Rich, Ben R. and Janos, Leo. Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years
at Lockheed. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1994. 370 pages.
In a hangar at the Burbank, California airport during the Cold War,
Lockheed's super-secret, windowless facility went by the name of "Skunk
Works." Ben Rich arrived in 1954 as an engineer, succeeded Clarence "Kelly"
Johnson as director in 1975, and retired in 1991. Rich's first assignment
was the CIA's U-2 spy plane. This was followed by the SR-71 Blackbird, a
plane that broke records for speed and altitude. His crowning achievement
was the F-117 stealth fighter. Essentially undetectable on enemy radar, this
fighter proved effective in laser-guided bombing runs during the Gulf War.
Rich was assisted in this autobiography by co-author Leo Janos, who also
helped with the autobiography of test pilot Chuck Yeager.
This book is not for those who are interested in the dirty laundry of
the Cold War. Rich is an engineer and manager, and doesn't pretend to be a
geopolitical strategist. His book is useful primarily as aviation history,
and as a window on the defense industry, with its problems of procurement
and over-classification. Skunk Works employees were given the freedom to
turn out some impressive engineering over the years. Rich notes that the
trend these days is toward increasing supervision and bureaucracy. U.S.
corporations should follow the Skunk Works model, he feels, to maximize
their capacity for innovation and better compete in the global economy.
ISBN 0-316-74330-5
Extract the names from this source
Back to search page