by Ben R Rich
As it happened, we achieved 70 percent efficiency within the first half year of our work, but to tweak it above that to our target of 80 percent took an additional fourteen months. Of primary concern was where to precisely locate the supersonic shock wave within the inlet walls. That was the key to achieving maximum efficiency, because the shock wave in the wrong place in the inlet would block incoming air, causing energy loss, drag, and in a worst-case scenario—stall.
I logged hundreds of hours testing inlet shapes and cone models at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in Northern California, a giant complex of high-speed wind tunnels. That became my second home, where I spent weeks at a time using their largest, most-powerful supersonic wind tunnel, a twenty-foot-long, ten-foot by ten-foot rectangular chamber powered by a gigantic compressor capable of driving an ocean liner, and a three-story cooling tower holding tens of thousands of gallons of water. Running Mach 3 pressures for several hours at a time drained so much electricity needed by local industry that we were forced to test only late at night, working usually until dawn. Wind tunnel tests cost us $10,000 to $15,000 an hour and we ran up a stupendous bill because our models were tested from every angle and on more than 250,000 separate measuring points, across a broad range of Mach numbers and pressures.
But Kelly preached that a precise model, even one like ours that was one-eighth the size of the real inlet, would provide precise measurements for the full-size model as well. So our wind tunnel testing was critical to the airplane’s success and usually ended at sunrise, when our exhausted little group of analysts finished computing the previous night’s test results. Nowadays, such calculations can be performed in a mini-second by supercomputers.
Kelly was now so desperate to save weight that he upped the ante to one hundred and fifty bucks to anyone who could save him a measly ten pounds. I suggested we inflate the Blackbird’s tires with helium and give each pilot a preflight enema. Kelly tried the helium idea, but helium bled right through the tires. The enema idea he left to me to try to promote among the pilots.
One bet easy to collect was that we would never have this airplane flying on time. By the end of 1960, we were over budget by 30 percent and Kelly was forced to concede we would be at least a year late in getting the Blackbird into the sky.
The biggest delay was in my bailiwick. We had contracted the inlet control mechanism that would move and position the cones to Hamilton Standard, which was also doing the fuel control system for Pratt & Whitney. The trouble was that the pneumatic inlet controls they devised were not responding quickly enough. We had spent $18 million to develop this system, but after more than a year the problem was unsolved. Finally, I took the matter to Kelly. I said, “Kelly, I think we’ve got to cut our losses and find someone else to get the job done.”
He cussed and agreed. We went to a company called Air Research and they developed an electronic control that saved our bacon. And they did it in less than a year. Meanwhile Pratt & Whitney was struggling with a slew of problems that were putting them further and further behind schedule. Dick Bissell and his assistant, John Parangosky, watched in anguish as our delays and costs mounted. In pique, Parangosky had begun referring to the P & W engine as the “Macy’s engine,” and complained to Bill Brown, their program manager, rather unfairly, “If we gave as much money to R. H. Macy’s, they could build that engine in time for Christmas.” By mid-1960, the agency decided to crack a mean whip. Kelly was called on the carpet and told he had to accept a CIA engineer bird-dogging in his shop and looking over all shoulders. Kelly blew up. He knew the agency was only trying to cover their own asses. But Parangosky, whom Kelly liked and trusted, flew in from Washington and warned him that if he refused the request there was a grave likelihood that the CIA would cancel the contract entirely.
Kelly fumed. “No, John! I’m not gonna have one of your spies poking into my business. Bissell promised me you guys would keep hands off and let me do this thing my way just like the U-2.”
“Kelly, be reasonable. We won’t get in your way. We just want someone here you can trust and we can too.”
He suggested a very bright and able engineer on the CIA’s payroll named Norm Nelson, whom Kelly had known from World War II days, and both liked and respected. Kelly sulked but ultimately surrendered. “Well,” he said, “I’ll let in Norm Nelson, but not another goddam person. You got that? Besides, you tell Nelson he can have a desk, a phone, but no chair. I expect him in the shop, not sitting on his fat duff.”
Nelson, who arrived in the spring of 1960, became the first outsider ever allowed a place inside Kelly’s realm. He gave Norm a free hand and actually took suggestions because he respected Norm’s judgment. We all knew that he reported directly to Bissell, and he knew that we kept him out of certain meetings and didn’t let him in on everything. But Norm was sharp. I recall one meeting in 1961, when Kelly told Norm that the agency had given us an additional $20 million to develop wing tanks on the Blackbird to extend its range. Norm did some quick calculations and figured out we would extend the airplane’s range only eighty miles. “Fooling around with wing tanks at this point will be more trouble than it’s worth,” Norm insisted. Kelly said, “You’re probably right.” Kelly Johnson sent back the $20 million that afternoon.
But our biggest problem was about as easy to conceal from Norm as a pregnant pachyderm on top of a flagpole. Norm Nelson came aboard just as we were starting to build a mock-up of the fuselage-cockpit section, which would contain more than six thousand parts, for heat testing inside an oven. To our horror, we discovered that the titanium we were trying to use was as brittle as glass. When one of the workers dropped a piece off his bench, it shattered in a dozen pieces. The trouble was diagnosed as poor quality-control procedures in the manufacturer’s heat-treatment process—a problem that caused endless delays, forcing us to reject 95 percent of the titanium delivered and set up a rigorous quality-control procedure.
For an outfit that detested red tape, we now found ourselves wallowing in bureaucratic procedures. We sample-tested for brittleness three out of every ten batches of titanium received and kept detailed records of millions of individual titanium parts. We could trace each part back to the original mill pour, so if a part went bad later on, we could immediately replace other parts from that same batch before trouble developed.
We also learned the hard way that titanium was totally incompatible with many other elements, including chlorine, fluorine, and cadmium. When one of our engineers drew a line on a sheet of titanium with a Pentel pen, he discovered that the chlorine-based ink etched through the titanium just like acid. Our mechanics working on the engine installation used cadmium-plated wrenches to tighten bolt heads. When the bolts became hot, the bolt heads just dropped off! It took intensive detective work to zero in on the cadmium contamination culprit, and we quickly removed all cadmium-plated tools from toolboxes. Even the routine matter of drilling a hole became a nagging frustration. When machining standard aluminum, a hundred holes could be drilled without resharpening the bit. With titanium, we had to resharpen every few minutes and were forced to develop special drills using special cutting angles and special lubricants, until we finally were able to drill more than 120 holes before having to resharpen. But it took us months of painstaking experimentation to get that far.
Miles of extrusions were required to produce an aircraft the size of the Blackbird, so it was necessary to invest time and more than a million dollars in new state-of-the-art precision drills, cutting machinery, powerheads, and lubricants.
For each problem solved, two or three others suddenly cropped up. We were stunned when spot welds on panels began to fail within six or seven weeks. Some intensive sleuthing revealed that the panels had been welded during July and August, when the Burbank water system was heavily chlorinated to prevent algae growth. The panels had to be washed after acid treatment, so we immediately began using only distilled water. During heat tests, the wing panels warped so badly they looked like potato chips.
We worked for months to find a solution and finally used corrugated panels that allowed the metal to expand without warping under immense heat friction. At one point an exasperated Kelly Johnson told me: “This goddam titanium is causing premature aging. I’m not talking about on parts. I’m talking about on me.”
We set up training classes for machinists using titanium for the first time and a research operation for developing special tools that would make their jobs easier. Between the new machines and the training, our bean counters figured that ultimately we saved $19 million on the production program.
Still, unforeseen problems kept increasing the costs, and only a few days after the November 1960 elections, which brought John F. Kennedy into office and took the Republicans out, Kelly returned from a week’s vacation and found a wire awaiting him from Dick Bissell, inquiring about what it would cost the government to cancel the Blackbird program. “I am very afraid,” Kelly noted in his private log, “about what will be Kennedy’s attitude toward the program, its overall cost increase, which is very high on all fronts, and the fact that our Russian friends have now come up with a new Tall King radar which appears to be capable of detecting a target about one-third the size that we are able to accomplish with the Blackbird. With all this we have made remarkable strides in reducing the radar cross section, and our experts say we would have about one chance in 100 of being detected, with practically no chance of being tracked.”
Our chief chemist, Mel George, helped us to develop special antiradar coatings loaded with iron ferrites and laced with asbestos (long before it became a dirty word) to be able to withstand the searing heat from the tremendous friction hitting the leading edges of the airplane. These coatings were effective in lowering the radar cross section and comprised about 18 percent of the airplane’s materials. In effect, the Blackbird became the first stealth airplane; its radar cross section was significantly lower than the numbers the B-1B bomber was able to achieve more than twenty-five years later.
To save time and money and maintain high quality standards, we did our own milling and forging and at one time approached the ability of our vendor’s plants to roll parts to precise dimensions. We even developed our own cutting fluid that would not corrode titanium. To prevent oxidation of the titanium—which caused brittleness—we welded in specially constructed chambers with an inert nitrogen gas environment. In all we had about twenty-four hundred trained fabricators, machinists, and mechanics working on the project, all of them specially trained and carefully supervised. And at the height of production, in the mid-1960s, we employed a huge force of nearly eight thousand workers and delivered one Blackbird per month. While we were trying to build that first airplane, the unions were giving Kelly fits because he ignored seniority rules and chose the best workers, so Kelly had the union heads cleared and walked them through the plant and showed them the airplane. He said, “Gents, this airplane is vital for our nation’s security. The president of the United States is counting on it. Please don’t get in my way here.” They backed off.
For security and other reasons, the airplane was assembled in various buildings in the complex. One unique, extremely time-saving technique was to build the fuselage on the half shell. The left half and right half were assembled independently to create easier worker access, then fit together and riveted into place. That was a major first in aircraft manufacturing.
Other Voices
Keith Beswick
I began working for the Skunk Works in flight-test operations on the U-2 out at Edwards Air Force Base in October 1958. By the 1960s I was put in charge of flight testing for the Blackbirds. We were working on the cutting edge, forced to improvise a dozen times a day. We would rig up some of the damndest tests ever seen. I remember when Ben Rich and his cohorts decided to test their cockpit air-conditioning system, they put one of our test pilots inside a broiler big enough to roast an ox medium rare, to see if their cooling system really worked well enough. The guy sat inside a cylinder cooled to 75 degrees by Ben’s air-conditioning system while the outer skin of the cylinder cooked to about 600 degrees. I asked Ben, “What would you do if the system failed?” He laughed. “Get out of town in a hurry.”
During the test phase of the Blackbird, we pumped air pressure into the fuel tanks up to one and a half times greater than the design limits. We did this late at night, inside Building 82, when there were very few people around, because if you’re pumping up that much titanium and if there should be a major failure and the thing blows—that’s an awful lot of energy bursting like a balloon. It would blow out windows in downtown Burbank, so we filled the fuselage with several million Ping-Pong balls to dampen any explosive impact and hid behind a thick steel shield with a heavy glass window, watching the airplane getting all this high-pressure air pumped into its tanks. We were pumping up to twelve inches of mercury and got to about ten when suddenly, Kaboom! The drag chute compartment in the rear blew out. Henry Combs, our structural engineer, took a look at the damage and went back to the drawing board and made the fixes. A few nights later we were back behind the protective shield in Building 82. This time we got up to ten and a half inches of mercury when the drag chute forward bulkhead ruptured with a loud bang. Henry took notes and went back to the drawing board. Three nights later we were all back for more testing. The pumping began and we heard the airplane crickling and crackling as the pressure mounted. It was really tense behind that shield as the mercury rose. We got up to eleven and a half inches of mercury and heard the airplane go crick, crack, crick. And Henry shouted, “Okay, stop. That’s close enough.”
In January 1962 we were ready to cart the Blackbird out to the test site. The airplane was disassembled into large pieces and would be trucked out in a heavily guarded wideload trailer, 105 feet long and 35 feet wide. Dorsey Kammerer, head of the flight-test shop at that time, came up with the idea of driving the entire route ahead of time using a pickup truck with two bamboo poles up on top. One pole was as wide as the load would be going along the edge of the series of freeways and underpasses. The second pole was exactly as high as the load. They drove the entire route, and any traffic or speed signs that hit against the pole, they pulled over and used a hacksaw to cut the sign off. Then they fit the pieces back with a brace and bolt and marked the sign. On the day we moved the airplane under wraps the lead security car stopped at all the marked signs, undid the bolts to take down the sign while the truck passed, then the rear security car bolted the signs back in place and the convoy moved on. But not even that kind of efficiency could overcome the unexpected disaster. Midway into the trip, a Greyhound bus passed us too closely and was scraped. Our security guys flagged him over, haggled for a while with the driver, and paid him $3,500 cash in damages right on the spot—to keep any official insurance or accident report from being filed involving the most top secret truck caravan in America.
We were scheduled to fly the airplane for the first time only thirteen days after we got it out to the test site. The J-58 engines weren’t ready, however, but Kelly didn’t want to wait, so in typical Skunk Works fashion, we reengineered the insides of the engine mounts to put in lesser-powered J-75s. The fuel, JP-7, has a kerosene base and such an extremely high flash point that the only way to ignite it was by using a chemical additive called tetraethyl borane, injected during the start procedure.
The first time we tried to test the engines, nothing happened. They wouldn’t start. So we rigged up two big 425-cubic-inch Buick Wildcat race car engines, an estimated 500 horse-power each, to turn the massive starter shafts and those suckers did the trick. The hangar sounded like the damned stock car races, but starting those huge engines was tough. The engine oil, formulated for high temperatures, was practically a solid at temperatures below 86 degrees. Before each flight, the oil had to be heated and it took an hour to heat it 10 degrees. But once those engines roared to life, it was a sight to behold. Twenty seconds into takeoff, the Blackbird achieved 200 mph in forward speed.
Every time I saw that Blackbi
rd on a runway I got goosebumps. It was the epitome of grace and power, the most beautiful flying machine I’ve ever seen. I was up in the control tower for the April 25th high-speed taxi test. Our test pilot, Lou Schalk, headed down the runway and over-rotated the engines slightly so that the airplane became airborne for a few seconds, wobbling back and forth. I thought Lou would stay airborne and circle around and land, but instead he put it back down right then and there in a big cloud of dust on the lake bed. For a moment, my heart stopped. I couldn’t tell whether or not he crashed. And it seemed an eternity before the nose of the airplane appeared out of a cloud of dust and dirt, and I heard Kelly’s angry voice over the radio, “What in hell, Lou?”
10
GETTING OFF THE GROUND
THE BLACKBIRD was a wild stallion of an airplane. Everything about it was daunting and hard to tame—building it, flying it, selling it. It was an airplane so advanced and awesome that it easily intimidated anyone who dared to come close. Those cleared to see the airplane roar into the sky would remember it as an experience both exhilarating and terrifying as the world shook loose. Richard Helms, then a high-level CIA executive, recalled watching a Blackbird take off on a night flight from our secret base in the 1960s, with the roar of an oncoming tornado and the ground shaking under his feet like an eight-point earthquake, as the engines spouted blinding diamond-shaped shock waves. “I was so shaken,” Helms told me recently, “that I invented my own name for the Blackbird. I called it the Hammers of Hell.”