Kelly (22 page)

The former owner was a motion picture distributor who had built a poolhouse complete with motion picture projection equipment, as well as a main residence. The main house is beautiful in the Spanish style and is somewhat larger, in fact, than our Encino home. And the pool is ten feet longer and five feet wider than the Encino pool. We weren’t exactly roughing it there.

This ranch and, I think, most ranches in the area are covered by California’s Williamson Act, which protects truly agricultural property from the untenable taxation that drove us from Lindero. Of course, this imposes a responsibility on the owner, too. There are restrictions on dividing the property; and should it be subdivided for other than agricultural purposes, taxes would be imposed retroactively at the highest use rate.

So, we didn’t have to build our home on the new ranch, just move our equipment from Lindero. It still was a do-it-yourself operation. We bought a big new truck with a 21-foot flatbed for hauling our tractors and other equipment. All the machinery necessary for a working ranch requires a lot of maintenance, so one of my first projects was to build a shop. I had a lot of fun designing it. Having a shop is also one of my joys, and has been since boyhood. I respect machinery and want it taken care of properly. This I do myself on the ranch, saving a great deal in maintenance costs.

My present shop is a large one—40 feet wide, 120 feet long, with a 22-foot-high gable roof. The roof is stressed to take loads of 6,000 pounds so that I can hoist heavy machine elements when necessary. The doors are designed to tolerate wind velocities up to 140 miles an hour, and the building is stressed for earthquake loads of one-quarter unit of gravity laterally.

It is well equipped with lathes, grinders, power saws, welding equipment, a hoist for engine repairs—everything needed to keep all the farm machinery running. It also houses the farm’s working vehicles—six tractors, four trucks, the hay baler, and other equipment.

We built a new house for the ranch foreman and his family and refurbished the original ranch house and a second small frame house for other ranch hands.

We moved our windmill from Lindero—took it all apart and reassembled it—and installed three new ones. They’re all painted yellow like daisies. I tell first-time visitors that they’re cow fans to keep the cows cool in summer. We have seven wells and plenty of water on the ranch but cannot count on the wind for 100 percent of our electric power. Gasoline-powered pumps in the field provide water for the cattle, and we depend on the utility company for the all-electric heating in the main house.

Star Lane was everything Althea and I had wanted our ranch to be. Again she was a full partner with me in its operation. She loved the outdoor life as much as I did. And for me, of course, it was a life-saving escape from the pressures of work.

Although not all that safe, either! There was one time when I had interrupted my work riding the tractor and discing a field to take the jeep and pick up our foreman, Lee Erickson. As we were driving along we saw a little calf lying in the middle of the road. We thought he might be injured or sick, so we got out of the jeep to check.

Now, the one thing you do not do is touch a young calf if the mother is anywhere nearby and you want to stay alive. But Lee gave this one a gentle boot in the tail to see if it could move. Well, it could and did, but it also bawled loudly. I decided to let Lee go on up to his house alone and return to my tractor to finish the discing job.

I hadn’t walked more than a hundred feet when suddenly there was a tremendous noise behind me, a great roar, and charging at what must have been at least 140 knots was what looked like the biggest cow I’d ever seen—the calf’s mother, of course. She should have charged Lee, but he was safely in the jeep, and I was the nearest target.

Thank heaven, I had disced that part of the field pretty thoroughly. I got down in the loose dirt as quickly as I could, falling on my back; there wasn’t time even to turn and fall face down. The cow went right over me, udders dragging over my
face, but hooves not hitting with full force fatally, I hoped. Fortunately, the cow didn’t return to finish the attack on me but rejoined her calf and led it back into the hills.

When I discovered that I could get up, I wondered if I had any broken bones, but decided to try to finish the discing. I figured that I’d feel it soon enough if I had. I was able to finish the job, and when I went up the hill to join Althea at the house for lunch she couldn’t believe what she saw.

“What on earth happened to you?” she asked. My clothes were torn and I was black and blue. There were big bruises on my rib cage where I’d been stepped on—but nothing was broken, apparently.

What an ignominious end it would have been if I’d been killed by a cow after all those thousands of hours of flying in experimental airplanes! I’ve always said it was safer in the air than on the ground.

When I told the story back at the Skunk Works, one of our engineers of Spanish descent and knowledgeable in the art of bullfighting gave me a toreador’s red cape and demonstrated how to use it should I have occasion again to have to duck a charging cow.

For about two years after we bought Star Lane, Althea and I lived an almost idyllic life, not without its pains and difficulties, but overall a very happy time.

My ulcer problem, which I’d fought since my college days, recurred seriously during the compressibility problems with the P-38. One evening during dinner in our Encino home, I just fell off my chair onto the floor. I had been suffering from ulcer symptoms again, and I knew this time it had burst—although I’d never had that experience before.

The pain was severe, and Althea’s first reaction was to give me a stiff double shot of brandy. Not exactly the conventional treatment, but it eased the pain. I had a lot of work to do at the time, so I went to the plant next morning and didn’t get around to reporting to the company doctor for two or three days, even though I knew the ulcer was still bleeding.

“I’ve had some trouble,” I told Dr. Lowell Ford.

“You bet you have. You’re crazy,” he told me when he heard I’d gone to work. But I also had healed in that time. Despite the fact that it usually would not have been prescribed for ulcers, forbidden, even, the alcohol apparently had a relaxing effect on the tensions that led to the ulcer formation. Eventually I was able even to persuade the doctor, who also had ulcers, of the validity of this treatment—in moderation.

During the war years, I was working on as many as six airplanes at one time and making a trip once or twice a month to Washington. In the pre-war DC-3 transports, that meant stops across country; flying was not as enjoyable as it is today in the big jets. At the plant, I would start about six o’clock in the morning and maybe work on the F-80 for an hour or so. Then I’d move on to the P-38 problems while these still were outstanding. Various derivatives of the Hudson were also in development—the Ventura and later the PV-1. The Constellation we kept going, too. And we had responsibility for the turbojet engine development headed by Nate Price. There were enough problems to keep me busy.

My career had moved ahead. After being chief research engineer from 1938, I was made chief engineer in 1952.

With the job came more responsibility and more ulcers. I had had more fun as chief research engineer responsible for designing and testing airplanes. As chief engineer, I had to learn quickly about translating the engineering into production. I discovered I had inherited a department of 5,500 people, about 800 of whom were engineers, and a complex system of drafting, printing, issuing, controlling, and revising production drawings. A simpler system with fewer people was the way I preferred to go, but I couldn’t use the Skunk Works approach with an army of 5,500.

Again I was trying to do many jobs at once. There were later versions of the Constellation transport. The F-104 and U-2 had come along. In those days, whenever one of our aircraft had an accident, particularly a fatal accident, I would develop a stomach ulcer in about 24 hours. One developed over that fatal night operational test with the F-80 and B-25 when they collided.
Another developed over the Constellation grounding. The solution to that when discovered was so simple it took about 15 minutes to re-engineer. I found the darned part myself—a fitting where the aluminum wiring was all scorched. The insulation had been inadequate. We had trouble with the engine backfiring, and we added fuel injection to counter that.

Fortunately, the worrisome nature that produced immediate ulcers during a crisis was overridden by my naturally strong Swedish constitution, and the ulcers would heal in about a week.

All of this took its toll on me physically, though, and on March 25, 1955, an interdepartmental communication to company supervision announced, “On the advice of his doctors … Johnson will take a complete rest … (his) health has suffered from the unusually heavy work load pressures his position has forced him to carry during the past many months … (On) return to work, his activities will be on a reduced basis and limited for an extended period of time to top level technical assignments.”

By 1956, I had been made vice president for research and development. This meant the added job of visiting various divisions of the corporation—the military aircraft production company in Georgia, for example, and the missiles and space division in northern California—to coordinate research and development and to avoid duplication of effort. This was a job I did not like because I did not have direct authority.

This business of suggesting is not my modus operandi. I much prefer to have direct authority, as I have in the Skunk Works, where there is no argument about what will be done nor how to do it. I was, therefore, in my own opinion, a very poor corporate engineer. By 1959, I had decided and announced, “I want no more of this. I don’t like all this traveling. I don’t like this job. I’ll put in full time at the Skunk Works.”

By that time, since 1958, a new title had been created for me as Vice President for Advanced Development Projects. That was the Skunk Works. My stand was accepted, and darned good timing it was, too. It was a very busy period and about
that time we started work on the Oxcart. That would take all the energy I could put into it. And give me another ulcer.

Taking X-rays during an annual physical examination about 30 years after that first time I collapsed with a perforated ulcer, Dr. Ford said, “Kelly, the outlet to your stomach is about as big as a lead pencil. If you don’t do something about it you will die. It could happen in a few weeks!”

At that point, I had accumulated so much scar tissue that I no longer felt any pain in the area. So, in 1970, I submitted to an operation that removed half of my stomach. Fortunately, duodenal ulcers tend to recur in the same place, so I still have a functioning stomach and have not had another ulcer since. It was a good weight reduction program, too, costing about $500 a pound, approximately what it cost on the C-5 cargo airplane.

Through all of this, our ranch—first Lindero then Star Lane—was a welcome retreat. In 1964, a year after we made the move to Star Lane, I was elected to the Board of Directors of the Lockheed corporation. By the next year, Althea began to feel less strong than her usual buoyant self. A physical examination showed that she had cancer.

It was a devastating blow to 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.

I’ve often wondered if a serious automobile accident we had several years earlier, when a drunken driver hit our car broadside, causing head injuries to Althea, had anything to do with her later difficulties.

It was a very, very trying period. Our good friend, Dr. Ford, spent a great deal of time with us, staying overnight at the house after having worked a full day. He not only remained for Althea’s sake but to monitor my own heart. I was having angina attacks during the night.

One of Althea’s hopes had been to endow a chair in my name at Cal Tech, and this she did. It is funded to begin after my death. Althea endured three more operations before she died in December 1969.

She had not wanted to be put in a grave, but rather to be cremated and have her ashes scattered over Star Lane, the ranch she loved so much. This was not legal, we discovered. So, with Dr. Ford and Tony LeVier, I piloted a small airplane over the mountains where we had ridden so frequently in happier times, out over Santa Barbara bay, and far enough out to sea where legally we could fulfill her last wish.

W
HAT THE SKUNK WORKS DOES IS SECRET
. How it does it is not.

I have 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. One exception was the successful development of the Agena-D space vehicle at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company. Another was the Army’s management of its Division Air Defense Gun Program.

But I fear that the way I like to design and build airplanes one day may no longer be possible. It may be impossible even for the Skunk Works to operate according to its proven rules at some point in the future. I see the strong authority that is absolutely essential to this kind of operation slowly being eroded by committee and conference control from within and without.

The ability to make immediate decisions and put them into rapid effect is basic to our successful operation. 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, for an overall high morale are other basics. With small groups of good people you can work quickly and keep close control over every aspect of the project.