801 00:43:46,928 --> 00:43:50,540 And it finally dawned on me -- if you go 20% higher 802 00:43:50,584 --> 00:43:54,066 on every part of the design -- 803 00:43:54,109 --> 00:43:57,025 It's easier to go from 1.5 Mach number, 804 00:43:57,069 --> 00:43:59,985 which we knew how to do, to 3, 805 00:44:00,028 --> 00:44:02,291 and that was how genius works. 806 00:44:07,296 --> 00:44:10,430 Narrator: All it really is, is the application 807 00:44:10,473 --> 00:44:13,999 of common sense to some pretty tough problems. 808 00:44:14,042 --> 00:44:18,699 The mental challenge is entertainment for me. 809 00:44:18,743 --> 00:44:22,572 It's always been, even back to my first day at Lockheed. 810 00:44:24,966 --> 00:44:28,361 He gets the job at Lockheed as a tooling engineer, by the way. 811 00:44:28,404 --> 00:44:30,189 He wasn't hired to be an aerodynamicist. 812 00:44:30,232 --> 00:44:33,671 He was hired to design the tools to build the airplane. 813 00:44:33,714 --> 00:44:35,977 But he goes to the chief engineer, Hall Hibbard, 814 00:44:36,021 --> 00:44:39,154 at the time, his first day on the job and says, 815 00:44:39,198 --> 00:44:41,591 "Your design for the Model 10 Electra," 816 00:44:41,635 --> 00:44:45,595 which was the newest plane that Lockheed is developing, 817 00:44:45,639 --> 00:44:48,250 "is unsafe and unstable, 818 00:44:48,294 --> 00:44:50,731 and you can't build it that way." 819 00:44:50,775 --> 00:44:52,602 This was a passenger aircraft, 820 00:44:52,646 --> 00:44:56,302 and you don't want that kind of airplane to be unsafe. 821 00:44:56,345 --> 00:44:59,392 It was all he could do to keep from firing the kid on the spot. 822 00:44:59,435 --> 00:45:03,352 "Who are you? You know, where'd you come from?" 823 00:45:03,396 --> 00:45:05,354 But they bring Kelly in the next day and says, 824 00:45:05,398 --> 00:45:08,793 "Okay, why is it not going to fly?" 825 00:45:08,836 --> 00:45:11,970 And Kelly is able to answer every one of his questions 826 00:45:12,013 --> 00:45:15,495 to the satisfaction that Hall gives this college graduate 827 00:45:15,538 --> 00:45:18,150 the model for the aircraft and says, "Fix the airplane." 828 00:45:18,193 --> 00:45:19,891 And that's what he did. 829 00:45:19,934 --> 00:45:22,067 Westwick: He said, "I think the way to solve it -- 830 00:45:22,110 --> 00:45:24,373 instead of having one tail, have two." 831 00:45:24,417 --> 00:45:26,636 And they tested it, and, sure enough, 832 00:45:26,680 --> 00:45:29,074 the twin-tail solution solved the problem 833 00:45:29,117 --> 00:45:31,380 and turned out to be a kind of hallmark 834 00:45:31,424 --> 00:45:33,948 of a lot of that generation of planes. 835 00:45:33,992 --> 00:45:37,865 Trimble: You don't see too many split-tail designs until 1933, 836 00:45:37,909 --> 00:45:39,737 and then you see it with the Model 10, 837 00:45:39,780 --> 00:45:42,304 and then, suddenly, everybody has got a split-tail design. 838 00:45:42,348 --> 00:45:45,394 It gets copied by almost everybody, 839 00:45:45,438 --> 00:45:48,354 but, essentially, he saved the company, 840 00:45:48,397 --> 00:45:51,096 you know, with that idea in 1933, 841 00:45:51,139 --> 00:45:52,793 because if they had come out with the airplane 842 00:45:52,837 --> 00:45:54,969 that they had designed originally, 843 00:45:55,013 --> 00:45:56,710 it would have been too unsafe, 844 00:45:56,754 --> 00:46:00,018 and airlines just wouldn't buy it. 845 00:46:00,061 --> 00:46:02,194 Narrator: I quickly got promoted, 846 00:46:02,237 --> 00:46:05,371 eventually becoming chief research engineer. 847 00:46:05,414 --> 00:46:09,549 Over the next decade, I worked with the likes of Howard Hughes 848 00:46:09,592 --> 00:46:11,203 and Amelia Earhart. 849 00:46:14,902 --> 00:46:18,340 It was in 1943 that I set up a secret division 850 00:46:18,384 --> 00:46:20,734 within the Lockheed corporation 851 00:46:20,778 --> 00:46:24,433 to build the P-80 during World War II. 852 00:46:24,477 --> 00:46:28,350 Officially, we were called Advanced Development Research, 853 00:46:28,394 --> 00:46:30,788 but the boys came up with "Skunk Works" 854 00:46:30,831 --> 00:46:34,095 because we were hidden next to a plastics factory, 855 00:46:34,139 --> 00:46:39,057 and the fumes drifting over stunk. 856 00:46:39,100 --> 00:46:42,843 Everyone at Skunk Works understood our mission. 857 00:46:42,887 --> 00:46:46,586 We had our own set of rules, my rules. 858 00:46:48,893 --> 00:46:51,504 If there was a Steve Jobs of the aerospace industry, 859 00:46:51,547 --> 00:46:54,550 it was definitely Kelly Johnson. 860 00:46:54,594 --> 00:46:56,596 And what Kelly did in his approach 861 00:46:56,639 --> 00:46:59,251 was to simplify everything 862 00:46:59,294 --> 00:47:02,167 and, above all, keep the momentum going. 863 00:47:02,210 --> 00:47:03,908 The way he put it was, 864 00:47:03,951 --> 00:47:05,735 "I'd rather make a wrong decision 865 00:47:05,779 --> 00:47:07,737 that keeps things moving forward 866 00:47:07,781 --> 00:47:09,739 than to stop everything for several weeks 867 00:47:09,783 --> 00:47:13,526 to make sure that we're making the right decision." 868 00:47:13,569 --> 00:47:16,355 Narrator: Three times, I was offered company president 869 00:47:16,398 --> 00:47:20,141 at Lockheed and three times declined it. 870 00:47:20,185 --> 00:47:23,710 To me, there was no better job at the corporation 871 00:47:23,753 --> 00:47:27,496 than head of Skunk Works. 872 00:47:27,540 --> 00:47:30,456 We were about getting things done, 873 00:47:30,499 --> 00:47:34,677 but not everyone appreciated our methods. 874 00:47:34,721 --> 00:47:37,942 The Skunk Works did have its enemies. 875 00:47:37,985 --> 00:47:40,858 People didn't like the way the Skunk Works did things, 876 00:47:40,901 --> 00:47:43,338 believed that they cut corners, 877 00:47:43,382 --> 00:47:47,516 that they were not living by all the rules and everything. 878 00:47:47,560 --> 00:47:50,650 You know, it was, like, on the fly, "Go, go, go. 879 00:47:50,693 --> 00:47:52,652 We don't have time for bureaucracy." 880 00:47:52,695 --> 00:47:55,481 And this became a problem later in the '60s, 881 00:47:55,524 --> 00:47:59,615 when that was threatening to the machine 882 00:47:59,659 --> 00:48:02,662 that was the Pentagon, and, surely, someone like 883 00:48:02,705 --> 00:48:05,665 Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, 884 00:48:05,708 --> 00:48:10,800 who loved to control things like the businessman that he was -- 885 00:48:10,844 --> 00:48:14,848 And you could see Robert McNamara making a move 886 00:48:14,892 --> 00:48:18,852 to take out Kelly Johnson and the Skunk Works. 887 00:48:23,988 --> 00:48:26,381 Narrator: The Blackbird was the fastest jet-powered, 888 00:48:26,425 --> 00:48:29,080 manned aircraft ever made, 889 00:48:29,123 --> 00:48:32,910 with speed records that were never broken. 890 00:48:32,953 --> 00:48:36,391 It was also known as the SR-71. 891 00:48:36,435 --> 00:48:41,092 The "SR" stood for strategic reconnaissance. 892 00:48:41,135 --> 00:48:44,530 The SR has an unequaled reputation 893 00:48:44,573 --> 00:48:47,533 for accomplishing what it was set out for. 894 00:48:47,576 --> 00:48:51,276 Carpenter: During the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, 895 00:48:51,319 --> 00:48:55,280 95% of the imagery that our president used 896 00:48:55,323 --> 00:48:59,849 to render decisions came from the SR-71. 897 00:48:59,893 --> 00:49:02,635 And the photography was spectacular. 898 00:49:02,678 --> 00:49:04,985 When you take a normal sheet of paper 899 00:49:05,029 --> 00:49:07,857 and you're holding it out in the parking lot 900 00:49:07,901 --> 00:49:12,514 and I fly over at 85,000 feet, doing 35 miles a minute, 901 00:49:12,558 --> 00:49:15,126 I will take your picture, and I will see you standing 902 00:49:15,169 --> 00:49:17,824 beside your car holding this sheet of paper. 903 00:49:17,867 --> 00:49:20,044 And most of the time, I could tell you 904 00:49:20,087 --> 00:49:22,872 what kind of a car you were driving. 905 00:49:22,916 --> 00:49:26,354 But that's the quality of the imagery we brought back 906 00:49:26,398 --> 00:49:28,878 for the leadership here in this country. 907 00:49:28,922 --> 00:49:31,446 Six presidents used us because they knew 908 00:49:31,490 --> 00:49:34,667 they could send us out, and we'd come back. 909 00:49:34,710 --> 00:49:37,235 Powers Jr.: I've heard stories from pilots 910 00:49:37,278 --> 00:49:39,933 where they'd be flying missions during Vietnam, 911 00:49:39,977 --> 00:49:42,370 and they would see the missiles come up, 912 00:49:42,414 --> 00:49:44,155 and they would see them fall back down, 913 00:49:44,198 --> 00:49:46,244 because the SR was going so fast, 914 00:49:46,287 --> 00:49:47,767 the missiles could not keep up with them. 915 00:49:47,810 --> 00:49:50,161 Gilliland Jr.: There have been over 5,000 916 00:49:50,204 --> 00:49:52,163 surface-to-air missiles that have been fired 917 00:49:52,206 --> 00:49:55,035 at the SR-71 by hostile countries. 918 00:49:55,079 --> 00:49:58,169 Not one of them ever hit an SR-71. 919 00:49:58,212 --> 00:49:59,605 As Dad used to say, 920 00:49:59,648 --> 00:50:01,737 "It helped end the Cold War with Russia, 921 00:50:01,781 --> 00:50:03,609 because they spent, you know, a lot of money 922 00:50:03,652 --> 00:50:05,741 shooting surface-to-air missiles and never getting a hit, 923 00:50:05,785 --> 00:50:09,789 so it helped Russia go bankrupt a little faster." 924 00:50:09,832 --> 00:50:12,487 Narrator: With the success of the SR-71, 925 00:50:12,531 --> 00:50:15,882 I wanted to build a new version of the Blackbird, 926 00:50:15,925 --> 00:50:20,669 more than just a recon plane, something far greater. 927 00:50:23,890 --> 00:50:26,762 Once they finished building the SR-71s, 928 00:50:26,806 --> 00:50:28,764 if you go into Kelly's logs, 929 00:50:28,808 --> 00:50:32,072 you can tell that the one that he wanted to build the most 930 00:50:32,116 --> 00:50:34,727 was a fighter-interceptor version. 931 00:50:34,770 --> 00:50:37,817 Called the YF-12A, and it was a missile shooter. 932 00:50:37,860 --> 00:50:41,690 It was being proposed as an interceptor. 933 00:50:41,734 --> 00:50:44,345 Trimble: There was a lot of fear about what would happen 934 00:50:44,389 --> 00:50:47,131 if the Soviets decided to attack us with bombers 935 00:50:47,174 --> 00:50:48,697 rather than missiles, 936 00:50:48,741 --> 00:50:51,613 so the whole idea of that airplane 937 00:50:51,657 --> 00:50:54,747 was intercepting an incoming Soviet bomber, 938 00:50:54,790 --> 00:50:57,706 and Kelly wanted to sell that to the Air Force, 939 00:50:57,750 --> 00:51:00,579 sell hundreds of them, actually. 940 00:51:00,622 --> 00:51:03,451 And this became a problem later in the '60s, 941 00:51:03,495 --> 00:51:07,151 when, at the Pentagon, now led by Secretary of Defense 942 00:51:07,194 --> 00:51:10,980 Robert McNamara, who loved to control things, 943 00:51:11,024 --> 00:51:13,157 and there's a sense of, "Wait a minute. 944 00:51:13,200 --> 00:51:16,247 That boys club out in California called Skunk Works 945 00:51:16,290 --> 00:51:18,162 has a little too much power." 946 00:51:18,205 --> 00:51:22,731 And you could see him, you know, making a move to take out 947 00:51:22,775 --> 00:51:25,995 Kelly Johnson and the Skunk Works. 948 00:51:26,039 --> 00:51:28,259 And McNamara shut it down, 949 00:51:28,302 --> 00:51:31,436 shut the program down, said it wasn't needed. 950 00:51:31,479 --> 00:51:35,092 Narrator: McNamara's decision is almost unbelievable. 951 00:51:35,135 --> 00:51:36,745 The Air Force has gone with us 952 00:51:36,789 --> 00:51:39,183 all the way supporting the plane, 953 00:51:39,226 --> 00:51:44,013 but McNamara and his band see it differently. 954 00:51:44,057 --> 00:51:47,147 Cappuccio: Now, what happened was -- Kelly was 955 00:51:47,191 --> 00:51:50,324 a very influential player in Washington at the time, 956 00:51:50,368 --> 00:51:54,067 with his contacts in the agency that had used SR-71 957 00:51:54,111 --> 00:51:56,374 and his contacts with the Air Force, right? 958 00:51:56,417 --> 00:51:59,072 Well, the Air Force pilots liked the SR-71, 959 00:51:59,116 --> 00:52:02,597 so he started going around the system. 960 00:52:02,641 --> 00:52:05,209 And McNamara was furious. 961 00:52:06,775 --> 00:52:10,953 And a decree came back, "You will cut up the SR-71 tools, 962 00:52:10,997 --> 00:52:13,652 and you will destroy all the drawings." 963 00:52:13,695 --> 00:52:17,134 And that was an edict. 964 00:52:17,177 --> 00:52:20,267 You know, to kind of get the point across, they told 965 00:52:20,311 --> 00:52:24,184 Lockheed to destroy the tooling, which the U.S. government owned. 966 00:52:24,228 --> 00:52:27,318 And when you do that, you make the cost of 967 00:52:27,361 --> 00:52:30,190 restarting production astronomically higher, 968 00:52:30,234 --> 00:52:34,890 so that was the decision that finally killed the Blackbird. 969 00:52:34,934 --> 00:52:38,720 Narrator: The damage has been done, the tools destroyed. 970 00:52:38,764 --> 00:52:41,114 We were never able to build the version of the Blackbird 971 00:52:41,158 --> 00:52:44,639 our country needed, the YF-12. 972 00:52:44,683 --> 00:52:49,775 To this point, I have laid off 130 people in engineering, 973 00:52:49,818 --> 00:52:52,908 and it's a sad time for me. 974 00:52:52,952 --> 00:52:56,173 This was a really difficult time for the Skunk Works 975 00:52:56,216 --> 00:52:57,565 when it happened. 976 00:52:57,609 --> 00:52:59,611 It needed money. 977 00:52:59,654 --> 00:53:03,876 It had a few thousand employees, and they needed things to do, 978 00:53:03,919 --> 00:53:08,097 and the F-12 was supposed to be that thing. 979 00:53:08,141 --> 00:53:11,318 Narrator: Yesterday, I took my yearly physical. 980 00:53:11,362 --> 00:53:14,495 The doctor says I must have an operation. 981 00:53:14,539 --> 00:53:17,585 My stomach has so many ulcers that the outlet is down 982 00:53:17,629 --> 00:53:19,718 to the size of a pencil. 983 00:53:19,761 --> 00:53:22,590 Constant pain. 984 00:53:22,634 --> 00:53:24,418 Trimble: And, at that point, 985 00:53:24,462 --> 00:53:26,812 Kelly's health was deteriorating to the point 986 00:53:26,855 --> 00:53:30,250 where he had started thinking about whether he should retire. 987 00:53:30,294 --> 00:53:33,210 But he also didn't like the idea of retiring, either. 988 00:53:33,253 --> 00:53:38,432 That wasn't really sort of in his DNA, so he kept going, 989 00:53:38,476 --> 00:53:42,175 but by 1972, 1973, 990 00:53:42,219 --> 00:53:46,135 they decided to pass it on, and Ben Rich was the guy. 991 00:53:48,790 --> 00:53:51,924 Painter: Ben -- he had an extremely hard job, 992 00:53:51,967 --> 00:53:54,056 because Kelly was still a consultant, 993 00:53:54,100 --> 00:53:57,059 so he was still coming to Lockheed. 994 00:53:57,103 --> 00:53:59,497 He still had that strong loyalty bond 995 00:53:59,540 --> 00:54:02,543 with so many of the engineers and people that worked there 996 00:54:02,587 --> 00:54:05,329 that instead of going to Ben for answers, 997 00:54:05,372 --> 00:54:08,506 they would wait for Kelly to come in on his day of work. 998 00:54:08,549 --> 00:54:12,727 So Ben had to overcome all that to establish his leadership, 999 00:54:12,771 --> 00:54:16,165 his fingerprint on the Skunk Works. 1000 00:54:16,209 --> 00:54:19,560 The key job in running the Skunk Works 1001 00:54:19,604 --> 00:54:22,781 is to work on the future. 1002 00:54:22,824 --> 00:54:25,610 Ben understood that, and he worked hard at it, 1003 00:54:25,653 --> 00:54:27,786 and he was very good at it. 1004 00:54:27,829 --> 00:54:31,398 Once he saw stealth, he took hold of it 1005 00:54:31,442 --> 00:54:35,707 and pursued it with a vengeance. 1006 00:54:35,750 --> 00:54:40,189 If I made a plane invisible to radar, would you buy it? 1007 00:54:42,191 --> 00:54:43,845 Kelly was never impressed. 1008 00:54:43,889 --> 00:54:45,934 He thought Ben had the wrong idea, 1009 00:54:45,978 --> 00:54:48,241 that Lockheed was just going to waste money. 1010 00:54:48,285 --> 00:54:49,764 He pretty much put his reputation 1011 00:54:49,808 --> 00:54:51,375 and his whole career on the line 1012 00:54:51,418 --> 00:54:54,247 when he went after that stealth technology. 1013 00:54:59,948 --> 00:55:02,951 Trimble: After Vietnam, our losses toimble: A, 1014 00:55:02,995 --> 00:55:04,997 surface-to-air missiles were pretty bad, 1015 00:55:05,040 --> 00:55:08,130 and it became pretty clear that unless you had some way 1016 00:55:08,174 --> 00:55:12,004 of defeating these ground-based radars that could cue these 1017 00:55:12,047 --> 00:55:14,049 surface-to-air missiles that you were going to lose 1018 00:55:14,093 --> 00:55:17,139 your entire Air Force if you ever got into combat again. 1019 00:55:17,183 --> 00:55:21,187 So they had to come up with a way to make aircraft 1020 00:55:21,230 --> 00:55:23,885 less visible to those radars. 1021 00:55:23,929 --> 00:55:27,802 DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, 1022 00:55:27,846 --> 00:55:30,152 sent out a request 1023 00:55:30,196 --> 00:55:34,461 to the seven most recent fighter-building companies 1024 00:55:34,505 --> 00:55:37,464 for experimental stealth technology, 1025 00:55:37,508 --> 00:55:41,903 and they had a requirement to get the radar cross-section 1026 00:55:41,947 --> 00:55:45,298 down to certain levels. 1027 00:55:45,342 --> 00:55:51,086 Okay. So, think about the radar cross-section on the SR-71, 1028 00:55:51,130 --> 00:55:56,309 that it shows up on enemy radar the size of a man, okay? 1029 00:55:56,353 --> 00:56:00,531 We need an airplane that's going to show up 1030 00:56:00,574 --> 00:56:02,620 the side of a ball bearing. 1031 00:56:02,663 --> 00:56:04,448 That was the new challenge. 1032 00:56:04,491 --> 00:56:08,321 "We're going to make an invisible airplane." 1033 00:56:08,365 --> 00:56:10,454 Cappuccio: How we came across stealth was -- 1034 00:56:10,497 --> 00:56:14,762 the SR-71 and the angles of the tails 1035 00:56:14,806 --> 00:56:16,721 were taking the radar section 1036 00:56:16,764 --> 00:56:19,767 and bouncing the radar beam away. 1037 00:56:19,811 --> 00:56:24,206 So the radar system was not picking up that reflection. 1038 00:56:24,250 --> 00:56:29,342 And Ben said, "If I can make a plane with all flat plates, 1039 00:56:29,386 --> 00:56:31,562 that radar won't pick up the signal." 1040 00:56:31,605 --> 00:56:33,651 Justice: Ben went to the CIA. 1041 00:56:33,694 --> 00:56:36,654 The CIA gave him permission to brief the Air Force 1042 00:56:36,697 --> 00:56:39,874 on the stealth technologies embodied in the Blackbird 1043 00:56:39,918 --> 00:56:42,311 and say, "Hey, we deserve entry into this," and they said, 1044 00:56:42,355 --> 00:56:45,097 "Well, we've already given out all the contracts. 1045 00:56:45,140 --> 00:56:47,491 There's no more money to give out, 1046 00:56:47,534 --> 00:56:49,144 so if you want to participate, 1047 00:56:49,188 --> 00:56:51,059 you've got to kind of do it on your own." 1048 00:56:51,103 --> 00:56:52,974 And so Ben says, "We'll participate. 1049 00:56:53,018 --> 00:56:54,759 Give us a $1 contract, 1050 00:56:54,802 --> 00:56:56,500 which means we have a formal relationship with you, 1051 00:56:56,543 --> 00:56:59,111 but we basically pay our own way." 1052 00:56:59,154 --> 00:57:03,768 Skunk Works is on its knees at this point in 1975. 1053 00:57:03,811 --> 00:57:06,379 It's got to have something new. 1054 00:57:06,423 --> 00:57:08,773 Painter: The company needs to up-front $10 million 1055 00:57:08,816 --> 00:57:11,036 as their share in building a prototype, 1056 00:57:11,079 --> 00:57:13,517 so he has to go to the corporate fathers and say, 1057 00:57:13,560 --> 00:57:15,780 "Give me $10 million, because I got to build 1058 00:57:15,823 --> 00:57:19,087 an airplane for unproven technology." 1059 00:57:19,131 --> 00:57:20,959 He pretty much put his reputation 1060 00:57:21,002 --> 00:57:24,136 and his whole career on the line when he went after that program. 1061 00:57:28,053 --> 00:57:29,707 Carpenter: Kelly was never impressed. 1062 00:57:29,750 --> 00:57:32,449 He thought that Ben had the wrong idea, 1063 00:57:32,492 --> 00:57:34,538 that Lockheed was just going to waste money. 1064 00:57:34,581 --> 00:57:36,627 To describe the radar cross-section, 1065 00:57:36,670 --> 00:57:40,326 Ben would roll marbles across the desk. 1066 00:57:40,369 --> 00:57:43,285 Ben went to Kelly and said, "Look at this. 1067 00:57:43,329 --> 00:57:46,506 What would a Soviet radar see? 1068 00:57:46,550 --> 00:57:49,596 Here's a marble, and based upon that, 1069 00:57:49,640 --> 00:57:52,991 they would not identify that as a significant threat 1070 00:57:53,034 --> 00:57:57,038 but, rather, a radar anomaly." 1071 00:57:57,082 --> 00:57:58,736 Justice: And Kelly just thought, 1072 00:57:58,779 --> 00:58:00,346 "You're not going to be able to make it," 1073 00:58:00,389 --> 00:58:03,001 and, quite honestly, broke one of his own rules. 1074 00:58:03,044 --> 00:58:04,916 Kelly would just assume something could be done, 1075 00:58:04,959 --> 00:58:07,353 and that's what he expected his teams to do, 1076 00:58:07,396 --> 00:58:08,876 but that's where you see Ben 1077 00:58:08,920 --> 00:58:11,444 having that piece of DNA of the Skunk Works. 1078 00:58:11,488 --> 00:58:13,359 You know, let's just assume it can be done. 1079 00:58:13,402 --> 00:58:14,926 Let's make it happen. 1080 00:58:14,969 --> 00:58:18,756 Law: Denys Overholser came up with this idea 1081 00:58:18,799 --> 00:58:21,454 that reflects the beams in all the directions 1082 00:58:21,498 --> 00:58:23,282 to where they don't make a return, 1083 00:58:23,325 --> 00:58:26,111 based on a bunch of Russian calculations. 1084 00:58:31,464 --> 00:58:33,684 Narrator: Just like they once sold us the titanium 1085 00:58:33,727 --> 00:58:37,209 for the Blackbird, the Russians inadvertently 1086 00:58:37,252 --> 00:58:40,081 helped Skunk Works again. 1087 00:58:40,125 --> 00:58:43,824 Trimble: Denys had come across a Soviet mathematics journal. 1088 00:58:43,868 --> 00:58:46,305 The Soviets had no idea that that's what those equations 1089 00:58:46,348 --> 00:58:48,263 could be used for, or they would never 1090 00:58:48,307 --> 00:58:50,831 have allowed it to be published in that kind of a publication. 1091 00:58:50,875 --> 00:58:54,008 But because they did and Denys read it and applied it, 1092 00:58:54,052 --> 00:58:56,881 the Skunk Works suddenly had sort of a secret sauce 1093 00:58:56,924 --> 00:59:00,798 to breaking this problem that had affected aircraft 1094 00:59:00,841 --> 00:59:04,976 in Vietnam and the U-2 itself, which is radar detection. 1095 00:59:05,019 --> 00:59:07,456 So, Alan Brown comes in, 1096 00:59:07,500 --> 00:59:10,503 and he's leading Lockheed's effort under Ben Rich, 1097 00:59:10,547 --> 00:59:12,549 and he doesn't care about the aerodynamics, 1098 00:59:12,592 --> 00:59:14,115 because he's a propulsion guy. 1099 00:59:14,159 --> 00:59:17,771 First of all, we did the calculations. 1100 00:59:17,815 --> 00:59:22,994 We built third-scale models, which we tested on radar ranges. 1101 00:59:23,037 --> 00:59:26,214 It was made up of a whole bunch of flat plates, 1102 00:59:26,258 --> 00:59:28,129 and the reason for that was that 1103 00:59:28,173 --> 00:59:32,046 we did not have the technical capability 1104 00:59:32,090 --> 00:59:34,571 to calculate the radar cross-section 1105 00:59:34,614 --> 00:59:36,964 from curved surfaces at that time. 1106 00:59:37,008 --> 00:59:39,271 Keep in mind this is why Kelly Johnson 1107 00:59:39,314 --> 00:59:44,624 hated this approach that Ben Rich took. 1108 00:59:44,668 --> 00:59:47,192 There aren't any airplanes out there that are made flat, 1109 00:59:47,235 --> 00:59:51,022 because air doesn't like flying over corners, right? 1110 00:59:51,065 --> 00:59:53,285 You want nice, smooth, rounded surfaces, 1111 00:59:53,328 --> 00:59:55,330 and there wasn't a rounded surface 1112 00:59:55,374 --> 00:59:56,680 anywhere on that airplane. 1113 00:59:56,723 --> 00:59:59,291 He called it the Hopeless Diamond, 1114 00:59:59,334 --> 01:00:01,685 and it was a way of sort of ridiculing 1115 01:00:01,728 --> 01:00:06,994 this design that, to an aerodynamicist, is sinful. 1116 01:00:07,038 --> 01:00:08,866 I think some people called it the Hopeless Diamond 1117 01:00:08,909 --> 01:00:10,998 because they thought it was a hopeless effort. 1118 01:00:13,740 --> 01:00:16,656 The shape of it was -- It was actually a geometry 1119 01:00:16,700 --> 01:00:17,701 problem pretty much. 1120 01:00:17,744 --> 01:00:19,354 You wanted a, you know, 1121 01:00:19,398 --> 01:00:21,443 angle of incidence and angle of reflection. 1122 01:00:21,487 --> 01:00:23,663 If a radar hit comes in this way, 1123 01:00:23,707 --> 01:00:25,622 it's going to bounce off, so what you want to do 1124 01:00:25,665 --> 01:00:28,276 is control the way it bounces off 1125 01:00:28,320 --> 01:00:30,583 so that the bounce doesn't go back to the guy 1126 01:00:30,627 --> 01:00:33,978 that shined it on you in the first place. 1127 01:00:34,021 --> 01:00:35,414 When the radar hits it, right, 1128 01:00:35,457 --> 01:00:37,764 instead of bouncing right back to you, 1129 01:00:37,808 --> 01:00:40,767 if I can curve it, I'm bouncing it here. 1130 01:00:40,811 --> 01:00:42,900 That radar don't pick up the signal. 1131 01:00:42,943 --> 01:00:45,424 So it's analogous to playing billiards. 1132 01:00:45,467 --> 01:00:47,644 You hit one cushion, it goes to someplace else. 1133 01:00:50,124 --> 01:00:52,083 Narrator: The first phase of the competition 1134 01:00:52,126 --> 01:00:53,693 was to build a scale model 1135 01:00:53,737 --> 01:00:57,044 to test its invisibility to radar. 1136 01:00:57,088 --> 01:00:59,960 Ours was easily the best. 1137 01:01:00,004 --> 01:01:03,747 But next, we had to build the actual plane. 1138 01:01:03,790 --> 01:01:06,575 Could this Hopeless Diamond really fly? 1139 01:01:08,882 --> 01:01:11,580 To find out, we needed to test it. 1140 01:01:11,624 --> 01:01:14,975 We needed to go back to where we had our greatest success 1141 01:01:15,019 --> 01:01:17,891 and our most guarded secrecy. 1142 01:01:17,935 --> 01:01:22,635 We needed to go back to Area 51. 1143 01:01:33,733 --> 01:01:36,780 Narrator: At Area 51, Ben's Hopeless Diamond 1144 01:01:36,823 --> 01:01:39,434 was going to be tested. 1145 01:01:39,478 --> 01:01:41,393 We were going to find out 1146 01:01:41,436 --> 01:01:45,702 if an airplane could really become invisible on radar, 1147 01:01:45,745 --> 01:01:50,141 if it could be become completely stealth. 1148 01:01:50,184 --> 01:01:52,230 The stakes were high. 1149 01:01:52,273 --> 01:01:54,275 If the airplane showed up on radar, 1150 01:01:54,319 --> 01:01:56,582 the project could be scrapped, 1151 01:01:56,625 --> 01:01:59,846 but Ben and his team believed they could do it. 1152 01:01:59,890 --> 01:02:02,762 I still had my doubts. 1153 01:02:02,806 --> 01:02:06,331 You have to remember that Area 51 has not only 1154 01:02:06,374 --> 01:02:09,116 the most interesting new, top-secret development 1155 01:02:09,160 --> 01:02:12,772 that the Air Forces are coming up with, 1156 01:02:12,816 --> 01:02:17,211 but they also had the top radar people, 1157 01:02:17,255 --> 01:02:19,039 so we were going to fly against 1158 01:02:19,083 --> 01:02:24,523 the very best radar team in the country. 1159 01:02:24,566 --> 01:02:27,265 So we said, "Okay, we'll make it easy for you. 1160 01:02:27,308 --> 01:02:30,137 Tomorrow afternoon, at 3:00, 1161 01:02:30,181 --> 01:02:34,838 we're going to come over that hill at 500 feet altitude. 1162 01:02:34,881 --> 01:02:36,665 You won't even have to look for us. 1163 01:02:36,709 --> 01:02:38,885 You'll be pointing in the right direction 1164 01:02:38,929 --> 01:02:41,714 right at the beginning. Okay?" 1165 01:02:41,758 --> 01:02:43,324 Off we go. 1166 01:02:46,284 --> 01:02:50,201 3:00 comes and goes, and they said, 1167 01:02:50,244 --> 01:02:53,552 "Oh, guess you missed your takeoff time." 1168 01:02:53,595 --> 01:02:56,120 I said, "I don't think so." 1169 01:02:56,163 --> 01:02:58,687 There's a guy looking through a telescope, 1170 01:02:58,731 --> 01:03:02,300 which is run... parallel to the radar. 1171 01:03:02,343 --> 01:03:04,563 Looking through his telescope, he said, 1172 01:03:04,606 --> 01:03:09,437 "I just picked the airplane up. It's just 8 miles out." 1173 01:03:09,481 --> 01:03:11,875 The radar guys immediately kicked their radar, 1174 01:03:11,918 --> 01:03:13,833 assumed it wasn't working properly. 1175 01:03:16,183 --> 01:03:21,841 We flew over the whole situation without being seen at all. 1176 01:03:21,885 --> 01:03:25,323 As soon as that happened, immediately, the Air Force said, 1177 01:03:25,366 --> 01:03:30,067 "Okay, we got to have a military version of this." 1178 01:03:30,110 --> 01:03:32,286 Narrator: The damn thing worked. 1179 01:03:32,330 --> 01:03:34,071 Didn't happen too often, 1180 01:03:34,114 --> 01:03:39,380 but this time, I was wrong, and I told Ben as much. 1181 01:03:39,424 --> 01:03:41,643 Trimble: Kelly was always quite stubborn 1182 01:03:41,687 --> 01:03:44,603 and always quite insistent that he was right, 1183 01:03:44,646 --> 01:03:47,171 and he would do these bets with people. 1184 01:03:47,214 --> 01:03:50,174 He would bet them a quarter, and, you know, 1185 01:03:50,217 --> 01:03:53,481 it was a really big deal if you won a bet against Kelly, 1186 01:03:53,525 --> 01:03:55,048 because he would pay you the quarter. 1187 01:03:55,092 --> 01:03:57,616 You know, he would admit that he was wrong, 1188 01:03:57,659 --> 01:04:00,271 but it would just very rarely ever happen. 1189 01:04:00,314 --> 01:04:03,274 And so he paid Ben Rich a quarter 1190 01:04:03,317 --> 01:04:06,886 and admitted that he was wrong. 1191 01:04:06,930 --> 01:04:11,021 Narrator: Our plane would be called the F-117 Nighthawk. 1192 01:04:11,064 --> 01:04:12,979 The prototype got off the ground, 1193 01:04:13,023 --> 01:04:15,329 but much work still remained. 1194 01:04:15,373 --> 01:04:19,507 This would be the first completely stealth aircraft 1195 01:04:19,551 --> 01:04:21,596 and also be the first jet fighter 1196 01:04:21,640 --> 01:04:25,949 Skunk Works built in over 20 years. 1197 01:04:25,992 --> 01:04:33,565 The 117 has a radar signature less than a BB on a radar. 1198 01:04:33,608 --> 01:04:36,481 So you get anything over a BB, you'll pick it up. 1199 01:04:36,524 --> 01:04:37,874 Let me give you an example. 1200 01:04:44,097 --> 01:04:46,491 If I accthat would bet a nut ipicked up by radar. 1201 01:04:46,534 --> 01:04:47,927 So, you're sitting there saying, 1202 01:04:47,971 --> 01:04:49,668 "Wow. We're making all these airplanes. 1203 01:04:49,711 --> 01:04:52,845 How do I know a manufacturing guy didn't drop a nut?" 1204 01:04:52,889 --> 01:04:56,109 So that's the concern. 1205 01:04:56,153 --> 01:04:58,851 Jacobsen: When the F-117 Nighthawk came along, 1206 01:04:58,895 --> 01:05:00,374 I mean, it was so secret 1207 01:05:00,418 --> 01:05:02,855 and it was so important to keep it secret, 1208 01:05:02,899 --> 01:05:06,815 they gave it its own test-flight facility out in Tonopah, 1209 01:05:06,859 --> 01:05:09,993 which is on the far skirts of the Nevada test site, 1210 01:05:10,036 --> 01:05:14,562 and it became known as Area 52. 1211 01:05:14,606 --> 01:05:18,566 And they built a whole setup specifically for the F-117. 1212 01:05:23,093 --> 01:05:25,617 Feest: I was flying the F-15 at Langley Air Force Base, 1213 01:05:25,660 --> 01:05:27,358 and my squadron commander called me in 1214 01:05:27,401 --> 01:05:30,056 and shut the door and said, "Hey, are you interested 1215 01:05:30,100 --> 01:05:34,321 in going to fly at the 4450th test group?" 1216 01:05:34,365 --> 01:05:35,975 None of us knew what was going on, 1217 01:05:36,019 --> 01:05:37,455 but we knew there was something 1218 01:05:37,498 --> 01:05:40,240 highly classified and different. 1219 01:05:40,284 --> 01:05:43,156 I decided to go. 1220 01:05:43,200 --> 01:05:45,463 After you've checked out, they put you in a room 1221 01:05:45,506 --> 01:05:47,291 and they turn on a projector 1222 01:05:47,334 --> 01:05:51,208 and they show you pictures of the F-117 for the first time. 1223 01:05:51,251 --> 01:05:54,733 And, usually, the first comment is, "That thing flies?" 1224 01:05:54,776 --> 01:05:57,301 Because it doesn't look very aerodynamic. 1225 01:05:59,738 --> 01:06:03,002 Morgenfeld: First test flight was my first flight in the F-117. 1226 01:06:03,046 --> 01:06:06,266 So, what scared me more than anything isn't so much 1227 01:06:06,310 --> 01:06:11,968 that something could happen physically to hurt me. 1228 01:06:12,011 --> 01:06:14,753 It's the fact that we work very hard on airplanes 1229 01:06:14,796 --> 01:06:17,190 to eliminate single-point failures, 1230 01:06:17,234 --> 01:06:19,105 and the airplanes are very redundant. 1231 01:06:19,149 --> 01:06:21,107 And you walk out to the airplane -- 1232 01:06:21,151 --> 01:06:22,804 I am a single-point failure. 1233 01:06:22,848 --> 01:06:25,503 If I goon it, I've ruined it for a lot of people, 1234 01:06:25,546 --> 01:06:28,549 and it's very much a team effort. 1235 01:06:28,593 --> 01:06:31,248 Brown: The idea of a pilot, you know, 1236 01:06:31,291 --> 01:06:36,731 first flying an F-117 was pretty scary to me. 1237 01:06:36,775 --> 01:06:38,951 I mean, at 4:30 in the morning, 1238 01:06:38,995 --> 01:06:41,040 they'd be stuck into the cockpit. 1239 01:06:41,084 --> 01:06:42,911 They open the hangar doors. 1240 01:06:42,955 --> 01:06:47,046 There are no lights anywhere on the airfield. 1241 01:06:47,090 --> 01:06:49,831 And they tell the guy, "Okay, you taxi out there, 1242 01:06:49,875 --> 01:06:53,226 turn right, 1/2 mile, you get to the main runway, 1243 01:06:53,270 --> 01:06:56,229 turn right again, take off." 1244 01:06:56,273 --> 01:06:59,537 So you're taking off on a runway in the dark. 1245 01:06:59,580 --> 01:07:02,540 "Oh, by the way, don't worry about the control system. 1246 01:07:02,583 --> 01:07:05,847 It's completely disconnected from all the controls. 1247 01:07:05,891 --> 01:07:07,632 It just goes to a computer, 1248 01:07:07,675 --> 01:07:10,243 and the computer operates the controls 1249 01:07:10,287 --> 01:07:13,029 because the airplane's basically unstable. 1250 01:07:13,072 --> 01:07:14,900 Good luck. You'll be fine." 1251 01:07:18,208 --> 01:07:21,298 Feest: You get acclimated to totally night-flying. 1252 01:07:21,341 --> 01:07:22,821 We had flight surgeons and doctors 1253 01:07:22,864 --> 01:07:24,388 that monitored what we did 1254 01:07:24,431 --> 01:07:27,434 and decided that we had to do certain things 1255 01:07:27,478 --> 01:07:30,089 to be able to fly at night and sleep during the day. 1256 01:07:30,133 --> 01:07:34,093 So at Tonopah, we had room-darkening shades. 1257 01:07:34,137 --> 01:07:37,401 They Velcroed black across our windows. 1258 01:07:37,444 --> 01:07:38,924 So when we were in there during the day, 1259 01:07:38,967 --> 01:07:41,231 you couldn't tell what time of day it was. 1260 01:07:41,274 --> 01:07:43,755 They also had a rule that, at night, 1261 01:07:43,798 --> 01:07:45,800 after flying, we had to be in our rooms 1262 01:07:45,844 --> 01:07:48,281 before the sun came up, because the doctors said, 1263 01:07:48,325 --> 01:07:50,327 "If the sun came up, your mind would go, 1264 01:07:50,370 --> 01:07:52,111 'Oh, something's wrong here.'" 1265 01:07:52,155 --> 01:07:54,287 All of us are daytime creatures. 1266 01:07:54,331 --> 01:07:57,812 We don't usually live in the black world. 1267 01:07:57,856 --> 01:08:01,120 When you consider that there were something 1268 01:08:01,164 --> 01:08:06,560 like 10,000 people that worked on the F-117 1269 01:08:06,604 --> 01:08:12,218 and they all kept this secret for 21 years, 1270 01:08:12,262 --> 01:08:18,094 that's a remarkable piece of American history. 1271 01:08:18,137 --> 01:08:22,446 On August 6th, in response to the unprovoked Iraqi invasion 1272 01:08:22,489 --> 01:08:24,361 of Kuwait, I ordered the deployment 1273 01:08:24,404 --> 01:08:28,495 of U.S. military forces to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. 1274 01:08:28,539 --> 01:08:31,803 Iraq's brutality, aggression, 1275 01:08:31,846 --> 01:08:34,675 and violations of international law 1276 01:08:34,719 --> 01:08:37,722 cannot be allowed to succeed. 1277 01:08:37,765 --> 01:08:43,162 President Bush made the decision to deploy 42 F-117s 1278 01:08:43,206 --> 01:08:47,775 from Tonopah, Nevada, to Saudi Arabia. 1279 01:08:50,387 --> 01:08:54,086 I'd been briefed on the F-117 for a number of years, 1280 01:08:54,130 --> 01:08:55,305 and when it was deployed, 1281 01:08:55,348 --> 01:08:56,654 you just had this sick feeling 1282 01:08:56,697 --> 01:08:58,177 it was actually going to be used, 1283 01:08:58,221 --> 01:09:01,267 that you're going to go to war. 1284 01:09:01,311 --> 01:09:03,443 Mullins: A good friend of mine, Al Whitley, 1285 01:09:03,487 --> 01:09:06,185 who was full colonel -- 1286 01:09:06,229 --> 01:09:09,188 On the first night of the war, 1287 01:09:09,232 --> 01:09:10,842 Whitley and one of his young pilots 1288 01:09:10,885 --> 01:09:12,539 were walking out to get in their airplanes. 1289 01:09:12,583 --> 01:09:14,759 They were both going to Baghdad. 1290 01:09:14,802 --> 01:09:18,850 The pilot said to Whitley, "I hope this works." 1291 01:09:34,431 --> 01:09:37,695 Narrator: I had been convinced that stealth was the technology 1292 01:09:37,738 --> 01:09:42,221 that will change the character of aerial warfare. 1293 01:09:42,265 --> 01:09:45,529 If the enemy can't see the aircraft with radar, 1294 01:09:45,572 --> 01:09:47,966 he can't hit it. 1295 01:09:48,009 --> 01:09:52,579 The role of the 117 in the Gulf War 1296 01:09:52,623 --> 01:09:56,844 was to wipe out the whole command-and-control system 1297 01:09:56,888 --> 01:10:01,153 of Iraq, flying night missions. 1298 01:10:01,197 --> 01:10:06,071 The design of the F-117 was to be the first ones in. 1299 01:10:08,160 --> 01:10:11,946 We were told what the F-117 radar cross-section was, 1300 01:10:11,990 --> 01:10:14,514 how it would perform, 1301 01:10:14,558 --> 01:10:18,301 so we had to trust the engineers to Skunk Works. 1302 01:10:18,344 --> 01:10:21,826 But I can tell you, flying the first night of Desert Storm, 1303 01:10:21,869 --> 01:10:23,654 we're not sure, as pilots, 1304 01:10:23,697 --> 01:10:28,441 whether or not the stealth technology's going to work. 1305 01:10:28,485 --> 01:10:36,014 On the first night of the war, well, I felt an -- 1306 01:10:36,057 --> 01:10:38,669 Every time I think about this, 1307 01:10:38,712 --> 01:10:42,847 I felt an emotional attachment to these guys. 1308 01:10:42,890 --> 01:10:47,025 This was their first-ever combat mission -- ever. 1309 01:10:51,508 --> 01:10:55,425 I used to go spend nights with them at Tonopah, 1310 01:10:55,468 --> 01:11:01,300 so I knew these people and had become personal friends. 1311 01:11:09,439 --> 01:11:14,095 We promised them a lot, and we'd never proved it. 1312 01:11:14,139 --> 01:11:15,923 It's one thing to test an airplane on a range 1313 01:11:15,967 --> 01:11:17,534 where you measure this stuff. 1314 01:11:17,577 --> 01:11:19,840 It's another thing to go to Baghdad at night. 1315 01:11:24,367 --> 01:11:26,151 Feest: The first night of Desert Storm, 1316 01:11:26,194 --> 01:11:30,068 I was chosen to lead the first attack. 1317 01:11:30,111 --> 01:11:32,505 It was 1,000 miles from our base to Baghdad, 1318 01:11:32,549 --> 01:11:36,204 so these were long missions. 1319 01:11:36,248 --> 01:11:38,685 We took off that night the way we practiced -- 1320 01:11:38,729 --> 01:11:40,774 no lights on the airplanes. 1321 01:11:40,818 --> 01:11:43,168 We found our tankers. 1322 01:11:47,259 --> 01:11:50,741 We would top off with fuel and, at a designated time, 1323 01:11:50,784 --> 01:11:54,484 stealth up our aircraft, bringing in the antennas 1324 01:11:54,527 --> 01:11:58,009 so that you could no longer talk to anybody or hear anybody. 1325 01:11:58,052 --> 01:12:02,274 Once we did that, we're gone. 1326 01:12:02,318 --> 01:12:05,321 I had the first target, so my only goal right now 1327 01:12:05,364 --> 01:12:07,888 was to find that target and hit it at the time 1328 01:12:07,932 --> 01:12:10,326 they wanted me to hit it. 1329 01:12:10,369 --> 01:12:11,979 I found the target. 1330 01:12:14,286 --> 01:12:16,984 The weapons-bay doors automatically open. 1331 01:12:17,028 --> 01:12:20,031 I pickle off the bomb. 1332 01:12:20,074 --> 01:12:22,512 The doors slam shut. 1333 01:12:30,215 --> 01:12:32,217 I looked back over my left shoulder, 1334 01:12:32,260 --> 01:12:34,437 and when I looked back, 1335 01:12:34,480 --> 01:12:38,223 I always described it as looking at a giant fireworks display. 1336 01:12:41,792 --> 01:12:44,098 This was anti-aircraft artillery. 1337 01:12:44,142 --> 01:12:47,363 I noticed it was coming at me, so I thought, 1338 01:12:47,406 --> 01:12:49,365 "I'm getting out of here as fast as I can." 1339 01:12:53,978 --> 01:12:56,197 Man: We have to go to Baghdad. We're going to Bernard Shaw. 1340 01:12:56,241 --> 01:12:58,635 Shaw: Something is happening outside. 1341 01:12:58,678 --> 01:13:01,115 People are shooting towards the sky, 1342 01:13:01,159 --> 01:13:04,989 and they are not aware or cannot see what they're shooting at. 1343 01:13:05,032 --> 01:13:07,731 This is extraordinary. 1344 01:13:07,774 --> 01:13:09,428 We're being told to get off this platform 1345 01:13:09,472 --> 01:13:12,039 and get inside into the air-raid sh-- 1346 01:13:12,083 --> 01:13:15,608 Holliman: We still have seen no signs of any airplanes coming in here. 1347 01:13:15,652 --> 01:13:20,787 All we're seeing is the Iraqi response from the ground. 1348 01:13:20,831 --> 01:13:23,399 I have a statement by the President of the United States. 1349 01:13:23,442 --> 01:13:26,663 The liberation of Kuwait has begun. 1350 01:13:26,706 --> 01:13:31,407 When they broke in and said that the first attacks had happened, 1351 01:13:31,450 --> 01:13:36,542 I knew that the Skunk Works jets were in doing their job. 1352 01:13:36,586 --> 01:13:38,762 Just prayed that everybody made it home safe. 1353 01:13:38,805 --> 01:13:42,287 Five months ago, Saddam Hussein started this cruel war 1354 01:13:42,330 --> 01:13:43,941 against Kuwait. 1355 01:13:43,984 --> 01:13:47,640 Tonight, the battle has been joined. 1356 01:13:47,684 --> 01:13:50,600 The U.S. air strike was almost certainly designed to begin 1357 01:13:50,643 --> 01:13:53,385 with these stealth fighters. 1358 01:13:53,429 --> 01:13:55,474 Feest: The sky over Baghdad was lit up. 1359 01:13:55,518 --> 01:13:57,215 I thought about the guys that were flying with me 1360 01:13:57,258 --> 01:13:58,956 that night and I thought, 1361 01:13:58,999 --> 01:14:02,699 "Those going into Baghdad are going to have it tough." 1362 01:14:02,742 --> 01:14:04,570 Cappucio: The pilots on the 117 were very dicey. 1363 01:14:04,614 --> 01:14:08,008 "Are they shooting at me? We know they're shooting." 1364 01:14:08,052 --> 01:14:12,622 The question gets to be, "Why is the pattern so erratic?" 1365 01:14:12,665 --> 01:14:17,496 Baghdad air defenses could not see that aircraft coming. 1366 01:14:17,540 --> 01:14:19,411 Why? Because it was stealth. 1367 01:14:22,849 --> 01:14:25,722 All hell has broken loose because they are just firing 1368 01:14:25,765 --> 01:14:29,508 stuff up in the air pretty much regardless, 1369 01:14:29,552 --> 01:14:33,643 you know, not knowing where anybody is. 1370 01:14:33,686 --> 01:14:36,689 The only way they knew the 117s were overhead 1371 01:14:36,733 --> 01:14:38,474 was things started blowing up. 1372 01:14:43,391 --> 01:14:46,482 It was a harrowing experience, and I thought it was unique 1373 01:14:46,525 --> 01:14:48,396 that I was able to make it through there. 1374 01:14:48,440 --> 01:14:50,834 And now I snapped the aircraft back 1375 01:14:50,877 --> 01:14:53,532 to head back to Saudi Arabia. 1376 01:14:53,576 --> 01:14:57,057 I had a list of all 12 pilots flying in that first go, 1377 01:14:57,101 --> 01:15:00,147 and I wanted to hear them all check in. 1378 01:15:00,191 --> 01:15:02,541 I checked in my wingman, and he answered. 1379 01:15:02,585 --> 01:15:04,064 And then as we rejoined, 1380 01:15:04,108 --> 01:15:05,979 I heard other pilots checking in, 1381 01:15:06,023 --> 01:15:09,592 and I checked off the names as their call signs were read. 1382 01:15:09,635 --> 01:15:11,594 And right before approaching my tanker, 1383 01:15:11,637 --> 01:15:14,292 I looked down and I had a check mark next to every call sign, 1384 01:15:14,335 --> 01:15:17,121 so I knew everybody was coming home that first night. 1385 01:15:17,164 --> 01:15:19,515 Our 12 aircraft came back. 1386 01:15:19,558 --> 01:15:24,128 There was not one single thing wrong with any of those planes. 1387 01:15:24,171 --> 01:15:27,348 We all realized, "This stealth technology works." 1388 01:15:32,745 --> 01:15:36,575 The F-117 made up approximately 2.5% 1389 01:15:36,619 --> 01:15:39,535 of the total Allied Air Force that was there, 1390 01:15:39,578 --> 01:15:41,537 and they would wind up taking out about 40% 1391 01:15:41,580 --> 01:15:44,801 of the high-value targets. 1392 01:15:44,844 --> 01:15:48,369 Their value can't be overstated. 1393 01:15:48,413 --> 01:15:50,937 Feest: We flew 1,271 sorties in Desert Storm 1394 01:15:50,981 --> 01:15:54,158 and never got touched by anything. 1395 01:15:54,201 --> 01:15:57,727 Statistically, nobody had ever seen anything like this before. 1396 01:15:57,770 --> 01:16:02,601 The F-117 was a really major factor 1397 01:16:02,645 --> 01:16:05,212 in the success in the First Gulf War. 1398 01:16:07,432 --> 01:16:11,828 The accuracy was just unprecedented. 1399 01:16:11,871 --> 01:16:16,484 The airplane did exactly what it was supposed to do. 1400 01:16:16,528 --> 01:16:19,836 Bush: Six weeks since the start of Operation Desert Storm, 1401 01:16:19,879 --> 01:16:22,969 our military objectives are met. 1402 01:16:23,013 --> 01:16:25,232 Kuwait is liberated. 1403 01:16:25,276 --> 01:16:27,147 Iraq's army is defeated. 1404 01:16:30,890 --> 01:16:33,806 Feest: The 117 had proved its worth to the American public, 1405 01:16:33,850 --> 01:16:35,634 and after we got home, 1406 01:16:35,678 --> 01:16:37,114 one of the stories we all would tell 1407 01:16:37,157 --> 01:16:42,162 is how this aircraft saved our lives. 1408 01:16:42,206 --> 01:16:44,861 We all came home because of the engineers. 1409 01:16:44,904 --> 01:16:48,734 The engineers that built this aircraft built it right. 1410 01:16:48,778 --> 01:16:51,345 Brown: With anything that you do like that, 1411 01:16:51,389 --> 01:16:53,521 you always have it at the back of your mind, 1412 01:16:53,565 --> 01:16:55,480 you know, did you think of everything? 1413 01:16:55,523 --> 01:16:58,962 And we were very pleasantly surprised 1414 01:16:59,005 --> 01:17:01,138 that we didn't have a single casualty 1415 01:17:01,181 --> 01:17:04,663 in either of the Gulf Wars. 1416 01:17:04,707 --> 01:17:06,578 You know, you put that much of your heart and soul 1417 01:17:06,622 --> 01:17:09,450 and time away from your family and everything into something, 1418 01:17:09,494 --> 01:17:11,888 it's kind of heartwarming to see it come to fruition 1419 01:17:11,931 --> 01:17:16,675 and that everything you'd done had a good ending to it. 1420 01:17:16,719 --> 01:17:19,591 Mullins: The bottom line is -- it changed the nature 1421 01:17:19,635 --> 01:17:23,943 of military combat aircraft permanently. 1422 01:17:23,987 --> 01:17:27,599 Stealth was the most important technological change 1423 01:17:27,643 --> 01:17:30,297 in military combat aircraft 1424 01:17:30,341 --> 01:17:32,604 since the introduction of the jet engine. 1425 01:17:35,563 --> 01:17:37,827 Jacobsen: Before stealth technology, 1426 01:17:37,870 --> 01:17:40,568 war planners used to think about, 1427 01:17:40,612 --> 01:17:43,746 "How many aircraft do we need 1428 01:17:43,789 --> 01:17:47,575 to take out a certain enemy facility?" 1429 01:17:47,619 --> 01:17:51,971 After stealth, it was, "How many facilities do we want 1430 01:17:52,015 --> 01:17:55,409 to take out with a single aircraft?" 1431 01:17:55,453 --> 01:17:58,804 Narrator: It proved again our axiom. 1432 01:17:58,848 --> 01:18:01,894 If you have a good man and let him go, 1433 01:18:01,938 --> 01:18:05,768 he'll really perform. 1434 01:18:05,811 --> 01:18:09,597 My own life has come full circle, 1435 01:18:09,641 --> 01:18:12,949 but if God should call me tonight, 1436 01:18:12,992 --> 01:18:16,082 I will have had more than my share of it all. 1437 01:18:28,355 --> 01:18:31,576 In the '90s, because of the evident success 1438 01:18:31,619 --> 01:18:33,534 of stealth aircraft in the Gulf War, 1439 01:18:33,578 --> 01:18:36,363 the Skunk Works really became famous in a sense. 1440 01:18:36,407 --> 01:18:37,800 People started asking, you know, 1441 01:18:37,843 --> 01:18:39,323 "Where did these airplanes come from?" 1442 01:18:39,366 --> 01:18:41,978 And then, you know, the Skunk Works was it. 1443 01:18:42,021 --> 01:18:45,459 Then Ben Rich publishes a book about the development of stealth 1444 01:18:45,503 --> 01:18:49,725 and a longer history of the Skunk Works. 1445 01:18:49,768 --> 01:18:53,293 And the book is a real gift to our family, 1446 01:18:53,337 --> 01:18:56,470 because I learned a lot about his career. 1447 01:18:56,514 --> 01:18:58,081 We knew he was an engineer, 1448 01:18:58,124 --> 01:19:00,170 and we knew he worked for Lockheed. 1449 01:19:00,213 --> 01:19:01,606 That was, you know -- 1450 01:19:01,649 --> 01:19:05,262 But details, you know, I did not know. 1451 01:19:05,305 --> 01:19:07,394 And my sister -- I remember her looking at me 1452 01:19:07,438 --> 01:19:09,875 and saying, you know, "Dad worked on that?" 1453 01:19:13,357 --> 01:19:15,359 Westwick: And this book was a best-seller, 1454 01:19:15,402 --> 01:19:17,361 and Skunk Works becomes kind of a buzzword 1455 01:19:17,404 --> 01:19:19,406 in corporate-management circles, 1456 01:19:19,450 --> 01:19:21,626 and every company has to go out and form their own Skunk Works, 1457 01:19:21,669 --> 01:19:23,193 which is where you do these kind of secret, 1458 01:19:23,236 --> 01:19:25,630 you know, cutting-edge projects. 1459 01:19:25,673 --> 01:19:30,461 Other aerospace companies have their equivalent of Skunk Works. 1460 01:19:30,504 --> 01:19:32,376 Westwick: Boeing has its Phantom Works, 1461 01:19:32,419 --> 01:19:35,509 which is basically a Skunk Works knock-off. 1462 01:19:35,553 --> 01:19:41,428 But they don't have 75 years of lessons learned 1463 01:19:41,472 --> 01:19:47,608 and the continuous record of technological breakthroughs. 1464 01:19:47,652 --> 01:19:50,394 A lot of the future technologies 1465 01:19:50,437 --> 01:19:53,527 are being worked on by the Skunk Works right now. 1466 01:19:56,574 --> 01:19:58,619 Crawford: They're constantly working on other things 1467 01:19:58,663 --> 01:20:00,099 that have other missions. 1468 01:20:00,143 --> 01:20:01,448 You just don't know about it. 1469 01:20:01,492 --> 01:20:04,364 You have no need to know. 1470 01:20:04,408 --> 01:20:06,497 Romig: People used to ask me all the time, 1471 01:20:06,540 --> 01:20:08,455 "What's Skunk Works working on?" And I would -- 1472 01:20:08,499 --> 01:20:10,806 I kind of stopped once we got to the F-117, 1473 01:20:10,849 --> 01:20:13,460 and people would say, "What are you doing now? Oh, you're doing nothing." 1474 01:20:13,504 --> 01:20:15,549 And the answer is, "Of course we're doing a lot. 1475 01:20:15,593 --> 01:20:17,769 Ask me in 25 years. I'll tell you what we were doing." 1476 01:20:22,469 --> 01:20:25,342 Jacobsen: What is known to the public about Skunk Works 1477 01:20:25,385 --> 01:20:30,695 is maybe 10% of the actual work 1478 01:20:30,738 --> 01:20:34,133 that Skunk Works has done so far. 1479 01:20:34,177 --> 01:20:36,875 But there's also another thing that I found 1480 01:20:36,919 --> 01:20:41,097 so interesting learning about the Skunk Works. 1481 01:20:41,140 --> 01:20:43,882 The U-2 is still flying today. 1482 01:20:43,926 --> 01:20:47,146 So when you think about that, it's remarkable. 1483 01:20:47,190 --> 01:20:49,888 It's never been retired. 1484 01:20:49,932 --> 01:20:51,847 There's been an effort to develop 1485 01:20:51,890 --> 01:20:54,240 an unmanned aerial vehicle called the Global Hawk 1486 01:20:54,284 --> 01:20:57,113 and others that could actually replace the U-2, 1487 01:20:57,156 --> 01:20:59,942 but each time it's about to be retired 1488 01:20:59,985 --> 01:21:01,552 and finally put to rest, 1489 01:21:01,595 --> 01:21:04,424 if you will, there's a recognition 1490 01:21:04,468 --> 01:21:09,603 that what it provides is still uniquely worth preserving. 1491 01:21:09,647 --> 01:21:13,694 In Iraq and in Afghanistan, there were some specific battles 1492 01:21:13,738 --> 01:21:16,175 in which the U-2 was very, very useful, again, 1493 01:21:16,219 --> 01:21:19,483 because of the precision of its optics 1494 01:21:19,526 --> 01:21:23,966 and the resolution of the cameras. 1495 01:21:24,009 --> 01:21:26,577 It is still very, very useful. 1496 01:21:34,628 --> 01:21:37,893 Justice: For me, it was the place to work because of the legacy 1497 01:21:37,936 --> 01:21:41,592 with these incredible flying machines. 1498 01:21:41,635 --> 01:21:43,507 The Skunk Works created airplanes 1499 01:21:43,550 --> 01:21:47,467 that changed world history. 1500 01:21:47,511 --> 01:21:49,948 What makes the Blackbird special to me is -- 1501 01:21:49,992 --> 01:21:56,433 it is this piece of sculpture that is sinister-looking, 1502 01:21:56,476 --> 01:22:01,307 it is purposeful-looking, and it draws out an emotion. 1503 01:22:01,351 --> 01:22:05,442 For me, it's a blend of excitement and pride 1504 01:22:05,485 --> 01:22:09,098 and awe that such a machine even exists. 1505 01:22:12,057 --> 01:22:13,754 Carpenter: Kelly Johnson -- he always considered 1506 01:22:13,798 --> 01:22:15,626 the SR his greatest achievement 1507 01:22:15,669 --> 01:22:18,107 of all the airplanes that he had developed, 1508 01:22:18,150 --> 01:22:21,458 starting in the '30s until he retired. 1509 01:22:21,501 --> 01:22:24,243 Trimble: The retirement of the SR-71 1510 01:22:24,287 --> 01:22:27,333 took place just a few months before he died. 1511 01:22:27,377 --> 01:22:29,596 The Air Force, to sort of say "thank you" 1512 01:22:29,640 --> 01:22:32,121 to the people of the Skunk Works, 1513 01:22:32,164 --> 01:22:34,427 took one of the remaining aircraft 1514 01:22:34,471 --> 01:22:37,387 and did a flyby over the runway at Burbank. 1515 01:22:39,824 --> 01:22:42,827 Law: And I know that Ben had gone to a hospital to get Kelly, 1516 01:22:42,870 --> 01:22:47,223 and Ben said he really didn't talk very much. 1517 01:22:47,266 --> 01:22:49,616 Trimble: Ben Rich picked up Kelly in a car 1518 01:22:49,660 --> 01:22:55,448 and drove him out to the runway at Burbank to see the SR-71. 1519 01:22:55,492 --> 01:22:57,146 They kept the windows up. 1520 01:22:57,189 --> 01:22:59,017 They didn't let the employees come to see him, 1521 01:22:59,061 --> 01:23:02,847 because they knew he may not even know who they were. 1522 01:23:02,890 --> 01:23:05,415 There was some level of dementia that he lived with 1523 01:23:05,458 --> 01:23:08,940 that got worse and worse and worse. 1524 01:23:08,984 --> 01:23:12,857 But then, when he heard those engines of the SR-71, 1525 01:23:12,900 --> 01:23:14,685 he responded. 1526 01:23:20,865 --> 01:23:22,693 And, all of a sudden, he came alive. 1527 01:23:25,087 --> 01:23:28,177 He knew something special was happening. 1528 01:23:46,282 --> 01:23:48,936 Then it wasn't too long after that he died. 1529 01:23:51,026 --> 01:23:53,941 Beard: Aircraft designer Clarence "Kelly" Johnson died 1530 01:23:53,985 --> 01:23:56,509 today at the age of 80 after a long illness. 1531 01:23:56,553 --> 01:23:59,382 Johnson helped to design more than 40 advanced aircraft 1532 01:23:59,425 --> 01:24:00,905 during his long career at Lockheed. 1533 01:24:00,948 --> 01:24:02,994 He organized Lockheed's Skunk Works unit 1534 01:24:03,038 --> 01:24:05,779 and worked on the SR-71 Blackbird, the U-2, 1535 01:24:05,823 --> 01:24:07,868 and the F-104 Starfighter. 1536 01:24:07,912 --> 01:24:09,348 During his long career in aviation, 1537 01:24:09,392 --> 01:24:11,785 Johnson received three presidential citations, 1538 01:24:11,829 --> 01:24:15,137 including the Medal of Freedom. 1539 01:24:15,180 --> 01:24:18,879 Carpenter: I equated the time I was able to spend with Kelly Johnson 1540 01:24:18,923 --> 01:24:21,882 equivalent to the privilege of being able to fly the airplane 1541 01:24:21,926 --> 01:24:26,409 because he was such a giant in his industry. 1542 01:24:26,452 --> 01:24:29,673 He was the Leonardo da Vinci of aviation. 1543 01:24:29,716 --> 01:24:32,110 His designs -- so unique. 1544 01:24:32,154 --> 01:24:35,331 The guy's a genius. 1545 01:24:35,374 --> 01:24:39,422 He combined really extraordinary technical knowledge 1546 01:24:39,465 --> 01:24:42,860 with equally extraordinary leadership capacity. 1547 01:24:42,903 --> 01:24:44,601 Kelly Johnson never, in a sense, 1548 01:24:44,644 --> 01:24:47,169 got the credit that he was certainly due 1549 01:24:47,212 --> 01:24:50,389 because of the covert nature of what was being done, 1550 01:24:50,433 --> 01:24:53,262 but was not one, I don't think, who cared about that. 1551 01:24:53,305 --> 01:24:56,134 He was devoted to, as we say, 1552 01:24:56,178 --> 01:25:00,138 a mission larger than self that was of enormous importance, 1553 01:25:00,182 --> 01:25:02,706 and he and his team performed near-miracles 1554 01:25:02,749 --> 01:25:04,490 with cutting-edge work. 1555 01:25:06,884 --> 01:25:09,104 Narrator: To do something spectacular 1556 01:25:09,147 --> 01:25:11,367 required unconventional methods. 1557 01:25:13,412 --> 01:25:15,632 It is amazing what can be accomplished 1558 01:25:15,675 --> 01:25:18,113 when no one cares who gets the credit. 1559 01:25:20,376 --> 01:25:24,380 You do what's right by sticking to your convictions, 1560 01:25:24,423 --> 01:25:26,251 and you'll do okay. 1561 01:25:37,480 --> 01:25:40,004 Like a lot of 12-year-old kids in the 1920s, 1562 01:25:40,047 --> 01:25:43,529 Clarence "Kelly" Johnson liked drawing pictures of airplanes. 1563 01:25:43,573 --> 01:25:46,706 Unlike those kids, Kelly Johnson never stopped drawing planes. 1564 01:25:46,750 --> 01:25:48,621 I think it'd be a long, long time 1565 01:25:48,665 --> 01:25:50,188 before we have an airplane 1566 01:25:50,232 --> 01:25:54,714 that has higher performance than the SR-71. 1567 01:25:54,758 --> 01:25:58,196 So we may be seeing, here, the highest-speed military airplane 1568 01:25:58,240 --> 01:26:02,244 that there will be around for a long time. 1569 01:26:02,287 --> 01:26:04,289 This is Dennis Quaid with "An American Portrait."