#419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works

Kelly Johnson’s “14 Points” read like a SpaceX operations manual — 60 years before SpaceX was founded. Kelly Johnson created Skunk Works, which he defined as: “A concentration of a few good people solving problems far in advance—and at a fraction of the cost—of other groups by applying the simplest, most straightforward methods possible to develop and produce new projects. All it is really is the application of common sense to some pretty tough problems.” Kelly Johnson was a great engineer and system builder with genius for organizational design. His autobiography which he wrote when he was 75 years old is full of hard-earned wisdom from his 44 year career. This episode is what I learned from reading Kelly: More Than My Share of it All by Kelly Johnson. Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Axon by Applovin: https://axon.ai/founders Vanta: ⁠https://vanta.com/founders⁠

• 0:00Speaker 00

  So a few weeks ago, I made this episode called "How SpaceX Works." And while I was reading about the way SpaceX operates, I came across this very interesting sentence. I'm going to read this to you. It says, "Many of these ideas are not even new. Lockheed's Skunk Works ran similar approaches 60 years ago. Founder Kelly Johnson's 14 Rules reads like a SpaceX operations manual." So that made me want to read Kelly Johnson's autobiography, which is called "More Than My Share of It All." He wrote it when he was 75 years old. And the first thing I want to tell you about in the book, I actually want to jump towards the end of the book. It's one of the last chapters. The chapter is called "It's No Secret," and it breaks down how he built and how he ran Skunk Works. But before I jump into the book, there's this list of 20 ideas.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  I want to give you an overview of basically how he ran this operation. And I think telling you this list of 20 ideas upfront will make it easy to remember and understand everything that comes after. So number one, a breakthrough program is an organization before it's a design. So this is one of maybe the greatest designer of aircrafts of all time. In the case of the plane, the SR-71, which Kelly designed all the way back in the 1960s, it still holds, to this day, 60 years later, it still holds the record for the fastest air-breathing manned aircraft. When Elon Musk is telling his team about the importance of speed and how speed is a massive competitive advantage for a business, he uses the SR-71 as an example. Let me read you this quote from Elon about this. He says, "The best offense and defense is speed." The SR-71 Blackbird, again, a design from Kelly Johnson and Skunk Works.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  "The SR-71 Blackbird is a military plane with almost no defense except acceleration. It was never shot down, not even once. Over 3,000 missiles were shot at the SR-71 Blackbird and none hit. All it did was go faster. The power of speed is underappreciated as a competitive factor." So back to these lists of ideas. It's saying, "A breakthrough program is an organization before it is a design." Johnson's most important invention may have been Skunk Works itself. And it gives an overview of how he designed it. Small empowered teams, streamlined processes, and a culture willing to attempt things that had not been done before. Number two, speed is not a side effect. It is a design requirement. And what they mean is not just speed in the plane, speed in the completion of the project. So they build the P80.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  Johnson and his team delivered the prototype in 143 days. Number three, use a few exceptional people, not many average ones. Johnson would describe Skunk Works as a few great people using straightforward methods with minimum overhead. Number four, the builder needs real authority. Johnson's operating model put program control close to the person responsible for technical success. In his autobiography, he says he lets managers run programs with minimum interference while giving them both authority and responsibility. Number five, bureaucracy is an engineering variable. Johnson treated reporting, approvals, meetings, and customer visits as drag. And this is such a great line. He pared away anything that used up time without advancing the project.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  Number six, start building before the paperwork is perfect. So in one case of designing a plane, it says Lockheed says the formal contract arrived four months after work had already begun. Skunk Works often began on a handshake when the need was urgent. Number seven, the customer must be small and empowered, too. Johnson's model did not merely demand lean contractor teams. It demanded lean interfaces with the military or intelligence customer. This reduced misunderstanding and correspondence. This one is fascinating. Number eight, secrecy can accelerate work, not just hide it. Secrecy reduced outside interference and let a compact group move fast. The team was warned not to discuss the project outside their small organization.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Number nine, argue with data even when you're a junior. This is one of the first things Johnson does when he's actually hired at Lockheed, which we'll talk about later. Very early at Lockheed, Johnson challenged the stability analysis for this plane that they're building. He went back to the wind tunnel and then solved the stability problem himself. Number 10, a designer should understand the pilot's fear. So what's happening here is if you're designing a part and that part's going in a plane, when they test that plane, you're flying in that plane yourself. You have to ride with the pilot. When your life is literally on the line, you're gonna do a better job. Number 11, don't optimize the old fight. Change the envelope. So, one of the most famous designs, planes, you've probably heard of it, it's called the U-2. The U-2 did not win by dogfighting.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  It won by flying so high that fighters and missiles of the time could not reach it. Number 12, make simplicity a weapon. So he repeats this over and over again. His principle was KISS, keep it simple stupid. Johnson believed that KISS was a survival method for complex programs. And again, he talked about over and over again, the importance of minimizing paperwork. Number 13, I think is self-explanatory. Extreme performance often comes from one brutally clear priority. Number 14, the contractor can create the requirements. What this means is when they're building the F-104, the idea came, instead of coming from the Air Force to Lockheed, it came from Lockheed to the Air Force. Says Lockheed submitted this proposal before the Air Force even had an operational requirement

• 5:12Speaker 00

  for that kind of aircraft. Number 15, really to me is the importance of just this continuous learning that Kelly talks about over and over again in his memoir. A lot of the designs he's most well-known for has to do with stealth. And it says stealth began as an operational idea first. And what they mean by that is he was already obsessed with many, for many decades, thinking about radar, visibility, speed, altitude, and exposure time. Number 16, at Mach 3, the airplane becomes a materials science program. So what they're talking about here is when you're inventing the SR-71, that's the plane where Elon's saying, you know, using the illustration of speed as a competitive advantage, it's not just an aerodynamic achievement. Whenever you're at the very forefront, you don't just have to invent the product, you have to invent the methods to create the product.

• 5:54Speaker 00

  So in this case, they had to invent special fuels, materials, sealants, paints, wirings, plugs, and manufacturing techniques all had to be invented. Number 17, this is really speaking to the fact that the best companies are these systems where everything affects everything else. It says this is systems thinking at a very high level. So it's the engine inlet, airframe, and heat system are one machine. Again, they're talking about the SR71, the fastest plane ever made. Less than 20% of the SR71's total thrust came from the engine itself. The rest came from the inlet, the movable spike, afterburner flow path, and the cell design. Number 18, know when to kill your own brilliant idea. So Kelly Johnson had this idea for a hydrogen-powered plane. But as they got deeper down the design path, he realized it was too impractical and too unwieldy, and so he scrapped the design and canceled the project.

• 6:39Speaker 00

  Number 19, integrity is a performance multiplier. Johnson sometimes returned government money or declined work when he thought the result would not be effective. In his autobiography, he said he never designed a plane he didn't believe in. And number 20, mistakes are acceptable, concealed mistakes are not. Johnson's standards were brutal but productive. Mistakes were allowed, but they had to be reported immediately with recommendations for correction. And so what ties all this together is the fact that for Kelly Johnson, he didn't separate technical design from institutional design, which leads us directly to chapter 16 of this book, which is called "It's No Secret." So now let's go to Kelly Johnson's own writing. He says, "What the skunk works does is secret. How it does it is not. I've been trying to convince others to use our principles and practices for years."

• 7:23Speaker 00

  I remember, he's writing these words as a 75-year-old man. He knew what he wanted to do since he was 12 years old, and I think his career at Lockheed was something like 44 years long. So he says, "I've been trying to convince others to use our principles and practices for years. The basic concept, as well as specific rules, have been provided many times. Very seldom has the formula been followed." Before we get back into this, I want to tell you about the presenting sponsor of this podcast, Ramp. One of the main themes in the history of SpaceX is constantly attacking and questioning your costs. Ramp helps many of the most innovative businesses in the world do exactly that. The median company running on Ramp cuts their expenses by 5%. And just like SpaceX has demonstrated, a religious dedication to controlling costs

• 8:05Speaker 00

  helps increase revenue and pursue opportunities you couldn't otherwise. We see that in the Ramp data, too. The median company running on Ramp also grows their revenue by 16%. Many of the top founders and CEOs I know run their business on Ramp. I run my business on Ramp, and you should, too. Go to ramp.com today to learn how they can help your business save time and money. That is ramp.com. And then he just describes how he operated Skunk Works. "I see that strong authority that is absolutely essential to the kind of operation slowly being eroded by committee and conference control from within and without." So he will rail against committees over and over again. He wants a single person in charge. "The ability to make immediate decisions and put them into rapid effect is basic to our successful operation."

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Then he talks about how to do that. "Working with a limited number of especially capable and responsible people is another requirement. Reducing reports and other paperwork to a minimum and including the entire force in the project, stage by stage, are other basics." This may be the main thread running through all of this. "With small groups of good people, you can work quickly and keep close control over every aspect of the project. People challenged to perform at their best will do so." Now, this is where he starts to deviate from Elon a little bit. He says, "With rare exceptions, long hours are not encouraged." And so, keep in mind, this book was written, I think, forty, over forty years ago. From what I gather from the book, his standard schedule was about ten-hour days, six days a week.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  So still a lot of hours, but less than like Elon with SpaceX. And then he talks about the point of Skunk Works. "Our aim is to get results cheaper, sooner, and better through application of common sense to tough problems. If it works, don't fix it. Keep it simple, stupid, is our constant reminder. Be quick, be quiet, be on time is another one of our mottos. Listen, you'll never learn anything by talking. The measure of an intelligent person is the ability to change his mind. These concepts save time, money, and people." And then again, he prioritizes scrappiness. So they start the first Skunk Works in 1943. And he says, "The first shop." Okay? So it's a way, it's separate from the big company. That's really important. And they build their own shop.

• 10:17Speaker 00

  The scrappiness is fascinating to me. The first Skunk Works shop was constructed of engine boxes and a tent. And from this, the very first project, which is the XP-80 jet fighter, was built with just 120 people in 143 days. There were only 23 engineers on that project. So then he talks about the U-2 spy plane, which is very famous. The U-2, many years later, employed a total of 50 people on both experimental and production engineering. On the enormously difficult SR-71, the one I've mentioned to you over and over again so far, there were only 135 engineers. And then this part's gonna sound a lot like Elon, too,

• 11:00Speaker 00

  because he's doing the work right alongside the people. He actually gets in trouble sometimes because they have a union, where he'll weld something, or he'll do somebody else's job. And Kelly talks about this. The employees actually enjoyed the fact that their top boss cared enough to work right along with them. And then this is another thing that if you listen to the How SpaceX Works episode. It is our practice to put the people in close contact with the airplane while it's being built so that they can follow it throughout its development. They feel responsible for the parts they make. If a part needs fixing, it will be fixed quickly. Let me read this quote from Elon, because he talks about the importance of this, too, in a different way. If your hand is on a stove and it gets hot, you pull it off right away. But if there's somebody else's hand on the stove,

• 11:44Speaker 00

  it'll take you longer to do something about it. The people on the assembly line should be able to immediately grab a designer and engineer and say, "Why did you make it this way?" Kelly Johnson says, "If a part needs fixing, it will be fixed quickly." They're in close contact with the airplane, with the product, the entire time. And then he talks about, "Well, if our methods are not secret, why is no one else doing this?" Most companies, while designing the benefits, will not pay the price in revised methods and procedures for setting up a Skunk Works-type operation. They will not delegate the authority to one individual, as Lockheed did in my case. The theory of Skunk Works is to learn how to do things quickly and cheaply and to tailor the systems to the degree of risk. There is no one good way to build all airplanes. When I talked to Toby Luque, the founder of Shopify, he told me the exact same thing.

• 12:27Speaker 00

  He said, "There's probably 100 different ways, 100 good ways to try to accomplish what you're doing." Back to Kelly Johnson, "I believe that the designer and the builder of an airplane should also test it. That is important to his ability to design future aircraft. I have always thought of flight testing as a method of inspection to see how well you have engineered and built the bird. Working with pilots in testing and development has taught me a great deal over the years." And then he goes back to hating committees. "There's a tendency today, which I hate to see, towards design by committee, reviews and recommendations, conferences and consultations by those not directly doing the job." That is so good. "There's a tendency today, which I hate to see, towards design by committee by those not directly doing the job.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  Nothing very stupid will result, but nothing brilliant either. And it's in the brilliant concept that a major advance is achieved. Development of some of this country's most spectacular projects, the atomic bomb, the Sidewinder missile, the nuclear-powered submarine, all were accomplished by methods other than the conventional way of doing business." And then he insists on the ability to get an immediate decision. So let's say he's building something for the Air Force. He can call up his counterpart, who's in charge on their end and who has to stay with the project to its conclusion. He can call them up and get a decision that same day. And Kelly Johnson says, "That's just not possible in standard operating procedure." And so he says, "At a typical day for me, it would start at 7:00 a.m.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  and I would immediately hold a meeting with the engineers working on key problems. So what's our biggest problem? Who is the person responsible for it? That is who Kelly Johnson is talking to." And he says, "These meetings were short and informal." And then he contrasts his approach with some of the ways these other companies were doing. And so he's looking at this project, and as they're trying to build this aircraft, he discovered that there was 1,206 people employed just in quality control. Remember, he built the world's fastest aircraft with 135 engineers. This company has 1,206 just in quality control. This subcontractor had 40 people inspecting, coordinating, and reporting. They only had 35 people building the actual instrument. Think about that.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  They have more people inspecting, coordinating, and reporting than doing the actual work. And so what he learns is you have to actually run this through all of your subcontractors, too. And so he says suppliers and others associated with the project must be extended the same kind of rules and permissions that are given us for the entire program. This cuts red tape and costs and allows all participants to concentrate on the product instead of a system. It is so simple. And he extends this to the customers, which he's already mentioned once. It is absolutely imperative that the customer have a small, highly concentrated project office as a counterpart to Skunk Works. There has to be an all-out commitment, or this method will not work. And when he says "small," he means small. He means like six people.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  So there's another program, just the interface for this other program. There were 145 Army personnel just to interface with the designer and manufacturer. In contrast, the total at Skunk Works for both the CIA and the Air Force representatives, for the U-2 and the SR-71, was six people. And so as a way to spread these ideas throughout his organization and anybody to interface with, he wrote this thing called 14 points. Kelly Johnson's 14 points are the basic operating rules of Skunk Works. And so I'm just going to run through them with you right now. Number one, the Skunk Works manager must be delegated, complete control of his program in all aspects. He should report to a division president or higher.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  Number two, strong but small project offices must be provided both by the military and industry. Number three, 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. Number four, a very simple drawing and drawing release system with great flexibility for making changes must be provided. Number five, there must be a minimum number of reports required, but important work must be recorded thoroughly. Number six, there must be a monthly cost review covering not only what has been spent and committed, but also projected costs to the conclusion of the program.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  Don't have the books 90 days late and don't surprise the customer with sudden overruns. One of his mottos is be quick, be quiet, and be on time. He should also say be cheap. He always wanted to come in under budget. Number seven, the contractor must be delegated and must assume more than normal responsibility to get good vendor bids for subcontract work on the project. Commercial bid procedures are very often better than military ones. Number eight, push more basic inspection responsibility back to subcontractors and vendors. Do not duplicate so much inspection. Number nine, the contractor must be delegated the authority to test his final product in flight. He can and must test it in the initial stages. If he doesn't, he rapidly loses his competency to design other vehicles.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  Number 10, the specifications applying to the hardware must be agreed in advance of contracting. Number 11, funding a program must be timely so that the contractor doesn't have to keep running to the bank to support government projects. Number 12, there must be a mutual trust between the military project organization and the contractor with very close cooperation and a liaison on a day-to-day basis. Why? This cuts down misunderstanding and correspondence to an absolute minimum. Number 13, access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled. And number 14, because only a few people will be used in engineering and most other areas, ways must be provided to reward good performance by pay, not based on the number of personnel supervised.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  And then after this, Kelly Johnson gives his definition of what Skunk Works is and why it exists. "The Skunk Works is a concentration of a few good people solving problems far in advance and at a fraction of the cost of other groups in the aircraft industry by applying the simplest, most straightforward methods possible to develop and produce new projects. All it is really is the application of common sense to some pretty tough problems." And then this is the promise that he would make to Skunk Works employees, and he said it still applies to this day. "I owe you a challenging, worthwhile job, providing stable employment, fair pay, a chance to advance, and an opportunity to contribute to our nation's first line of defense. I owe

• 19:01Speaker 00

  you good management and sound projects to work on, good equipment to work with, and good work areas." And then I think one of the most important parts of understanding why this was so successful is because this is what he wanted to do most. Technically, it was not the highest job in the company. Says, "Three times I was offered a company presidency at Lockheed, and three times I declined it. To me, there is no better job within the corporation than head of advanced development projects," which is what Skunk Works was called. "I was doing what I wanted to do since I was 12 years old." Okay, so now I want to go back to the beginning of the book. Let's get into more of the biography and like the life story of Clara Johnson. Like, how, what were the circumstances to cause this person to become the best in his field?

• 19:45Speaker 00

  And why was he perfectly suited for the profession that he picked? So he is the seventh in a family of nine children. And he describes his childhood this way. "We were very poor. His father would work in construction. He says, "My father could lay 2,000 bricks in a day. My mother, in addition to raising nine kids, had to take in clothing and wash clothes for the wealthier people in town." And of course, as you can imagine, being a poor family with nine kids, they put the kids to work too. So he starts working from like seven years old. And he would pick up and deliver laundry. And he would do it in his wagon when there wasn't snow on the ground, and when there was snow on the ground, he would do it in a sled. He was ferociously curious and loved to learn, and so much so that he's going to be made fun of by other kids in his class.

• 20:29Speaker 00

  He says, "School was always interesting to me. I was always eager to go, and I would show up early and be first in line to enter the building." And he describes the way he was raised. "Our parents were stern but not severe, serious in manner but considerate of us children. I was never struck by either of them. We children were expected to show responsibility. I had access to my father's tools and a workshop from the time I was seven or eight years old. I could use any of his tools, so long as I didn't break or lose them, and I'd always put them back in their place. Some of my earliest lessons in construction were in watching my father build toys for me. He was a proficient carpenter and mason, an all-around craftsman. My respects for tools and machinery I learned early in life from his example.

• 21:13Speaker 00

  He taught me a great deal about construction. It was to be very useful to me. Our parents instilled a love of learning in us children." And he talks about the fact that he learned from his father. He says, "Next to my father, I credit Andrew Carnegie with being the most important influence on my early life." Why? He's growing up in this poor community in Michigan. I think it's called Ishfemming. And he says Carnegie donated these libraries as he had in many other small towns whose natural resources had helped build his fortune. So in this little town that he's living in, in this very rural area, it's where Carnegie got a lot of his iron ore to build his steel company. And the way that Kelly Johnson describes this, this gift to the community from Carnegie, is excellent.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  He returned an even richer resource. "I went to the library almost every day. It opened a whole new world to me." And so he actually credits a work of fiction for inspiring him down the path that he chose for his career, something he does his entire life. And he's reading these books on Tom Swift. He said, "Tom Swift was a very highly skilled designer, engineer, pilot and operator of many kinds of locomotion and an adventurous young man. It became my goal to be just like Tom." So he's reading all these fictions and then he picks up all these books on aircraft and reads every single one. And as a result of this reading, that came because of a gift from Andrew Carnegie, he says, "I was 12 years old when I decided I would be an aircraft designer.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  My whole life from that time was aimed at preparing for that goal. I continued to read everything I could get my hands on about aviation. My enthusiasm for the subject spilled over." And so when he's 10 years old, he has to learn a trade. He has to go to work. He decides to learn the trade of lathing. And by the time he's 12 years old, he's contributing $7 every week for room and board. So again, think about how poor you have to be if you're charging your 12-year-old son for room and board. And he says, "From that point on, from 12 years on, I was self-supporting." The way he described himself was an impoverished but high-spirited and determined boy. And so through high school and college, he says, "I was always talking about aviation."

• 23:25Speaker 00

  In junior college, I was able to take engineering courses for the first time. I studied physics, mathematics, and calculus. He will talk about as an old man still being in love with all these subjects. He had to work his way through high school and college. Says in the summers, I worked for the Buick Motor Car Company, swinging fenders on the production line and repairing motors. "I would be so dirty and oily after a day's work that I was not allowed to sit down on the streetcar going home. I was reading and studying all the time." And this is when he realizes to pursue his goal of being in aeronautical engineering, he has got to learn all these other fields of engineering first. So he says, "In those days, you had to study civil engineering, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, that then leading you to the study of aeronautical engineering." He says it was an excellent curriculum because it provided a very good basic education in

• 24:10Speaker 00

  everything it took to design and build an airplane. And you see, he's very entrepreneurial in two different ways. One, he's always trying to find the people with minds worth examining. And so he builds these relationships with a bunch of his professors at the time. Some of the ideas that he got from his professors, he'd used his entire life. One of them was the fact that you just have to keep an open mind. You never know which idea is actually going to work. And so his professor would repeat over and over again, "Do not automatically write anything off." Anything. "Do not automatically write anything off." Anything. And the second thing is, he's working in the wind tunnel. He's doing wind tunnel testing, and he realizes that the wind tunnel is not in use most of the time. So he asks his professor, "Can I rent the wind tunnel when it's not needed by the university and get some jobs on my own?"

• 24:53Speaker 00

  And so he starts renting out the wind tunnel to car companies at the time and making a bunch of money. And then one thing he has in his personality is he's learning a lot from them, but he's constantly questioning. He wants to be correct. And so he says, "Respectful though I was of the great experience and knowledge of my professors, I was not so deferential that I would not argue back if I disagreed, and I did." I bring this up because this is really important, because this helps him establish respect and a good reputation when he gets locke'd. Because this is one of the first things, it might be the first thing he does when he gets hired. So he's describing the kind of focus and intensity he had. "Most of the time I was working or studying. I completed three years of university work in two. There was little time to play." I knew I had to work hard to become a good engineer and I enjoyed it. I didn't have time for romance either and I deliberately avoided any entanglement.

• 25:37Speaker 00

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• 27:04Speaker 00

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• 27:43Speaker 00

  So he drives across the country to try to get a job at Lockheed. Lockheed is a tiny company at this point, and it is in dire financial straits. So he says, we get to Lockheed, and the company had just been purchased from receivers by a small group of aviation enthusiasts for $40,000. The company was in the process of being reorganized. They were already a big name as designer and builder of fast plywood aircraft. They're building wooden planes. There was no jobs for engineers yet, so he talks to the chief engineer at Lockheed, and the chief engineer tells him, hey, look, something's going to come out of this. Why don't you go back to school and then come out again next year? By then, we should have something for you. So Kelly Johnson goes back to the University of Michigan for a year of graduate study. Now, remember all that time he spent in the wind tunnel?

• 28:28Speaker 00

  That becomes really important, because then he goes back the next year, and he gets a job he's hired at Lockheed in 1933. They have no availability, no openings in engineering, so he's hired to do tool design. And the first thing he does is tell the two lead designers that their plane is unstable. And I love this response. So he goes, "When I announced at Lockheed that the new airplane, the first designed by the reorganized company, and the one on which its hopes for the future were based, was not a good design and was actually unstable, they were somewhat shaken. It is not the conventional way for a young person to begin employment. It was, in fact, very presumptuous of me to criticize my professors and experienced designers." And so one of the engineers was this guy named Hibbard. Hibbard himself was a fine engineer with a degree in aeronautics from MIT, and he

• 29:11Speaker 00

  wanted to get some, quote, "new, young blood, fresh out of school with new ideas," into the engineering department, as he explained. And then this is what Hibbard says about Kelly Johnson. "He looked so young, I was almost afraid that he couldn't read or write. We got some fresh new ideas, believe me. When he told me that the new airplane that we had just sent in was no good, and it was unstable in all directions, I was a little bit taken aback, and I wasn't so sure that we should have hired the guy. But then I thought better of it." And his response was excellent. This is what he did. "Kelly, you've criticized the wind tunnel report on the design. Why don't you go back and see if you can do any better with the airplane?" So he goes back to the University of Michigan, takes the plane into the wind tunnel, and says, "It took 72 tunnel runs before I found the answer to the problem."

• 29:54Speaker 00

  This leads Lockheed to promote Kelly to engineer. And remember when he said that if you're going to engineer and design something, you have to be with the pilots, testing it in the actual aircraft that you're designing? It's almost right away in his career when he understands how important it is. So he's always riding with this test pilot named Eddie Allen. This is, I can't describe this book to you. I highly recommend, obviously, you read it. But we are the beneficiaries to the work. Like, how safe is air travel now? It's the safest form of travel for any humans, right? And yet, so many people are dying or being injured as they're trying to figure out how to create and design safe airplanes, first for the military and then, obviously, for all forms of business and leisure travel that we use it today. And so he's, Kelly Johnson is with this guy named Eddie Allen, who's a test pilot. He says he's an excellent teacher.

• 30:39Speaker 00

  And so he is serving as a flight test engineer. And remember, these are brand-new planes that they're making. And so you go up in the plane that you just designed, and you're with the pilot. And the pilot is doing, it's like they're diving the plane. It says dive tests, stalls, spins, everything. They have to test what this plane can do. Could you imagine being in the sea? And listen to how Kelly describes this. "It was an excellent indoctrination to the art, skill, science, adventure, all that goes into flight testing. He taught me what it was all about, what was important, what to record, and he was un-flappable." And as a result of this, this is the philosophy that Kelly built and spread and used. "I have a philosophy that those who design aircraft should also fly them. The engineer knows where the quarter-inch bolts may be marginal,

• 31:24Speaker 00

  where the flaps are likely to, what the flaps are likely to do or not do. I've shared the concern of the pilot." That's so important. So our purpose is like putting us with the customer, right? "I've shared the concern of the pilot. I've shared the concern of the customer. I figured I needed to have the hell scared out of me once a year in order to keep a proper balance and viewpoint on designing new aircraft." Now, it gets into where I would say he deviates from Elon, where early in his career, Kelly did not consider other people's reactions. And so one of his mentors had to take him out and talk about this over and over again. And he says, "You've got to learn to live in the world with all these other people. And the sooner you learn that, the better off you're going to be." And so he says, "My mentor taught me that it's much better to lead people, not to drive them.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  Drive yourself if you must, but not anybody else." And so then in the late 30s, he comes up with this like philosophy for living. And again, the way I would say about Kelly, he's just like very practical. He said, you know, we're just trying to apply common sense to really tough problems. Kind of does that to the art of living. And so he has this, I guess he likes lists a lot. So he has this five point list of his philosophy of living. So number one, belief in God. When you're in a difficult situation, ill or in danger, and wonder if you're going to make it through to the next morning, your faith is one of the most important thoughts that will sustain you. Number two, health. Without it, one cannot be truly happy. It certainly has been important in my life. And there's a devastating story in the book where his first wife gets diagnosed with cancer relatively young.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  And so he sees when health is taken away from you and what happens to your life. Number three, purpose. We must have a purpose in life, doing something we want to do and doing it well. This will provide the necessities, security, money, and the rewards of other sorts. Number four, a wife or husband who loves and understands you. Number five, respect of the people for whom you work and who work for you. That sums up my philosophy of living. So after a few years of being hired, he's promoted to be chief research engineer for Lockheed. This happens in 1938. This is very important because World War II teaches them the importance of designing and then mass producing aircraft, which they had never done before the war.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  And many of these stories that he tells around this time is the importance of speed, of just watching how fast they move. So officials from Britain are coming to the United States to see if Lockheed and other manufacturers can build what they need to fight the Germans. And Kelly Johnson is notified of this visit just five days before the British officials get there. They're looking for an aircraft that can destroy submarines. So within five days, they build a prototype. Then the visit happens. The British suggest some changes. And Kelly writes, "We incorporated what changes we could over the weekend and called them on Monday for another inspection." So that visit was on a Friday. They worked through the entire weekend. They make the changes and say, "Come back on Monday." "They were so impressed that this little company had the gumption to address their

• 34:17Speaker 00

  problem that they invited us to England to talk to their technical people." They immediately go to They have this meeting and they get another series of updates of what the British are looking for. And so Kelly says, "It was a three-day holiday weekend. I worked a solid 72 hours on this redesign, not taking any time for sleep, just catnapping briefly when absolutely necessary. I was a rumpled figure. When I finally fell into bed for some very sound sleep, it was the first time I had removed my clothes in 72 hours. I was 28 years old and the result of this, the Air Ministry gave Lockheed an order to build 200 airplanes. This was the largest aircraft production order placed up to that time in the United States." And then he talks about anytime you're working on the frontier, you're trying to

• 35:02Speaker 00

  invent something new. You have to stay on top, you had to be constantly learning and stay on top of the new technology. And this goes back to the fact that he just loves learning and loves being a student. And so he says, "It was and is important for an engineer to keep up with the advancing technology. Studying still held for me the same fascination that it had when I discovered the Carnegie Library. On one vacation in those early years, I reworked all the problems in Fred Weeks' classic book, Aircraft Propeller Design. On another vacation, I reworked every problem in Dr. Clyde E. Love's Differential and Integral Calculus. I was determined not to lose my capability in mathematics, and I enjoyed both those vacations. For many years after I began my work at Lockheed, I would attend a Wednesday afternoon seminar

• 35:44Speaker 00

  conducted by the eminent scientists and engineers at Caltech." And then there's several sections of the book where it's just like these few sentences I'm going to read to you where you realize like the process is in many cases like an absence of process. So they have a failure, a part fails, they find it as fast as possible, they fix it as fast as possible, and then they test it as fast as possible. And again, this is an absence of process. So he says, "Well, we had located our trouble and we were ready to fly. No committee inspections, no review. In those days, when we were ready to fly, we flew. Next day, first flight." And so even when there was these other organizations that would inhibit his ability to move quickly, he would find ways around it. So NACA, which is the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which is a precursor to NASA,

• 36:28Speaker 00

  had a wind tunnel that Kelly Johnson would need to use because he needed wind speeds over 300 miles per hour, which his wind tunnel could not do. And they tell him, "No." So he says, "Our own wind tunnel could not achieve the required high speeds above 300 miles per hour. NACA officials protested every time they had approached speeds in their tunnel. The model had thrashed around so violently, they feared it would cause damage to their tunnel, and that was a risk they did not want to take." So Kelly goes over their head to General Arnold, who was the head of the Army Air Forces at the time. And he sends NACA a message. So this is the message that NACA got directly from General Arnold. "Put that airplane in the tunnel and run the test for Kelly. Find out what's wrong with my airplane. To hell with the tunnel. If it blows up, call me."

• 37:12Speaker 00

  And then he goes back to this idea of the people making the decisions have to suffer the consequences. And so they're developing this plane. And Kelly says, "We need to add a dive flap to the plane." And that would require more expense and more effort. And so there's actually a lieutenant named Lieutenant Kelsey, who doubted the need for such things. And so the response is, "Okay, well, take the plane up, and you test it yourself, and you tell me." And so he put the plane in a dive and soon encountered compressibility effects so extreme that he could not reach the dive flap switch. "When the tail broke off and he was descending to low altitude at very high speed, he bailed out and broke a leg." He then became a believer in the dive flap. And so as you can imagine, in any field where you're a pioneer, the work that you're doing is going more and more valuable. You're going to run into all these strong personalities and these strong characters.

• 37:57Speaker 00

  And so he tells hilarious stories, which were probably not hilarious at the time, probably scary at the time, of Howard Hughes hiring them to build airplanes for TWA. And Hughes wasn't just an owner and the largest stockholder. He was also an avid pilot. He was obsessed with aviation. He was also completely reckless. I think he crashed a plane, what, three or four times? And so Kelly in the book tells the story of they're trying to deliver some of the first units to Howard Hughes. They obviously have to have the customer test it. So Kelly's in the cockpit with Howard Hughes and one of Kelly's pilots. And Howard is trying to just jump to the very end, which we'll see here. "Our normal procedure in checking out a new pilot in an airplane was to go through the maneuvers carefully, then have the student follow through on the controls

• 38:42Speaker 00

  from the copilot's seat, which is what Howard Hughes was supposed to do. We had just taken off when Hughes said to Milo, who's the pilot, "Why don't you show me how this thing stalls?" So Milo lowered the flaps in gear, put on a moderate amount of power, pulled the airplane up, and stalled it. Hughes turned to the pilot and said, "Hell, that's no way to stall. Let me do it." So the pilot turns the controls over to him. So Milo turns the controls over to Howard Hughes. "I was standing between them in the cockpit. Howard reached up, grabbed all four throttles, and applied takeoff power with the flaps full down." Hughes then proceeded to pull back the control all the way as far as we would go to stall the airplane. Never before, nor since, have I seen an airspeed indicator read zero in the air.

• 39:24Speaker 00

  But that's the speed we reached: zero. At that point, I was floating against the ceiling yelling, "Up flaps, up flaps!" I was afraid that we'd break the flaps since we got into a very steep angle. I was very much concerned with Howard's idea of how to stall a plane. And so he says, "Milo, take this thing home," meaning, "take the controls away from Howard Hughes." Hughes turned and looked at me as though I had stabbed him. I repeated, "Milo, take this thing home." There was no question about who was running the airplane program. Milo got in the pilot's seat, and we flew home. Hughes was livid with rage. I had given him the ultimate insult for a pilot, indicating essentially that he couldn't fly competently.

• 40:09Speaker 00

  And so there's a bunch of stories about just the reckless nature of Howard Hughes. I'll just tell you one more, because I thought this was interesting. On a flight as he was approaching Denver, Hughes encountered a big thunderstorm. Instead of flying around it or over it, he plowed right through it. Unfortunately, the passengers had not been warned of turbulence, and several were not strapped in their seats and were injured. And so we're about a decade into his career until he asks his bosses, "Hey, the way we're doing things isn't working. Let me try an experiment. Let me set up a separate unit." This is, of course, Skunk Works. And so the pitch was, "Let me set up an experimental department where the designers and shop artisans could work together closely in development of airplanes without the delays and complications

• 40:51Speaker 00

  of intermediate departments to handle administration, purchasing, and all other support functions. I wanted a direct relationship between design, engineer, and mechanic and manufacturing. I decided to handle this new project just that way." And this is when they build the shop out of old wooden boxes and a circus tent. And he says, "Somehow I got together 23 engineers, counting myself. I simply stole them from around the factory. I wanted people whose work I knew." And then he went about eliminating all these complications that you see in a big company. We had our own purchasing department and every function we needed to operate independently of the main plant. In the strict secrecy of wartime and simply for efficiency and to avoid distraction, we allowed no one who wasn't working on the project to wander in

• 41:33Speaker 00

  and out. He wants to drastically accelerate how fast they move. So let's say they're supposed to deliver the aircraft in 180 days. They have a giant number. And it says, "We counted off the contract days on a big scoreboard." We had scheduled the work on the basis of a 10-hour day, six-day week. No one worked on Sunday. We had to enforce that rule because even with the sickness rate during the last few weeks as high as 50% daily, it was mid-winter and we had poor facilities in which to work and almost no heating. We could not afford to lose even one of our small supervisory staff to illness. On day 143, the plane was accepted by the Army Air Corps and ready for flight. We had beaten the schedule of 180 days. That is the XP80. As you can imagine, they're on the very cutting edge and the

• 42:17Speaker 00

  frontier of aircraft design and manufacturing. There is a lot of accidents. There's a lot of people losing their life. And this is where redundancy in his systems, he says, "just became mania with me." With everything we build, we make sure that we can relight, restart, and keep flying. And he talks about the planning and how spending a few days actually saves a ton of money. So he says, "Every time we release an engineering drawing to our manufacturing director to build a part for our experimental airplane, we also release it to a group of production engineers with these instructions. Find every alternative way of making this, ruling out adverse effect on drag, maintenance, or cost. You can affect all of these characteristics favorably." When we finished building the prototype, we had

• 42:58Speaker 00

  a thick report on how to build a production model. We sat down for three days with that book to choose the best way to build the airplane from every point of view. On this particular project, it saved $10,000 to $20,000 for every airplane built. The total production worldwide was 2,500 aircraft.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  He is constantly hounding on costs. He says this over and over again. Costs must be considered. Aircraft are getting to be so expensive, they are hardly worth it for what they can do. With the price of a fighter aircraft now running more than $30 million per plane with all the equipment, not including pilot costs, I can foresee the day when the fighter pilot will be on the ground, flying an unmanned fighter with a missile in it. It's almost like he's predicting drones, but he's writing this in 1985. I think this can be done remotely at a great savings in aircraft costs, and of course, great savings in manpower, to say nothing of the greater safety for the pilot. This is worth considering.

• 43:57Speaker 00

  And he talks about the kind of people you have to recruit. These are obviously mission-driven people, people obsessed with aeronautics, and people are willing to just make unbelievable personal sacrifices. So he says, "In Skunk works, we never had trouble getting workmen to go wherever we needed them because they knew wherever it is, the work will be exciting and challenging. They cannot, of course, take their families with them for security reasons, but they can return home once a year." Think about that, once a year on long assignments. That's an incredible level of sacrifice. And Kelly had personal sacrifices, including threats on his personal safety. This is during the Cold War with Russia. He's the one that designed the U-2.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  The U-2 spy plane is being flown all over Russia and taking all of these photographs. It flies at like 70,000 to 80,000 feet, and it's used for reconnaissance. So eventually, the Russians are able to shoot one down. And then they take pictures of an aircraft they shot down and publish it in the media. Now, they actually did shoot down a U-2, but the pictures they published were not of the U-2. And so the CIA contacts Kelly and they want him to speak out about it. He says, "The CIA wanted me to provoke and insult the Russians into revealing more about the incidents, so I challenged them publicly." "Hell no," I was quoted in the press, "that's no U-2." "It was about that time that it was suggested to me by security people that I not go to work and come home by the same route, or establish regular patterns of movement.

• 45:23Speaker 00

  And for a few years during this and other secret aircraft developments, I slept with an automatic pistol close by." And so it is during LBJ's presidency.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  That the Skunk Works and Johnson, Kelly Johnson, that is, create the SR-71 Blackbird that flies at three times the speed of sound. It is the most advanced aircraft in the world at the time and still the fastest. And this is where he goes in. Well, it's like, OK, not only are we having to invent new products, we have to invent the manufacturing methods to invent the new product. Everything about the aircraft had to be invented. So he says, "Aircraft operating at those speeds and altitudes," it's at 80,000 feet, because I didn't already say that. "Aircraft operating at those speeds and altitudes would require development of special fuels, structural materials, manufacturing tools and techniques, hydraulic fluid, fuel tank sealants, paints, plastics,

• 46:18Speaker 00

  wiring and connecting plugs, as well as basic aircraft and engine design." Everything about the aircraft had to be invented. Everything. And during the design and creation of the SR-71, he says, "I reverted to my old axiom, keep it simple, stupid. The more complexity, the more potential for problems." And then he has a great advice on how to handle talent. "It's difficult to get an old time machinist to change his ways. He wants to discover on his own how to do something. So in Skunk Works, we put them in the experimental shop under the engineer's direction and made them a party to developing the data. That always is a good tactic. Involve the employee in the whole program as much as possible

• 47:00Speaker 00

  to arouse his interest and inspire his best performance." Now, he's so dedicated to his job, he actually has to find a way to take himself away from work. So he actually loves to be a rancher. He loves being outdoors. He likes riding horses. He likes raising cattle. And I think this one sentence gives you a summary of how important it was to him. He says, "It was a life-saving escape from the pressures of work." And these pressures are so intense that he's got these reoccurring ulcers. They debilitate him. At one point, they cut away part like half of his stomach. And so anytime he has a big problem, he's under a lot of stress at work, these ulcers come. He says, "With more responsibility came more ulcers. Whenever one of our aircraft had an accident, particularly a fatal accident, I would develop a stomach ulcer in about 24 hours."

• 47:46Speaker 00

  And then, right around this time, they find out that his first wife has cancer. She's going to die relatively young. And I think this paragraph will give you an idea of just how horrendous this experience had to be. "It was a devastating blow for both of us. After two operations, we both knew that she would not overcome the deadly disease. She suffered a severe depression during which she attempted to put herself to sleep permanently with pills so that she would not be a burden to me. Fortunately, this happened at the ranch on a day when I returned earlier than expected from working in the fields. I was able to rush her to the hospital, and she kept going for another few years. She died in December 1969. Much as I love my work and always have, perhaps more than most people, I always believe life should be shared to be really meaningful."

• 48:31Speaker 00

  And he really means it. The last chapter is called "A Good Life," and I think his perspective is a perfect way to end a book, a career, and a life. "My work has always been exciting to me and still is. Very serious study, while demanding, always has been a joy. I literally love aerodynamics, mathematics, physics, machinery, all of the tools of my trade. I consider myself very fortunate to have lived my professional life doing exactly what I always wanted to do. The final chapter of my life is not yet written, but if God should call me tonight, I will have had more than my share of it all: poverty and wealth, struggle and success, obscurity

• 49:15Speaker 00

  and recognition, sickness and strength, sorrow and joy, happiness and love. More than my share."