Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed

by Ben R Rich

  On November 22, 1969, I flew my first North Korea mission. I was uptight because North Korea was very heavily defended, and on this particular mission we went to every known SAM site in North Korea, all twenty-one of them, and we crisscrossed them, made a big 180-degree turn that took us right across the Chinese border, then came back right down the center of North Korea, then made another 180-degree turn across the demilitarized zone. We crossed North Korea eight to ten times on that mission, covered the entire country. As we finished up and were turning to go home, a right-generator fail light came on. I tried to reset it, but it was no go, so we ended up making an emergency landing in the south and caused a big stir and fuss.

  In ’71, we were tasked to fly three Blackbirds over North Vietnam, which was highly unusual. All other missions used only one airplane at a time. We took off first, refueled over Thailand, and headed north, with the other two planes following. The plan was for us to crisscross over Hanoi in thirty-second intervals at 78, 76, and 74 thousand feet respectively, at a certain point, which we later learned was over the Hanoi Hilton, the infamous POW prison, and deliver sonic booms, one after another. Later on, the vice commander of our squadron hinted that the purpose of the mission was to send a signal to the POWs, a fact I’ve never been able to confirm. Many years later, I talked to POWs who were in that prison at the time and they heard the sonic booms thirty seconds apart but insisted that they didn’t know what in hell it meant.

  Fred Carmody

  I ran the SR-71 operation for Lockheed at Mildenhall, an RAF base in Suffolk, from 1982 to 1989. We had two SR-71s, and when I went in with eighteen Skunk Works mechanics, I replaced eighty Air Force mechanics who had suffered eight aborted missions in a row. We took over and immediately logged eight successful flights in a row and had those blue-suiters scratching their heads.

  The Mildenhall operation was revealed by the prime minister, Mrs. Thatcher, about two years after we got there. Our main deployment was to fly twice a week up to the northern extremes of the Soviet Union to the big naval base of Murmansk, on the Kola peninsula, to keep a sharp eye on their nuclear sub pens. That place was so remote it took us three air-to-air refuelings to get there. Which is why they put their subs there to begin with. The place was very heavily defended by fighters and missiles, but only the Blackbird could fly it safely. They always detected us, but they couldn’t stop us. We flew right up against them but didn’t actually penetrate Soviet airspace. That was a big no-no, by presidential orders. In cases of emergency, engine problems and such, we had to put in to Norway—that happened three times. We took pictures of the subs in their pens, saw which ones were occupied, which empty. Those nuclear subs were a potential threat to our mainland because they carried Polaris-type nuclear missiles that could be fired offshore and hit Washington and New York. So we kept a close count and tracked the subs from the moment they left their pens. The pictures were so clear we could even tell the size of the sub’s screws under the water, count the missile silos on the decks. We took both radar pictures and regular pictures, tested radar frequencies by penetrating their air defense systems, and then did the same thing on long flights down the Baltic coast of East Germany and Poland.

  The Soviets would scramble their MiG-25s against us, but they got up to only sixty thousand feet, then fell off. One of them got up to Mach 3 on a zoom, then fell off. Those MiGs could reach max speeds of Mach 2.5 to 2.7, which wasn’t nearly good enough to catch the SR-71. They also fired missiles at us from time to time, but we used our jammers very effectively. The purpose of the Baltic coastal flights was to gather radar and electronic intelligence as well as obtain good photos of military facilities along the border of the Eastern bloc. On a typical mission, we could get invaluable intelligence on as many as fifty different radar and missile tracking systems deployed against us in the Baltic and Barents Sea regions.

  Our guys out of England regularly overflew the Mediterranean, from Greece to Tunisia. We were far superior to any damned spy satellite. You wanted a picture at 10:01 a.m. Sunday, anywhere in the world, we’d go out and get it for you. We covered the world with a handful of airplanes.

  Lt. Colonel D. Curt Osterheld

  (Air Force RSO)

  My first mission to the Soviet sub pens in the Baltic was in December 1985. At eighty-five thousand feet, the winter view of the northern Russian port areas was magnificent. The land was absolutely white in every direction, and the sea was frozen solid, too, except for the dark black lines where icebreakers had been used and I could see subs moving along the surface, heading for deeper waters. In the polar cold, we pulled engine contrails, which made us a clear target in the cloudless sky. Way down below I could see the spiral contrails of Soviet fighters, scrambled because of us. At that time of year the sun was very low on the horizon even at noon. I had lowered the curtain to cover the left window so I could watch the radar and defensive systems panels in the backseat without having the sun directly in my eyes. As we approached the sub pens we received a “condition one” alert over the high-frequency radio that got our immediate attention. An instant later, the defensive systems panel began lighting up, indicating we were being tracked and engaged by SAM missiles and there might be a missile on the way. I advised my pilot to accelerate out to maximum Mach. I thought, If they really fired a missile, it should be here by now. At that instant, the Velcro that held the sun screen curtain in place let go, and my cockpit was lit with brilliant light. For a split second, I thought, They got us! I let go with a shriek of terror. So much for the image of the fearless flyer. Scared crapless by a blinding flash of winter sunlight.

  Lt. Colonel William Burk Jr.

  (Air Force pilot)

  In the fall of ’82, I flew from Mildenhall on a mission over Lebanon in response to the Marine barracks bombing. President Reagan ordered photo coverage of all the terrorist bases in the region. The French refused to allow us to overfly, so our mission profile was to refuel off the south coast of England, a Mach 3 cruise leg down the coast of Portugal and Spain, left turn through the Straits of Gibraltar, refuel in the western Mediterranean, pull a supersonic leg along the coast of Greece and Turkey, right turn into Lebanon and fly right down main street Beirut, exit along the southern Mediterranean with another refueling over Malta, supersonic back out the straits, and return to England.

  Because Syria had a Soviet SA-5 missile system just west of Damascus that we would be penetrating (we were unsure of Syria’s intentions in this conflict), we programmed to fly above eighty thousand feet and at Mach 3 plus to be on the safe side, knowing that this advanced missile had the range and speed to nail us. And as we entered Lebanon’s airspace my Recon Systems Officer in the rear cockpit informed me that our defensive systems display showed we were being tracked by that SA-5. About fifteen seconds later we got a warning of active guidance signals from the SA-5 site. We couldn’t tell whether there was an actual launch or the missile was still on the rails, but they were actively tracking us. We didn’t waste any time wondering, but climbed and pushed that throttle, and said a couple of “Hail Kellys.”

  We completed our pass over Beirut and turned toward Malta, when I got a warning low-oil-pressure light on my right engine. Even though the engine was running fine I slowed down and lowered our altitude and made a direct line for England. We decided to cross France without clearance instead of going the roundabout way. We made it almost across, when I looked out the left window and saw a French Mirage III sitting ten feet off my left wing. He came up on our frequency and asked us for our Diplomatic Clearance Number. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I told him to stand by. I asked my backseater, who said, “Don’t worry about it. I just gave it to him.” What he had given him was “the bird” with his middle finger. I lit the afterburners and left that Mirage standing still. Two minutes later, we were crossing the Channel.

  Major Randy Shelhorse

  (Air Force RSO)

  On October 28, 1987, I flew from Okinawa to Iran and back—an eleven-hour missio
n into the Persian Gulf. The purpose was deadly serious. The Reagan White House wanted to know whether or not the Iranians were in possession of Chinese Silkworm missiles that could be fired against shipping in the Straits of Hormuz. These missiles posed a threat against oil tankers, and the Blackbird overflights clearly showed that the Iranians indeed had Silkworms in place along the coast. Knowing their exact location, we were able to forewarn the Navy and also deliver some very direct private warnings to the Iranians about what they could expect if they fired one of those Silkworms at shipping. Our government was escorting tankers in and out through the narrow straits to ensure their safety.

  Our flight was code-named Giant Express. And that it certainly was. We flew halfway around the world. After leaving Okinawa, we headed out toward Southeast Asia, and then, south of India, for our second refueling. Five hours after taking off, we approached the Gulf region and could actually see the Navy escorting a line of tankers down below. While in acceleration after the third air refueling, I received the following radio call: “Unidentified aircraft at forty thousand feet, identify yourself or prepare to be engaged.” I immediately transmitted on another UHF frequency specifically designated for this sortie that I was “an Air Force special.” I received no further response. A few months later, an Iranian civilian airliner was shot down by the U.S. Navy in the Gulf. While reading the press accounts of the incident, I recognized the identical transmission to the Airbus that I had received, probably from that very same missile frigate down below. I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I chosen not to respond to their identification demand and maintained my radio silence.

  Some of the riskiest missions had to be personally cleared by the president and were undertaken at moments of high drama and international tensions when the chief executive’s need to know what was happening inside denied or hostile territory was so explicit that issues of war and peace hung in the balance.

  For example, during the early hours of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when the Arab armies caught the Israelis by surprise and scored quick victories on three separate fronts, President Nixon was informed that the Russians had repositioned their Cosmos satellite to provide their Arab clients with real-time overflight intelligence showing troop positions and deployments—a huge tactical advantage. Nixon ordered Blackbird overflights to provide these same kinds of real-time war zone overviews to the Israelis and level the battlefield. However, the British government, afraid of offending the Arabs, refused to allow the Blackbird mission to leave or land at their Mildenhall base, so we flew nonstop to the Middle East from a base in upstate New York—a twelve-thousand-mile round-trip in less than half a day. By the following day, Blackbird’s photo take was on the desk of the Israeli general staff.

  During one of the most tense moments of his presidency, Reagan ordered the Air Force Blackbirds to mount deep-penetration flights along the Polish-Soviet border, in January 1982, following the Polish government’s brutal crackdown against the Solidarity reformers. Poland’s Communist ruler, General Jaruzelski, cut communications with the West and declared martial law; the White House was deeply concerned that the Kremlin not only had ordered these drastic moves, but was about to commit troops to crush the uprising as they had done in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Much to Reagan’s relief, the overflights revealed no Soviet troop movements or any evidence of a military buildup along the border.

  The Blackbird flew again by direct presidential order during Operation Eldorado Canyon, the April 1986 air raid against Muammar Kaddafi of Libya, in direct retaliation for a terrorist attack against a Berlin nightclub frequented by U.S. servicemen. The Blackbirds provided post-raid reconnaissance and damage assessments. These overflights, only six hours following the raid, were extremely dangerous since Libya’s entire air defense system was on maximum alert and eager to bring down the prestigious Blackbird as a prized trophy. Dozens of missiles were launched, but none came close. The photo take was transmitted to the Situation Room an hour after safe landing back in Britain, completing a six-hour, twelve-thousand-mile round-trip, and a few hours later, table-size blowups of bomb damage were shown to Secretary of Defense Weinberger. One photo revealed that an errant bomb had accidentally hit an underground ammunition storage facility not far from the presidential palace. The Libyans thought that the hit was intentional and were stunned at our apparent intimate knowledge of their secret storage facilities. “How did the Americans know?”

  In my view, shared by many blue-suiters, this marvelous airplane should still be operational but, alas, that was not to be. One of the most depressing moments in the history of the Skunk Works occurred on February 5, 1970, when we received a telegram from the Pentagon ordering us to destroy all the tooling for the Blackbird. All the molds, jigs, and forty thousand detail tools were cut up for scrap and sold off at seven cents a pound. Not only didn’t the government want to pay storage costs on the tooling, but it wanted to ensure that the Blackbird never would be built again. I thought at the time that this cost-cutting decision would be deeply regretted over the years by those responsible for the national security. That decision stopped production on the whole series of Mach 3 aircraft for the remainder of this century. It was just plain dumb.

  But the Air Force decided that the twenty or so SR-71s remaining in service from the original procurement of thirty-one aircraft could suffice through the end of this century. In fact, a study by the Defense Science Board review, in 1984, concluded that the Blackbird’s outer titanium skin, annealed by heat on every flight, was actually stronger than when first delivered more than a decade earlier and would last another thirty years. The blue-suiters decided to invest $300 million in updating the airplane’s electronics with digital flight controls and a new weather-penetrating synthetic-aperture radar system, as well as refurbishing its power systems. But General Larry Welch, the Air Force chief of staff, staged a one-man campaign on Capitol Hill to kill the program entirely. General Welch thought sophisticated spy satellites made the SR-71 a disposable luxury. Welch had headed the Strategic Air Command and was partial to its priorities. He wanted to use SR-71 refurbishment funding for development of the B-2 bomber. He was quoted by columnist Rowland Evans as saying, “The Blackbird can’t fire a gun and doesn’t carry a bomb, and I don’t want it.” Then the general went on the Hill and claimed to certain powerful committee chairmen that he could operate a wing of fifteen to twenty F-15 fighter-bombers with what it cost him to fly a single SR-71. That claim was bogus. So were claims by SAC generals that the SR-71 cost $400 million annually to run. The actual cost was about $260 million.

  SR-71 operations were not cheap; they could not fly at cruise speed longer than an hour and a half without requiring the costly and complex planning of air-to-air tanker refueling. And what really annoyed the blue-suiters was the fact that while the Navy, the State Department, and the CIA shared in the intelligence takes acquired on SR-71 missions, none of these users helped to defray the operational expenses. In 1990, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney decided to retire the airplane and end the program. Some of our friends in Congress, like Senator John Glenn, were bitter about the decision, after a two-year struggle to keep it from happening. Senator Glenn warned, “The termination of the SR-71 is a grave mistake and can place our nation at a serious disadvantage in the event of a future crisis.” We had more than forty members of Congress actively seeking to keep the program alive, headed by Senator Sam Nunn, the powerful chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services. But Cheney prevailed. I was a fan of his, thought he was an outstanding DOD Secretary, but I agreed with Admiral Bobby Inman, then the former director of the National Security Agency, who commiserated with me over Cheney’s decision. “Satellites will never fully compensate for the loss of the Blackbird,” Bobby told me. “They have nothing in the wings to replace it and we may be in for some nasty surprises and a whole new set of intelligence problems because of this.” A few days after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, I called General Michael Loh, Air Force vice chief of staff, and told him
that I could have three Blackbirds ready and operational in ninety days to overfly the region. I also could supply qualified pilots. The last three Blackbirds were being used by NASA for high-altitude flight tests. My idea was to provide the blue-suiters with a total package—airplanes, pilots, and ground crews—for a cost of about $100 million. The airplanes would be indispensable providing surveillance over Iraq, and I had another idea, too. “General,” I said, “We could fly over the rooftops of Baghdad at Mach 3 plus at prayer time and sonic-boom the bastards. Just think how demoralizing that would be for Saddam.” General Loh said he would get back to me. About a week later I received a call saying that Dick Cheney had vetoed the idea. The secretary felt that there was no such thing as a one-time-only role for the Blackbird. “Once we let this damned airplane back in, we’ll never get it back out,” he told General Loh.

  Other Voices