Kelly

by Clarence L. Johnson

  The vertical ascent XFV-1, an unsuccessful design concept. It was characteristic of Kelly Johnson to write off aircraft developments he came to view as impractical—regardless of the financial and manhour loss of initial investment.

  Three times I was offered a company presidency at Lockheed and three times declined it. To me, there was no better job within the corporation than head of Advanced Development Projects—the Skunk Works. I was doing what I’d wanted to do since I was 12 years old.

  17

  Farewell, Sweetheart

  BEFORE ALTHEA DIED, SHE URGED ME TO REMARRY. She did not want me to be lonely. I endured it for awhile—fortunately this was a period of demanding work for me—but I knew I could not continue to live that way. Much as I love my work and always have—perhaps more than most people—I also believe life should be shared to be really meaningful and be balanced with the pure pleasure of recreation.

  My secretary at the time was a pretty, petite redhead. She had worked for me for ten years, the last two actually as an administrative assistant. She not only was beautiful but well educated and talented, a former ballet student. She became more and more important to me personally; and in May of 1971 I married Maryellen Elberta Meade in the little Lutheran church at Solvang, near the ranch. We honeymooned in Hawaii.

  Once again I was happy in my personal life as well as in my profession. I knew that Maryellen was, too. She was my “Sweetheart.” But not for long, about a year and a half.

  In the brief, happy period we enjoyed, Maryellen came to love Star Lane as I did. We rode horseback together over the ranch whenever we could. She took up golf, too, playing at Lakeside Golf Club in Toluca Lake, where I have been a member for many years. As a relative beginner, she teamed frequently with another player of comparable handicap, Nancy Powers Horrigan.

  But the diabetes that had been diagnosed in Maryellen some years earlier but held under control became more serious. The first serious effect was to her eyesight. We tried everything. She underwent hundreds of laser treatments to reduce the blood spots on her retina, but the treatments were only slightly successful.

  An operation developed at Stanford University offered hope. She submitted to the procedure twice, the second time knowing that the entire eyeball might have to be removed. She was determined to take every chance to retain some sight. The operations caused her great pain and anguish and unfortunately were unsuccessful. The continuing loss of sight was gradual. At one point, she used a television-screen-size magnifier to read. Eventually, she lost sight in both eyes.

  Maryellen began to experience kidney failure and was on dialysis for more than a year before she began to explore the possibility of a kidney transplant. Tests showed that her sister Irene’s kidney would prove a compatible exchange, and the operation was performed. It required repeated treatments over several years to forestall a threatened rejection, but finally the transplant became fairly well established and no longer showed signs of failure. In this same period, she had another operation at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Her sister donated a part of her pancreas, but within two weeks it was rejected.

  In 1975, I took partial retirement. I needed to take Maryellen to numerous doctors’ appointments and hospital visits. During one period, we were seeing from three to seven doctors each week.

  During her stay at Mayo, an infection was discovered in the big toe of her right foot—an extremely dangerous condition for a diabetic because of the likelihood of gangrene. It wasn’t many months after her return to California that the toe had to be amputated, then her right leg below the knee. She was fitted with an artificial limb, learned to adapt to it, and got around with the aid of a cane. In one year, she had five major operations.

  With the loss of her sight, Maryellen lost her ability to balance, so her movement was restricted to a wheelchair.

  Throughout this long ordeal, she was unfailingly courageous. She was very much aware of what I had been through with Althea’s illness and did not want to cause such an experience again. Her frequent companion—and a great help to me as well when business interferred with my taking Maryellen to doctors’ appointments—was Nancy. But I was with “Sweetheart” through all her major surgery.

  Her health began to fail in other ways. She developed angina. Her strength was ebbing, and her weight slipped to 89 from 117 pounds.

  Several times I had to rush her to the hospital when she passed out from incorrect doses of insulin. There was no stability to her condition, and it was difficult to establish just how much insulin to administer. I bought an electronic device with which I could measure her blood sugar for the injections I gave her several times a day. Dr. Howard Rosenfeld of Valley Presbyterian Hospital worked with us faithfully throughout this period.

  For most of the ten years of our marriage, it was one long disheartening struggle against a siege of failing health. I did not escape untouched, myself. There had been the operation in 1970 to remove half of my stomach—and with it the recurring ulcer problem. Later, there was also the uncomfortable and not uncomplicated necessity to remove a piece of bamboo I’d accidentally driven into my lower colon. And I required a triple-bypass heart operation. In my case, the operations were successful, and my health was restored.

  But Maryellen spent the last year of her life almost totally bedridden. Her loyal visitors until the end were Faye Rich, Ben’s wife, and Nancy.

  Because of what I, myself, have been through with hospitals, doctors, and the medical world, I have determined to make it easier for others who have their loved ones in intensive care, or under treatment for serious operations, incurable illness, or whatever problem that requires continuing and recurring presence in a hospital. I am funding at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Burbank the building of a hospice with about 20 simply-appointed rooms where family members can sleep comfortably or just rest, bathe, have telephone and other facilities, and be nearby for comfort and reassurance. It should be operating by the mid-’80s.

  Knowing that she was dying, Maryellen told me she felt as Althea had that I should not remain alone. “Sweetheart” died in Encino on October 13, 1980.

  We buried her in a beautiful setting on the side of a grassy hill overlooking the San Fernando Valley. Many friends and my colleagues from the Skunk Works came to express their sorrow. As they left one by one and in small groups, I found myself standing alone by the gravesite. Nancy noticed this and came up to join me. We walked back down the hill together. She had been a solid support to me as well as Maryellen for the last seven or eight years. She is a beautiful brunette whom I had come to know as an intelligent and admirable person. I realized that I still needed her with me. A scant month after Maryellen’s death, I asked her to marry me. Nancy worried that it might seem too sudden. My answer was that while I would be sorry if anyone felt that way, I was not concerned with impressing other people. Life was too short. I had done my mourning for Maryellen through the last years of suffering with her.

  “Let’s put the past away,” was my persuasion. “I don’t have time to wait as a mere matter of form. Let’s get on with life.” Nancy agreed and we were married in November of that year.

  18

  Defending Ourselves

  THE DANGER IN PLANNING OUR NATIONAL DEFENSE is that we prepare to fight World War II all over again. The victor in any future war will have learned that lesson. If there is a third world war it will be a great deal different.

  Is the defense currently being programmed for this country really effective? Does it look far enough ahead? Does it risk more than necessary? Are we getting the most for our money? Is it costing too much? Is a “prohibitively expensive” defense really so? Do we want to go down in history as the richest nation in the history of mankind—but be destroyed?

  Or is it possible that the realization that no country can afford the defense necessary against new technology might so affect diplomacy that war really does become unthinkable?

  The history of the human race does not offer much encouragem
ent. Civilizations have been devastated before with an “ultimate” weapon.

  The invention of the longbow and then the crossbow were as important to warfare in their time as the atom bomb or laser and particle weapons today and tomorrow.

  When a man fought astride his horse bareback, with only knee pressure and a pull on the mane for control, any peasant could pull him off, stab him, or knock him out with a stone ax. But when the horseman developed a flight control system—a bridle, then saddle, and stirrups—war became darned dangerous for someone on foot.

  The invention of the English longbow that could kill a French knight in armor from a distance of 1,300 feet so shattered the mores of the time that the Pope declared in effect, “Cursed, ye who use the longbow.” It was unthinkable that an unworthy peasant could overcome a noble knight. The longbow had a rapid-fire capability, too. In their first use of the longbow on the European continent, the English decimated the French at the Battle of Cressy in 1346, when their marksmen could launch arrows in waves, each shot requiring only a few seconds.

  The Turkish crossbow, though slower, had more power—being cranked back mechanically—and could send an arrow slightly farther.

  It wasn’t until 1803—although the rifle dates from the 15th century—that the Kentucky long rifle, invented by a Pennsylvania Dutchman, could deliver a greater impact with higher accuracy than the English longbow. But the real reason the rifle then became important on the battlefield was not that it was so efficient at killing people but because it made so much smoke and noise that it frightened the horses!

  The use of mustard gas in World War I was viewed as so terrible a weapon that all nations agreed to outlaw its use. This restraint was observed in World War II. But then, the gas would have been difficult to control in dispersion and not effective enough militarily for the user to face the inevitable international opobrium. Since Korea, however, use of nerve gas has been reported on more than one side. The morality of man on record does not, I fear, hold out much hope for an end to deadly human conflict.

  The technological battles of today will determine the outcome of any future world war. It will be won with new weapons—lasers and charged particle weapons for defense, “stealth” technology to make attacking aircraft invisible, and space satellites for navigation and missile firing. Computer capability may be the most important element of all to winning the conflict, being the controlling technology, insuring the accuracy of weapons firing.

  We must not sell our technology. We must not sell, for example, our best electronic gear—the silicon chips and galium arsenide chips that give computers a memory of millions of bits of information for guidance of missiles, aircraft, submarines, and satellites.

  Computer technology is a field in which this country has led for some time. It will be fundamental to our defense against the intercontinental ballistic missile. With enough power, beams can be directed to destroy incoming targets from space bases or from earth bases. These targets—as many as 12 warheads on each missile—must be detected and destroyed with near-100 percent reliability while they still are above the earth’s air blanket, well over 100 miles up.

  They must not be allowed to get low enough so that the blast to destroy them creates fallout. Even a low-level blast could destroy our own missile bases and cities. A direct hit on earth, with the resultant dispersion of polluted dirt and debris, would be devastating.

  Our navigation satellites are fundamental to guiding our submarine-launched missiles with the same accuracy as missiles launched from fixed-ground locations. If we cannot protect our satellites, we cannot insure the accuracy of our missile firings.

  In the battle for technology, it is not only what we do but what we do not do that will be important. Our defense can be endangered by actions we fail to take. Failure to develop supplies of critical material. Failure to exploit the resources we have. Failure to think innovatively. Inadequate basic research and development. Insufficient attention to training of technicians, engineers, and physicists. Failure to stop technology transfer.

  When we were fighting on the same side with the Russians in World War II, there was a considerable open exchange of technology, of course. They had as good or better equipment than ours in some cases. Our tanks were not comparable to theirs in winter. Their aircraft were better winterized than ours and were operating in freezing weather when we could not even start ours. Winter was a familiar friend for them. On the other hand, our tanks were desertized to operate in Africa, whereas the Russian tanks in the desert would grind to a halt in no time at all.

  There also was some inadvertent exchange. We found that when one of our aircraft would have to make a forced landing in Russian territory it would be very difficult to get it back. We tried hard to avoid that. They did copy from two B-29s forced down and retained there.

  The United States has been slow to tighten security on access by Russia, especially to some seemingly simple but strategically important basic technology.

  Concrete hardness testers, for example, would not seem at first thought to be strategically important. They are used in this country to determine strength in a bridge or roadway—or a missile installation. The tester tells us what kind of weapon it would take to knock out an installation. Several were sold to Russia before supply was cut off.

  Gear-shaping equipment that has made our submarines more quiet for years than the Russians’ has been sold to them. So has ball-bearing grinding equipment that could improve their missile-firing accuracy by a factor of eight or ten.

  Our own Air Force some years ago received an award for size of a load carried in a single airplane—40,000 pounds of switching gear flown to Russia in a C-5 cargo plane. And how would that gear be used? It was capable of switching tremendous amounts of power in nanoseconds, a necessity in magnetohydrodynamics—generating high-powered rays electrically or from nuclear sources. The Russians needed the American equipment to generate the very short time pulse that is the basis of what we believe to be one of their new weapon systems.

  It was no secret that they were undertaking four to five times more work than this country in the field of lasers and charged particles—commonly called “death rays”—the next major weapons. Should the Russians develop the capability first to make our missiles impotent, there won’t be a war, just a surrender. They may be ahead of us in charged particles. I think we may be ahead in lasers. I’m quite sure we are ahead in infrared use. But I do not think we should make it any easier for them by transferring technology in any of these areas.

  There was interest by the Russians during the early ’70s in buying Lockheed’s L-1011 transport. It was the latest in advanced passenger airliners. The Russians wanted to buy three planes only. This would have provided them with three complete sets of drawings and all manuals, including details on the world’s only advanced automatic blind landing system. That would have been very useful for all-weather bombers. It would have been a very inexpensive way to acquire the technology without a long research and development program. And the Rolls-Royce engine on the airplane is much better than anything the Russians have. I was one who protested that sale, and I must not have been alone. Somewhere along the line the deal was dropped. The English are reported to be considering sale of the engine still.

  Future military aircraft will be very expensive. An entire new fleet—fighters, bombers, ground-attack airplanes, cargo carriers—designed with the latest “stealth” radar avoidance techniques—would cost more than this country could afford realistically.

  We will have fewer types of advanced new models and fewer of them in number. Because of the high cost, it becomes critical to deploy them only on key missions. Vulnerability of the new systems can be lessened and effectiveness increased by mixing them in service with the large number of old and obsolete models—manned on support missions, or unmanned as bombers, missile carriers, or drone decoys.

  In new design, we must not look backward and try to put maneuverability in the airplane over all else, but rather
put it in the missile. We may not need to endanger a man in the vehicle at all on the most hazardous missions.

  It will be a very selective process, deciding how to fight a future war. Superior performance will be required of the new systems. And toward that end, work needs to be done in several basic fields. It should not be forgotten that the major aeronautical advances of World War II were not ours but German—the swept wing, the delta wing, and the jet engine, for example.

  Work needs to be done to give our fighter aircraft more range in supersonic flight than they now have flying subsonically, and without afterburner and its extravagant use of fuel. The range of the F-15 in supersonic flight at sea level is about 57 miles. The F-14 doesn’t fly much farther. The extra range will come with improvement to the type of engine built by Bristol and used now in the Concorde transport. This engine shifts cycles, using a slight amount of afterburner to boost speed to supersonic, then cuts off the afterburner to cruise at Mach 2 with very economical fuel consumption.

  Another area requiring more research in the transonic range—speeds from Mach .9 to Mach 1.1. In this speed range today, aerodynamic drag goes up by a factor of 300 to 1,000 percent, with tremendous compressibility effects. We still rely on primitive forms of dealing with this phenomenon. We have learned how to deflect it, but not yet to conquer it.

  There are ways of minimizing it. In the F-104, we did it with a razor-thin wing. It can be accomplished also with highly swept-back wings. In the YF-12A, the brute power of the engines just pushes the plane through the transonic range. But these are not efficient methods of solving the basic problem.