The Lockheed Skunk Works, led by Kelly Johnson, was responsible for its Advanced Development Projects - everything from the P-80, the first U.S. jet fighter plane, to the U-2 and A-12 spy planes.
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My dad worked as an executive at Lockheed Aircraft and worked on the U-2 and things like that. My mother was a homemaker, and she was vice-president of the Democratic Council of California back in the '50s.
If you go back to the early days of aviation, the guys designing it built it, and then they got in it and flew it. I mean, who does that anymore?
When I was fired from my post as General of the Fighter Arm, I was to give proof that this jet was a superior fighter. And that's when we did it. I think we did it.
Back in the 1950s, there was a top-secret program code-named SUNTAN being conducted at a top-secret facility called Skunk Works. Its objective? To develop a liquid-hydrogen-powered spy plane. Because liquid hydrogen is incredibly volatile, early experiments were conducted inside a bomb shelter with eight-foot-thick walls.
My mom worked for Lockheed Corp. in Burbank as an inspector of airplane parts. To help make ends meet, Dee, a friend of my mom's from Lockheed, moved in. She was a lovely person and helped with our care for many years.
So we knew their intentions were to strike in the United States. We also knew from other sources of dozens of examples of where the notion of using planes as weapons was discussed.
Skunk works were emblematic of corporate structures that focused on execution and devalued innovation.
All military and most commercial aircraft use our designs that process power from jet engines.
Growing up, I was fascinated with Buck Rogers' airplanes. As I began to mature in World War II, it became jets and rocket planes. But it was always in the air.
You can have the best technology, but if you have an inside job of a worker that has access to the plane that's corrupted or bribed or radicalized, they can get a bomb on that aircraft and blow it up.
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