“The Ship that Never Was” from “Skunk Works” by Ben R. Rich
“Skunk Works” by Ben R. Rich is a worthy sequel to Kelly Johnson’s “Kelly: More Than My Share of It All.” It brings the story of the Lockheed Skunkworks, founded by Johnson, up to 1995. There are a number of lessons for technology entrepreneurs.
“Skunk Works” by Ben Rich is a candid and very funny memoir by the second leader of Lockheed’s Skunk Works. It was published in January 1994, a year before Rich’s death from cancer in January of 1995. It’s well worth a read for a sense of what it’s like to work on impossible and unthinkable products. Rich had many successes during his leadership of the Skunk Works, notably the F-117 NightHawk stealth fighter. This post concentrates on his unsuccessful efforts to sell breakthrough systems that leverage stealth to the Navy.
In THE SPRING of 1978, while we were developing our model for the first stealth airplane, our project photographer stopped me in the hall to complain about defects in a new Polaroid camera we had recently purchased. “I’ve been taking instant view shots of the stealth model, and I’m getting very fuzzy pictures. I think I’ve got a defective lens,” he remarked. ”
