May 26, 2020 Skunk Works

The Liberty Gazette

May 26, 2020

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: On December 20, 1989, the 25th anniversary of the SR-71 “Blackbird” was celebrated in style. This legendary aircraft impressed crowds with low passes at Beale Air Force Base, just north of Sacramento, then headed south for three low passes over the Skunk Works—official nickname for Lockheed’s Advanced Development Programs.

Soon after the celebration, politics forced the Blackbird to retire from military service. In its time, the SR-71 thumbed its nose at every adversary; no enemy could touch its speed and altitude capabilities.

The ingenuity to conceive of something so amazing was inspired by one man, Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, the rough-and-tumble leader of the Skunk Works. His team of select and sundry aerospace professionals worked under tight security, often stricter than when building the atomic bomb. Even under that pressure, Lockheed cranked out airplanes like the P-38, the F-104, the U-2 and the venerable SR-71, and they completed those projects under deadline and under budget. The U-2 went from concept to flying prototype in less than 90 days. The stubborn and thrifty Kelly Johnson was proud to give back to the government unspent funds and show them what could be done when not impeded by government bureaucracy.

Building the Blackbird, they threw out the airplane design rule book and started from scratch, creating technology and production processes never before imagined. The plane was developed for the CIA in 1958 as the A-12, designed using slide-rules before calculators existed. It went from drawing board to first flight in four years. The team felt the earth shake as they watched the prototype thunder into the skies above Area 51.

On March 6, 1990, the Blackbird made a final sprint across the U.S. at an average speed of 2,120 mph. Traveling at 3.3 times the speed of sound—faster than a bullet leaving a rifle barrel—it laid a continuous sonic boom from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. flying 2,404 miles in 67 minutes. The boom was heard across the country. And the record still stands.

My logbook entry for December 20, 1989 records my personal brush with history. I had departed from Inyokern Airport in the desert north of Edwards Air Force Base, headed back to Ontario for another load of Christmas cargo. As I lumbered along in a bumblebee-like Twin Otter in the cool wintry morning air, I chatted with the Edwards Approach controller while transitioning their Military Operations Area. He asked, “Hey, do you want to watch an SR-71 take off?”

Who wouldn’t? “Yes!”

He had me loiter over Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale. I watched as a U-2 spy plane went first, and then the Blackbird. It accelerated down the 10,000’ runway rocketing westward, afterburners spewing white-blue-diamond shock waves. It reached 400 knots shortly after the wheels left the ground, then rapidly disappeared.

“Did you see it?” asked the controller.

“Wow! Awesome!”

“Did you notice the two hundred thousand people at the end of the runway?”

“Uh, no…with eyes on that black beauty, who would?”

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