Sniffing Out Skunk Works Part One

although it is proprised area. Yeah, so not officially do they use it, but skunk works has come to mean like a a division or a project within a company that is not hampered by bureaucracy, red tape, you know. There, it's people given the freedom to works. Uh yeah, the black ops kind of things that like the X Files

really enjoys talking about. Yeah, so, but it can be anything, right, Like we've got another episode that we just did, the Google Loon, which really that's part of Google X, which in a way is kind of a skunk works for Google. It's top secret, super advanced research. Perhaps less top secret than the stuff that Lockheed skunk Works has been working on, because they tend to be working on contracts for the

US government, yes, and specifically the military exactly. So we're talking about stuff that is at least on some level, meant to protect people rights, meant to protect real human lives, and therefore secrecy is important to maintain that. But before we get into skunk works, we really need to just give a quick overview of Lockheed Martin. Now, Lockheed Martin as an entity is relatively recent the past couple of decades, but both Lockheed and Martin have existed since the beginning

of the century. Yeah, nineteen twelve August sixteen, that's when Glenn L. Martin, who was a pilot and someone who would who built his own planes, had his first flight back in nineteen o nine, But in nineteen twelve that's when he formed the Glenn L. Martin Company in Los

Angeles and he was building planes there. On December nineteenth, nine twelve, two brothers Alan and Malcolm Lockheed, who also were in the process of building their own aircraft, although they wouldn't have their first flight until nine, they founded the Alco Hydro Aeroplane Company, which later they decided to call the Lockheed Aircraft Company UM. And they were really specializing early on in building fast sea planes that established

many speed and distance records for overwater flights. So, uh, these guys all were at the very beginning. Yeah, we're talking like airplanes had barely existed when these companies started making stuff, not fall out of the sky. Yeah right, And uh so it's funny. I like, I was reading up on some of the engineers, and I kept coming across names that I recognized, like Donald Douglas and James McDonald which anyone who's flown a lot starts to recognize

these names because we have aircraft named after them. Um. And both companies were absolutely instrumental in in defining what the early airplane industry was. And also they were really instrumental in helping the US military get its place in an error combat. Right Without Without the engineers who would come out of these companies, I don't think that we would have done as well in um, several of the

wars that we've participated in. Yeah, not to mention just commercial flight, because a lot of the developments that we would have coming to the military flights would end up being used in commercial aspects. Now, when we talk about skunk works, were mostly talking about military because it's really the top secret stuff. Uh. And we'll get more into that. Before we get into get that far, we should talk

about some other early stuff at Lockheed. For example, in nineteen thirty, Lockheed built a prototype two seater pursuit aircraft fighter called the XP nine hundred, and the US military he ended up purchasing the prototype and redesignated it the y P twenty four, and eventually they ordered five why one P twenty four fighters and four why one A nine attack aircraft. Now here's the fun thing about this podcast. Y'all gonna be lettle letters and numbers. It's it's pretty unavoidable.

I I think that probably what's going to happen is Jonathan is going to read those out. I am going to say the nice nickname that someone has come up for these things, and then we will proceed to call it that nickname forever and ever and ever. Right, and I don't have a nickname for these, so I'm just

calling him Bob. Bob was never actually built. Because here's the thing that so the U. S Military had ordered aircraft from Lockheed, but there was something else that happened right around nineteen thirty, little thing called the Great Depression, which, by the way, guys, wasn't so great. Pretty pretty crappy. Now it's a pretty crappy depression. It was huge F minus would not would not buy from again. No, no, yes, I do not recommend um. Yeah. So great Depression obviously

was a devastating economic, uh global economic disaster. Yeah. And Lockheed itself would go into bankruptcy in nineteen thirty two. They go into bankruptcy. They were only bankrupt for five whole days. After that, a group of investors kind of swooped in and safed them, didn't it. Yep, yep. They

poured enough money to keep the company going. But those five days, I mean the fact that Lockeed had been struggling so for so long and then had finally gone into bankruptcy, had had done a lot of damage, and so that that plan to build those early aircraft with the military fell through. So that would not be the first aircraft order that Lockheed would really fulfill for the military. But it wasn't too much longer after that that they

would manage to do it. Seven. Uh. There was an important team led by how Hibberd and assisted by someone who will become incredibly important in this podcast one, Clarence Kelly Johnson. Yeah, and they were designing a new type of fighter using twin engines called the XP thirty eight, which eventually would be called the P thirty eight Lightning,

and it is awesome. It's been called the most maneuverable and furthermore, the most beautiful plane in the Allied Forces and in what would become the Allied Forces in World War Two. It was if you've never seen a picture of this, you need to look for the the P thirty eight Lightning. Uh. It is is a particularly striking design. It's it's these kind of jets for kids who are my age. I'm gonna show my age here in second, the kids my age who grew up in the realm

of G. I. Joe. And that was a big cartoon on television. If you look at the law of the vehicle designs from G. I. Joe you can see a lot of it has has drawn inspiration from these early aircraft, these very classic things, right. Um. Furthermore, it was an impressive feed for the time, capable of speeds of four miles per hour, which is about six per hour. Yeah, that's pretty fast for the for it's time. Obviously, aircraft

today leave that in the dust. But right well, we're still talking about engines that use moving parts and not turbines. We're talking for pellers. Yeah, yeah, this this is before the jet era. So ninety eight, Lockheed had the Model fourteen Super Electra, which was a plane that ended up breaking the speed record for circling the globe. It only took three days, nineteen hours and fourteen minutes to get

all the way around the Earth. And uh yeah, and of course it was piloted by a famous crazy guy, right, Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes. It's got to be difficult piloting and electra when you've got boxes on your hands and feet the whole time, and you know, especially if you don't want to upset the jars of urine that you have in the back. Howard Hughes was crazy, y'all. I imagine he did not bring I actually think this was

I don't imagine that that was actually the same. I'm pretty sure that by nine he wasn't quite uh showing the the real symptoms of his later kind of disturbing behavior. You know, he became a hermit, a recluse, But that was later on. I think he was still you know, he pretty much had it together that point. At any rate. In um, that's that's when we're going to really get

started on these big military contracts. Right. Yeah, that's when the US Army Air Corps, which was the predecessor for the United States Air Force UH decided to ask for a new jet fighter and they kind of put out

the world a jet fighter period. I mean, okay, that the things is that previously the Army had kind of rejected development of these propellerless jet engines in the thirties because they didn't think it could be done until the Germans went and did it, right, and then they said, well, you know what, I guess we need some of let's

do some of those things. So they kind of put out the request for proposal asking various companies to put forth their their proposed solution to this, and Lockeed wanted to throw its hat in the ring, and they decided that the best way to to innovate quickly would be to create a special division within Lockheed that was not going to have to answer to the corporate level at the same kind of bureau addic process that everyone else had to write, and that would wind up being the

basis of the skunk Works ideology for forever until now. Right. So, originally it was called, you know, the official official name is the Lockheed Advanced Development Projects and then later it was renamed officially to Advanced Development Programs a d P. But it's official nickname, which, like we said, it's it's trademarked. It's got a logo is of course, skunk Works. And the logo, by the way, is a skunk. It's it's

the cutest little skunk that has ever adorned machines. War It's just about almost as cute as flower from Bambi, but not quite but close. And so you might wonder, why the heck would they be called skunk Works? Where's that name come from? Okay, So the story goes that when when this division was first started up, they you know, it was wartime. Lockheed did not have any room on

their main floors for this new division. So they started up, uh Mr Clarence Kelly Johnson UM bought a circus tent and set it up somewhere like I imagine, in a parking lot on the property of this facility and UM and it happened to be next to a plastics manufacturing plant which was really quite stinky yep. And so that stinky odor ended up completely saturating that circus tent, making it a very smelly place. And you know, but but

but it was all very secretive. You know, all the projects that they were working on are really the one project, this jet engine project that they were working on. It couldn't be talked about. And so they were told when they answered phones to to not say what they were doing or give any kind of indication. And supposedly when one engineer answered a phone, he he made this joke.

And and this joke is a little bit out of my reach personally, having never read the comic strip Little Abner, Um this, this is one of those newspaper comics from the time. Um. But apparently in in this comic strip there was something called the Skunk Works. Yes s k O n K. It was a kind of a play full misspelling of skunk because it's it was a couple of country bumpkins who ran this um this this uh still well it's not even a still really, because it

wasn't moonshine they were making. They were making Kickapoo juice, and Kickapoo juice was made out of pretty much anything they could get their hands on, and it was supposed to be up to including skunks moose. The moose were very popular because they would say lacks body, so they would go knock a body unconscious to throw it into the mix. And uh yeah, kickapoo juice was supposed to be the most powerful alcohol. And dog Patch. Dog Patch,

by the way, is the location where Little Abner takes place. Okay, all right, but but so so this engineer answered the phone like like, hello, this is Skunk Works because it was stuck and and it's stuck and and eventually, um, I believe after the Little Abner lawyers gave them a call, they changed it officially to Skunk Works. Yeah, so that would happen later. That would happened later. They so they started trying to develop a jet plane based around a

jet engine that had was not developed at Lockheed. In fact, it was it was developed by the British is called the Goblin. And before they really got down to designing this, Kelly came out. Kelly Johnson came out and kind of laid down the law. He sort of came up with a philosophy. He was thirty three years old at the time, which is just incredible to me. Yeah, it's a young man who comes up with fourteen guiding principles, rules and

practices or what they're called. And we're not gonna read out all fourteen, but I've got six of them I would like to. Yeah. Yeah, So they're this pretty much is just kind of the overview of how skunk Works business gets done in order for them to do it expediently at the quality they wanted. So number one was the skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control

of his program in all aspects. He should report to a division president or higher, meaning that Kelly wanted to make sure that he had the authority to make the decisions he needed to make in order to deliver upon the these incredibly lucrative contracts and uh. And he felt that if he had to dance around all these corporate levels, that would slow things down and they would lose. So

he said, we can't have that. So that's rule number one. Uh, we'll skip over a couple of Rule number three is the number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people ten to twenty compared to the so called normal systems. So these are really small, nimble teams, and that was important for multiple reasons. One again, he wanted to be able to move quickly, and the more voices you have than you know you might have,

and it just slows everything down. And also because these projects were top secret, it's a lot easier to keep a secret if you keep the number of people who know it to a small minimum. Yeah, I tell you, you tell like twenty five people a secret, that secret is gonna get out eventually. But if you tell two thousand, five hundred people that secret, that secret, you might as well not even make the secret in the first place. That's why I don't tell anyone my secrets, especially podcast

as you can't trust us. Yeah, I'll tell you guys a secret. Number five is there must be a minimum number of reports required, but important work must be recorded thoroughly. Again, this was to cut down the bureaucratic approach that didn't have to keep on making reports over and over, taking time away from actually doing the work. But he did say that it's important that we record what we do because accountability still has to be maintained. You can't just

have no accountability whatsoever. That would be a disaster. As well. Number twelve, there must be mutual trust between the military project organization and the contractor, the very close cooperation in liaison on a day to day basis that this cuts down misunderstanding and correspondence to an absolute minimum, again cutting out all that interference. Number thirteen. Access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled by

appropriate security measures. This would actually come into a really important story later on in skunk Works where people who genuinely wanted to help we're not allowed on the premises and it ended up destroying a project in the process. Number fourteen is because only a few people will be used in engineering and most other areas, ways must be provided to reward good performances by pay, not based on

the number of personnel supervised. I think this was Kelly's way of saying, I wants to get my money, y'all Shakespeare to get paid, yeah, Because you know, this is essentially saying I might have these really small teams that I've asked for, but don't base my pay on how many people I oversee. Based my pay on the results that we get, which which we mostly include. Because we were a little bit entertained by by all of these

like really imported. I mean, these these kind of business structures have been used throughout corporate America and the world exactly since the inception of skunk Works, but tacked onto the end like get dudes paycheck, yes, which you know, t again makes sense because it's not just it's not just Kelly here, we're poking fun at Kelly, but honestly referred to anyone who was a project leader, right because again and if your project is incredibly important but it

has fewer people on it then say a typical project in the main branch of Lockheed, you don't want that to count against you. So that was he was really looking out for his people. So even though we're making light of it, he was. He was actually he was being very thoughtful exactly. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I mean, practicality was overall the thing of this that the mantra of the entire operation is is quick, quiet, and quality. Yep,

he wants all three of those things. It has to be secret, it has to be done on schedule, and it has to be uh, you know, has to meet the qualifications that the military laid out. In fact, that was another one of his rules was that let's be really clear about what the expectations are, so that we can meet them and not waste time on things that are not important to whatever the expectations are. So yeah,

top secret operation. In fact, employees were not allowed to talk about what they were working on with anyone who wasn't on their project team. So even other people who are working in skunk Works at the time, you were not allowed to talk about what it was you were working on if that person wasn't also on that project. So um, this one carry over to one of the great testing facilities that would come into existence about a

decade later. We'll mention it a couple of times, but it's one of my favorite subjects that I still I'm determined to do an episode on sometime in the future. Anyway, Uh, it's almost as though we continually get prevented from doing it.

I know. It's some kind of shadowy forces, almost like some gentlemen wearing black suits will occasionally show up outside of the offices of How Stuff Works and say, you really don't want to talk about that, namely Alex Trebec and Jesse Ventura sometimes sometimes been Bowlen, and you think, like I thought he was on our side, but no, he's working for the man anyway. So another thing that we can mention is that the secrecy went beyond just you know, don't talk about it, right. They went so

far as to start to disguise the buildings themselves. Right, Um, Yeah, they had decoy buildings and they would cover some of them or all of them in camouflage and netting and stuff like that. Yeah, because you know, Pearl Harbor demonstrated the value of being able to hide potential high value targets, and you know, they were going to be working on super secret projects for the military, so they considered themselves

a potential target. So this was really kind of a practical approach to trying to minimize that the chance that they would be hit by some enemy aircraft carrying bombs. So they actually went to great pains to to disguise their campus. Now, the very first jet that they started working on, the one that had that Goblin jet engine from the British, was designated the XP eight E jet fighter.

So the team started work on that in nineteen forty three, four months before they were officially awarded the contract for the project. And it would turn out that this apparently was sort of yeah, that was essentially the military would say, hey, you know what, we sure could use an an aircraft that does this, this, and this, and the skull corks would a we could do that for you know, we

might whip something up. They shake hands and then skunk work goes out and pours a lot of time, money, and effort into developing it, and then months later the contract comes through. Oh yeah, yeah with it with the understanding that eventually the money would come. And you know, this was partially due to the or largely I think due to the cleverness and machinations of Kelly Johnson, because he uh he also in stated himself as the only person who would get to talk to Air Force officers

and CIA agents. Um, yeah, there's a great everything comes through him, which you know, which really streamlines the process exactly. Yeah, yeah, you had that and puts him up as a as a reliable He was the central voice. I mean, it meant that you weren't going to get mixed messages because everything was going through one source. I also have a fun little thing I can talk about and a little bit about about what it was like to go along with Kelly on one of these meetings with the CIA.

I've heard him referred to as like W. C. Fields without the sense of humor. Yeah, and this case, it was more about the links they went to to try and prevent being overheard, which I thought was amusing. But we've got a lot more we're going to talk about as far as skunk Works goes. Before we do that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Alright. So ninety three they got that contract. Ninety four they

delivered the x P eighty Lulu Bell prototype jet fighter. Uh. This was only a hundred and forty three days after that kind of handshake deal had occurred. It was just under five months and a little bit earlier than planned. Yeah, by a full week. They delivered it a week ahead of schedule. Uh. And the jet fighter would eventually become known as the Lockheed P eighty Shooting Star. And that was the very first jet fighter used by the U. S.

Army Air Forces. So some of the bombers that were operating in Europe during the tail end of World War Two, absolutely, Um, we're we're helped out by the creation of this vehicle. Right, It's just that they weren't designed to do actual military work yet, Like they couldn't fly a combat mission. They weren't outfitted for that, and it wouldn't happen until after the conclusion of World War Two. They would be used

later in the Korean War. Yes, so you might wonder what looks like, Well, it's a single theater, single theater jet. It's pretty simple, like a basic jet design that if you can imagine what a fighter jet looks like, it looks like a small version of that. That's what it was by night. So a little four years later they developed the T thirty three T Bird, which is also known as the T thirty three Shooting Star, which is mostly used at least in the United States. Was mostly

used as a training aircraft. It was meant to get pilots who had had experience with propeller aircraft who actually get jet aircraft r This was a brand new way of flying, and very few people had any expertise in it, apart from those crazy test pilots who lived on adrenaline and are a totally different species as far as I'm concerned. I'm a Nedraline junkie myself, but I cannot imagine living that lifestyle where like what you're strapping me into this

thing goes you know twice the speed of sound. Let's do it. No, a roller coaster adrenaline is great, Yeah, actual death adrenaline. That's a little more than I can handle. But yeah. So the first flight was piloted by Tony Lavier, who would end up piloting lots of different test aircraft for Lockheed um and it remained in service for a

long time in the United States as training aircraft. In a few parts of the world it's still used as training aircraft, and a few places even weaponized it, making it a combat aircraft, which was never used in the United States for that purpose. It was mainly there just as a training vehicle. But some places in the world have purchased T thirty three's and used them for for combat jets. They they are. They are slightly overmatched, I would say, by most modern jets, but but but still,

I mean a solid piece of machinery. It was a little bit longer than the T, than the than the right, and had a second seat right, which makes sense because it was used for training. Had a second seat with instrumentation and control, so kind of like you know, if you've ever taken one of those driving courses where the car has two sets of brakes and maybe even two steering wheels. Yeah, so in that case it's kind of similar. So, like I said, it was used still used in some

parts of the world, mostly for training. Nineteen fifty they came out with the F ninety four, which was also developed I called the Starfire, right it was. It was also developed off of the T Yes, that's right, and it was meant to be faster and more maneuverable than the P E D turned out. It was not that that was the intent. It did not quite turn out that way, but it was meant to kind of match

against Soviet aircraft. At this time, we're getting into the Cold War, and so you had this escalation on both sides of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States building all sorts of things. I mean, this would also be what fueled the Space race, uh, shortly

after this time period we're talking about right now. So they wanted to have something that was a little more capable of going up against Soviet aircraft, which tended to be smaller, less complex, and far faster and more maneuverable than the United States version. So that was the idea. It was a it was a twin cedar aircraft and supposedly had very powerful instrumentation, including radar, that would allow them to detect potential targets from quite a far away away.

In fact, it was so sensitive and so advanced that the United States government did not really want pilots flying the F ninety four they were enemy territory. They placed restrictions to make sure that the technology wouldn't fall into

enemy hands. Yeah, which would come. And you know, it turns out that's an important consideration because, as we'll see with some later aircraft, there were instances where certain aircraft were shot down and there was a real worry that that technology was now going to fall into enemy hands and that any advantage the United States might have had would be lost as a result. So that's why they were very careful about where it could fly. It did

enter combat in the Korean War. Uh. There's a site called Military Factory that has a great article about the Starfire and said that it just didn't outperform the P A D when it came to combat situations, but it was able to uh inter combat with aircraft at night because that radar was so sensitive that the crew aboard the Starfire could navigate and find targets and fire upon

them just using the instrumentation while not using visuals. So that's pretty amazing, and they called it a stop gap aircraft. Like the idea was that until we can develop something better, this is what we're going to use in the interim, and by the late nineteen fifties it gets phased out. Now that brings us up to an interesting test vehicle in nineteen fifty one, the X seven Kingfisher. So this

test vehicle is different from other test vehicles. This was not This was not really a vehicle so much as an aircraft. It was it was not meant to carry people at all. What was meant to do was to mimic a missile. It essentially was a missile, but without any kind of payload. So the idea was that they would launch one of these from like a B twenty nine or a B fifty and it would go into ramjet operation. Right. Ramjet being a type of engine that

doesn't use moving parts. It takes an air at in this case subsonic speeds and then using the pressure of of the motion of the aircraft um it compresses that air to create combustion. Hence that missile like design. I mean, the entire body of the aircraft is essentially an airflow device. Yeah. Yeah.

In fact, one of these days we're gonna have to do like a full episode about jet engines ramjet engines, talk about the differences and why uh you know, some are are sub sonic, some are supersonic, some are hypersonic. But that that's such a huge topic to really get into that it would this this series would go like five episodes. So loved you that that's it's yeah, so

the yeah, it's pretty cool stuff. And so what was funny about this thing was it was all meant to allow the United States to test anti missile systems, right. It was to give a target that anti missile systems could aim at and fire at in an attempt to bring it down safely without having an actual missile with an actual payload flying around. Um. It also had a very long nose that ended in a like a needle

like projection. Uh. The idea being that when it was when its fuel was spent, it would parachute down and the needle would would land nose down in the desert, and and that that would kind of cushion in a way. Yeah, it's like kind of like a dart falling into the dirt. Like the idea being that it would suspend itself, you know, from this needle, and therefore the fins on this thing wouldn't get damaged in the fall. And it turned out that that was handy because it was hardly ever shot down.

That was the problem was that apparently the Kingfisher was a bit too good at what it did, and it was um so fast and agile. The anti missile systems didn't hit it that frequently. It was very few hits that were scored in the program overall. And because that doesn't look so good to the military, like, well, our anti missile systems are are terrible. That's not a that's not a fun thing to say, all right, It wound

up being a little bit of an embarrassment. I think, Yeah, so they scrapped the program because obviously that's the right choice, Like, our missiles can't hit this thing, let's scrap it. Let's redefine the rules so that we can we can win. Like, I don't know, I don't think that's I mean, I'm not a military expert. I just don't think that's how winning works. I I think that really the issue is that it was the incorrect technology for the project, for

for for for its purpose. But you're far more generous than Iland. Uh So nineteen fifty four, there's I'm just gonna mention this briefly because it will come into play. We're actually doing this in two parts. This this uh show about Lockheed and so this is part the first part, but this is going to come into play in the second part. Lacke develops the x C one Hercules YEP,

which was a four engine turboprop aircraft used in military transport. Now, the original Hercules there wasn't that much innovative about it other than the fact that they could carry a lot of stuff. It was an enormous cargo plane. But there's some stuff that they add to it a couple of decades later that make it pretty um terrifying. But what the hook about that? When I get to it? So nineteen the Also in nineteen fifty four they developed the

F one oh four Starfighter. Yeah, so, um now I'm starting to think of like transformers at this point, and so I know it's stars Scream and transforms. Don't write to me. I know it's star Scream. I'm just saying it's starting to get get that feel. So Starfighter, it's a single engine supersonic interceptor and all right, go ahead, Sorry, well no, no, I was just gonna say that this was it was the first MAC two aircraft, which means it travels at speeds of one miles per hour or

about two thousand kilometers per out pretty fast. Uh. It's also you know, it was specifically designed to go into battle against Soviet miggs at least, if ever we were to go into combat with the Soviet Union. The MiGs. The miggs were incredibly maneuverable, so this was sort of our answer to the Soviet miggs aircraft. Um. And uh,

you know, and an interceptor. That's what an interceptor is, in case you're wondering, is a specific kind of jet fighter that's designed to do air to air combat, so not just other fighters but also bombers and other types of aircraft. So it's a specific type of jet fighter. Wasn't really designed to have any kind of ground operations, so you wouldn't be using this to fire against ground forces necessarily. Um. It has a really weird look to it.

It's very long and the wings look pretty stubby. Compared to the body of the jets. So it just it looks like a rocket with some thin stuck to the side and a cockpit in it, and there's a person in there. This is this is going to be another

one of those um ramjet based engines. And uh it was operated mainly by the Air Force and the Air National Guard, and NASA had a few because they wanted to use them for supersonic test flights, because they had this crazy idea about sending people up into outer space, I know. And it turns out that if you want to make sure that your human beings can survive the trip, you might want to do some supersonic tests first, because

you're gonna be going pretty fast. Yeah. Yeah, So it was really important there and about undred actually more than were produced overall, but only seven thirty eight of those were made by Lockheed. Everything else was licensed to other manufacturers. Right. They would be retired by the mid nineteen seventies, but would continue or by the US anyway, but would continue to serve in various air forces until about two thousand four. YEP.

And UH, the way this whole program started was Kelly went to Korea and started talking to US pilots and said, okay, what is it that you need in order? What do you want? What if you could build your own aircraft, what what would you want? And they said, we want it less complex, smaller, and faster. Essentially, they're saying, you know those Soviet maigs that they have, they want those. So that was kind of the idea that that fed

into the development of the Starfighter. The thing that weirds me out about this craft is that had this had this downward facing ejection seat, so rather than than than

popping up and away. And I understand that probably I've read that it was something about the shape of the tail or the height of the tail that might have made clearance difficult exactly, but nonetheless, sending me screaming straight downwards out of a plane just sounds like and not dropped right shot shot because you are in because your jet may be in danger of exploding, so you have to have these explosive charges that project your your seat

in a particular direction. In this case, that direction was straight down, so that you would the bottom of the jet would open up and you would be shot down in your objector seat to clear the plane. Yeah, and I am strangely enough not the only person who found this kind of weird. The Germans had a really interesting nickname for it. Yeah, that nickname would be vit vin Macher,

which means the widow maker. Yes, the widow maker. They said that it was an incredibly dangerous aircraft and that uh, that there were that you were more likely to have a malfunction or some other kind of accident in it in operation rather than ever getting shot down in combat. That it was just an unreliable aircraft, and that there were some big, big problems with it. Germany was not

the only country to say that. Now, there were other countries that said that something like fifty of the aircraft they lost fift of all the ones they had due to operational accidents. Yeah, um not. Nonetheless, it would win a Call Your Trophy in which is an award presented annually by the National Aeronautics Association for achievement in either aeronautics or astronautics. And it's it's a pretty big deal. Like Lackie Martin would win six of these over the

course of their tenure um up until today. But you know, so it was a big important craft. Yeah. Yeah, it all depended on whom you us, right. There were some who said the Starfighter was an inherently dangerous vehicle that was poorly constructed and in fact alleged that Lockheed had bribed officials in order to win the contract to make a thing. But then there were other places that said, no, we've never lost a single aircraft due to some sort of operational error, so it all depended on you know,

who was doing the flying. I guess, uh, so it certainly is controversial. Then there's the the RB sixty nine Neptune. You know, here's the crazy thing about the Neptune. There are two different types of neptunes. Okay, so the U. S. Navy has neptunes, and these neptunes are maritime, uh surveillance, not even surveillance. They just they just they monitor and fly over oceans looking. Yeah, it's just patrol, right, that's all it is. Um So it's not necessarily like a

heavy combat type thing. It just does these patrols. Well, this, this Neptune was designed to look like the Navy's Neptune, but instead of being operated by the Navy, they were operated by the CIA, central Intelligence Agency in the United States. I just want to take a moment to say thank you to all the men and women in the CIA who always try very hard to keep us safe, and uh promise I'll be good. So the c I as obviously one of those organizations known for being super secret.

I mean that's one. It's that's their job. That is literally their job. Yeah, the the espionage is high up there. They are all about material surveillance, which means like direct surveillance, whereas the n s A, the National Security Agency which we've talked about before, is all about electronic surveillance and

signal surveillance. So c I A Uh, they wanted to have the opportunity to do some surveillance missions with aircraft, and uh there there were so many of these of these Navy neptunes in use that they were like, you know, if we just built something that looks like a Navy neptune, people will be It's it's like a you know, it's it's it's a Navy, it's Navy aircraft. Yeah, corolla, it's everywhere, right, no one's going to pay any attention. We're perfectly fun. Well,

we can hide in plane site. The Navy said, hey, hang on there, buddy, if one of those planes is shot down, that means you're going to blame us, the U. S. Navy, because you're not going to come forward and say that was our plane. And the c I said, yop, and the Navy said you can't. You can't paint your plane to look like our planes. So they look like from a from a just a from a body standpoint, Yeah,

they look identical. They are identical to these other and the other types are designated P two V seven Neptunes. That's the Navy's aircraft. The c I A is the RB sixty nine. So they look from a superficial level identical. Although each of those seven planes that was built that were built for the CIA by hand, but hand it

looks different and is outfitted with different equipment. They could do different things, like one of the things they would occasionally do is drop leaflets on two countries to try and promote you know, resistant and propaganda exactly. Um, so you know, it wasn't always some sort of actual direct combat issue. So uh, there were a couple that had some sidewinder missiles, So there were a couple that were ready for combat if it wasn't necessary, but none of

them ever entered combat. I believe someone were shot down, but none of them I think went into a combat mission. Yeah. Out of the seven that were built for the CIA, five of them have been lost, either shot down or we don't know, or at least we don't know. We don't know, Johnathan and I don't know. No one has told us. Yeah, there's no public information about what happened.

Like one of them disappeared over China, for example, and there's no information that is publicly available about the fate of that aircraft, although actually technically the fate of the other two is not known to the public as well. Is that right? The two the two surviving ones, we don't know where they are. They could be doing anything right now. I think they're with Ben boll And and and

Alex Trebat. Yeah. Probably those men and Black have to get around somehow, right, So we don't know what those two surviving aircraft are doing, but we have our suspicions. Uh, nineteen fifty five, now here's where we're gonna end. Because this is also a big, big year for Lockeed skunk Works and for the spy industry in the United States, surveillance reconnaissance. This is when Lockeed built the U two A Angel the or the YouTube the first YouTube plane.

So tech stuff has done a full episode about the U two spy plane, So if you want to hear all about it, I recommend you go back. Yeah, go listen to that. That was published on March nineteenelve and was called tech Stuff Spies on the YouTube. So we've got a lot more information about the entire process of developing the YouTube, as well as some of the other aircraft that we will be talking about in our next episode.

But this was big. It was a joint operation between the CIA, the Air Force, and and Lockheed of course, right, so because it was c i A, it was it was called a black operation, meaning it was ultra secret. And the reason why the CIA got involved, well the United States, you know, the President kind of wanted to have these spy planes, but Congress could oversee the budgets the Air Force. Yeah, the budget for the Air Force.

So Congress is like scrutinizing all the money that's going through to the military, and the President says, you know, I'd really like to be able to build these planes, but I can't do it through Congress because they're not going to play ball. What if I had the CIA the secret agency who the governance of which is a mystery to almost everybody apart from the people who are actually running things. Stuff they don't want you to know. Um, how don't we have them build it instead? So it

falls under the CIA's budget, which was classified. People in Congress could not see what the money went to. They knew that money was going to the CIA, but they no idea where it was going. Beyond that. Only only a small number of government officials knew anything about the project at the time, right. So that project being the development of the YouTube plane, which is an incredible aircraft. It's still in service today. Um, there's still quite a few in the fleet. And essentially what does is it

flies it really high altitudes, like seventy thousand feet. Yeah, so twenty one kilometers that's that's almost twice the the operating the normal jet engine like a passenger gener that's about right. Yeah, So it's about twice as high as any of those. And the idea was that at that altitude the YouTube could fly over radar and not be detected.

It also would be out of reach of any air ground to air missiles or fighters, So in other words, they could just stay up out of reach and spy on whoever they wanted, and then there would be no repercussions at least directly to that aircraft for the time being. That would change pretty quickly. I mean, the whole industry technology was moving forward very quickly, and especially you know

as as part of the space race. Everything was developing very fast, right, I guess space race wasn't really kicked off quite yet. It was the early days were I mean, there were there were people thinking about it, but not a lot of action had happened in nine yet. But this was definitely another another notch in the belt for the United States in that Cold War, you know, another thing that they could not brag about because they didn't

want anyone to know that they had them. But uh, and and these would end up being tested at a facility called Groom Lake, also known as Area fifty one. And that's the subject I want to do an episode about. But wait, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm looking out the window. I'm getting a little sign it's about time to wrap up this episode, Lauren. Um, So, I guess, uh, I guess uh. Apparently I gotta go and get coffee with

this person. Okay, So in the meantime, Guys, if you have any suggestions for future topics of tech stuff, I highly recommend that you write to us quickly. UH. That address is tech stuff at Discovery dot com. You can also give us one minute. You can give us a message on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumbler. We are tech Stuff hs W at all of those and Lauren the very least. We'll talk to you very soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com