TechStuff Classic: Sniffing Out Skunk Works Part One

Skunk Works is a fun little catch all phrase these days for secret R and D facilities within different companies, although it originally had a very specific designation, let's listen in it's people given the freedom. This is black ops kind of things that like the X Files really and was 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. 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, nineteen 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 nineteen thirteen, 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. We're talking like airplanes had barely existed when these companies started making stuff, not fall out of the sky, 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. 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 air craft fighter called the XP nine hundred, and the US military 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 with 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 them 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 little thing called the Great Depression, which, by the way, guys, wasn't so great, pretty pretty crappy, No it's a pretty crappy depression. It was huge F minus would not would not buy from again, No, no, yes, do not recommend um. Yeah.

So great depression obviously was a devastating economic global economic disaster. Yeah. And Luckheed itself would go into bankruptcy in ninety two, they go into bankruptcy. They were only bankrupt for five whole days. After that, a group of investors kind of swooped in and safe from, 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 done a lot of damage. And so that that plan to build those early aircraft for 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 a 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, it's pretty fast for the for it's time. Obviously, aircraft today leave that in the dust. But right we're still talking about engines that use moving parts and not turbines. We're talking propellers. Yeah, yeah, this this is before the

jet era. So 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 the jars. But I actually think this was I don't imagine that that was actually the same. I'm pretty sure that by he 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, pretty much had it together at that point. At any rate. In three 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, decided to ask for a new jet fighter and they kind of put

out the word a jet fighter period. I mean, okay, that the thing is 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, we need some of

let's do some of those things. So they kind of put out the request for a 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 bureaucratic 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 flour 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

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 Work. Yes s k o in k. It was a kind of a playful 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 the most including skunks up doing, 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, alright, but but so so this engineer answered the phone like like, hello, this is Skunk Works because it was stucky 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 was 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. It's 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 are 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 these incredibly lucrative contracts and uh. And he felt that if he had to dance around all these corporate levels,

it 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 the rule number three. He's 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'll tell you. You You tell like twenty five people a secret, that secret

is going to get out eventually. But if you tell two thousand, five hundred people that secret, that secret, they might as well not even make the secret in the first place. That's why I don't tell anyone my secrets, especially podcasts. He can't trust us. Yeah, i'll tell you as 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 I 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 are 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 four team 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, and Shakespeare got 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, until again makes sense because it's not just it's not just Kelly here, we're poking at Kelly, but honestly referred to anyone who was a project leader, right because again, 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. That 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 now 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 a an aircraft that does this, this and this, and the skunk Works would say, we could do that for you. Yeah, you know, we might

whip something up. They shake hands, and then skunk Works 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 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 put 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, in this case, it was more about the links they went to to try and prevent being overheard, which I thought was amusing. Jonathan from here breaking in to say, we're going to be back at skunk Works in just a second, but first let's take a quick break alright. Soe they got that contract, they delivered the XP eight 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. Yea 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 where 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 it 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 why it was by 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 to actually jet aircraft. Right. This is 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 that I cannot imagine living that lifestyle where you like, when you're strapping me into this thing, goes, you know, twice the speed of sound. Let's do it. No roller

coaster adrenaline is great. Yeah, actual death adrenaline. It'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 use them for for combat jets. They they are they are slightly overmatch, 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, I 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 called the Starfire, right it was. It was also developed off of their three though. Yes, that's right, and it was meant to be faster and more maneuverable than the P A D.

Turned out it was not that was the intent. It did not quite turn out that way, but it was meant to kind of match against Soviet aircraft. After 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 for 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 import in 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 in her

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 N one, the X seven King Fisher. 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. A 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 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 I'd love to know that 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 would fall. 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 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 that's not a

fun thing to say, right. It wounded 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. We'll return to sniffing out skunk Works Part one in just a moment, but first let's take another quick break. 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. Lockheed 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 with 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. 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 alright, go ahead. Sorry, well no, 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, four fifty 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 intercepter. 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 air craft. So it's a specific type of jet fighter.

Wasn't really designed to have any kind of ground operation, 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. Yeah, and uh.

It was operated mainly by the Air Force and the Air National Guard and a 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 dred actually more than were produced overall, but only 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.

And uh. The way this whole program started was Kelly went to Korea and started telling 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 the Soviet maigs that they have, 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 side of the tail, and that might have made clearance difficult exactly, but nonetheless sending me screaming straight down arns out of a plane just sounds like and and not dropped right shot shot because you were 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 ejectors 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 the 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's something like fifty of their aircraft they lost of all the ones they

had due to operational accidents. Yeah, um not. Nonetheless, it would win a Callier 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 Lockheed 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, and a

little bit shotting. 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 at Yeah, it's just patrol, right, and that's all it is. Um. So it's not necessarily like a heavy combat type thing.

It just it 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 why it's their job. That is literally their job. Yeah, 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 were 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 a Navy, it's Navy aircraft. Yeah, 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 CIA said, yop, and the Navy said you can't. I can't paint your 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 by hand, it looks different and is outfitted with different equipment for different 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, resistance and then propagand 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 was necessary, but none of them ever entered combat. I believe, well, someone were shot down, but none of them I thinking to went into a

combat mission. Yeah. Out of the seven that were built for the c I A, 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, Jonathan 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 Bolland and Alex treat you. 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. Ninety 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 to 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 nineteen

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 c I A 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 do 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 had 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 yea, so twenty one kilometers that's that's almost twice the the operating the normal jet engine like

a passenger gen 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 concludes our first part of

a two part episode about skunk Works. We will return next week to conclude that too, partner skunk Works in general. It's one of those things that I could do probably half a dozen episodes about UH and not even scratch the surface. But if you guys have suggestions for things I should cover in tech Stuff, whether it's really too secret, R and D projects or not, reach out to me on Twitter. The handle is tech stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Y. Text

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