How Lockheed’s Skunk Works Got into the Stealth Fighter Business

GIZMODO ^ | Lt. Col. William B. O'Connor USAF (ret.)

[DogByte6RER]

[Mears]

What is that?

Impressive.

[DogByte6RER]

F-117 Nighthawk

[donmeaker]

The P-80 wasn’t the first US jet fighter. P-59 Airacomet would be the first.

[Cyber Liberty]

Looks like a 117 to me. They are impressive.

[JRandomFreeper]

DARPA has given the best ROI on my tax dollars of any program. Ever.

/johnny

[Steely Tom]

I saw an F-117 at an airshow back in 1998 or 1999. I walked two or three times around it trying to figure out where the exhaust was. When I finally zeroed in on the answer, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

[Red_Devil 232]

Thanks for this history lessen! Good interesting read.

[Norm Lenhart]

Anyone interested in this should hit Amazon ASAP for the book “Skunk Works” by Lockheed’s Ben Rich. It’s an amazing look at a piece of our history.

[Slump Tester]

GREAT article - thanks for posting!

[cliniclinical]

I concur... Not only for the F-117, but the SR-71 as well... The explanation of the “plunger” in the engine intake that allowed the aircraft to operate at high speeds and altitudes is incredible. Skunk Works is a book for anyone interested in military/aviation history.

[Norm Lenhart]

The 71 is my favorite thing in existence. My daughter worked on the 117 and said it’s more incredible than people will ever know ;)

[Erasmus]

[...] originally derived centuries ago by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell.

Well, make that a century and a half. Maxwell's first paper on it was in 1864, IIRC. Oliver Heaviside recast them into modern form twenty years later.

One of the great breakthroughs in the history of Science occurred when Maxwell intuitively inserted a term into one of his equations (the one for the magnetic field) to be symmetrical with the other one (for the electric field). He did this on aesthetic grounds, without any immediate empirical evidence for its inclusion.

However, it gave him a pair of equations that allowed him to predict the existence of a wave, traveling through space, that was composed of both electric (electrostatic) and magnetic fields which reinforced each other and therefore sustained the wave for indefinite distances.

The equations included two constants for the characteristics of the medium through which the wave was travelling; and the speed of the wave was dependent on these two characteristics. (Technically, they are known as the 'dielectric permittivity' and the 'magnetic permeability.')

These had been previously been determined for a vacuum. When they were substituted into Maxwell's equation for the velocity of his hypothetical 'electromagnetic' wave, it gave another value that was already empirically known: the speed of light.

So, on the basis of Maxwell's inspired guess as to the form of his equations, he was soon able to postulate with some confidence that light itself was an electromagnetic wave.

And soon after Heaviside reformulated Maxwell's equations, a young Heinrich Hertz demonstrated how to produce and detect EM waves of practical dimensions much longer than those of light: Radio waves.

[doorgunner69]

When I first saw one in a static display, they had black painted plywood sheets over the exhaust. Armed guards and roped off too.

[tang-soo]

I met Denys Overholser while an engineer with GE Aircraft Engines in Cincinnati, Ohio. He and my boss, Don Foreman (now deceased) were good friends. Don was also somewhat of a stealth pioneer.

I also worked with the original F-117 wing commander, Colonel Robert Jackson while at General Dynamics - though I didn't know his background at the time (He had retired a few years earlier). I didn't find out his connection with the F-117 until The History Channel did a weeklong series on Stealth Technology (about 10-12 years ago) and interviewed him. He was also a former Thunderbird Pilot. Turns out I had a brochure that I had save from an airshow when I was about 8 years old. It had his picture in it. That brought a lot of smiles when I passed it around the office.

Also, the article mentions a test range in White Sands. That was likely the RATSCAT facility near Alamogordo. RATSCAT. Spent 3 weeks there back in the 80s. Clearest night sky I've ever seen.

[dalereed]

That’s the F117!

[Norm Lenhart]

Kind of a side note but the last year they were at Holloman I got to take a tour of the ‘test cells’ where they work on the engines. Being a gearhead it was like going to Nirvana.

Imagine ‘walls’ of Snap-On tool rack/cabnets and clean room style working conditions. I quickly understood why that little toy cost so much. But the really funny part was the drawers full of ‘modified’ tools the crew came up with to actually get work done ;)

[cliniclinical]

That’s pretty awesome... Flying math... Sat through a lecture during open cockpit day at Castle AFB with a sled-driver... Stellar bird! It had not dawned on me until then that max speed and altitude where a function of weight. Thrust levers were essentially at the detents and as fuel was consumed, the aircraft climbed and increased in speed. They essentially ran out of fuel before they ever hit the maximum possible speed and altitude.

[Norm Lenhart]

I think it’s interesting that so much of that plane’s abilities are still classified.

“Sled Driver”...now there’s a book I want in the worst way. I love the stories on that plane posted here on FR from time to time and available on the net. The story about the ‘altitude check’ is hilarious.

Also, My daughter and I stopped at the Tucson museum on a trip. She had never seen a 71 in real life. For all her time with the 117, she still stood there slack jawed when she realized that they built that thing with slide rules and 1950s tech.

[Mears]

Thanks all.

God,I’d love to go out for a “spin” in that.