How Lockheed's Skunk Works Got

into the Stealth Fighter Business

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

Filed to: WAR 4/17/12 10:00pm

How do you hide an airplane behind a bird? Very skillfully. Lt. Col. William
B. O'Connor (ret.) flew the F-117 Nighthawk during the Bosnia Conflict,
and in Stealth Fighter, he explains the history, operation, and soul
America's most advanced stealth jet.
While the United States had never embraced a defensive mindset and
had only fielded one strategic SAM system to that point, the NikeHercules dating from the 1950s, and one real medium-range tactical
system, the HAWK (homing all the way killer), the Soviets had
fielded over fifteen different systems. One Soviet SAM system was
even armed with nuclear warheads.

It had become clear that there had to be a better way. So in 1974, the
U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiated a
program known as Project Harvey (named after the 6 feet 3 1/2
inches tall invisible white rabbit from the play of the same name).
The ultimate goal was to develop a combat aircraft with as low a
radar signature as possible. Five aerospace corporations had been
contracted a million dollars each to give it their best shot.
Surprisingly, Lockheed hadn't been among them. It was only an
accidental tip-off that allowed Lockheed's Ben Rich to lobby for
inclusion. Rich had been an engineer on the secret U-2 and SR-71
reconnaissance aircraft and had by then advanced to become
Lockheed's successor to the famous Kelly Johnson as director of the
Skunk Works. The "Skunk Works" is the official alias for the
department responsible for all of Lockheed's highly secret advanced
development projects. It was formed in 1943 to build America's first
jet fighter, the P-80, and numerous other projects that belong to the
shadow world of military operations.
By the time Rich had gotten wind of Project Harvey, there was no
money left for another developmental contract. So Lockheed was
offered a shot-for a dollar. But Rich wanted in and wisely turned
down the token dollar. He knew that any new technologies developed
with company funds would then be proprietary. Lockheed was
famous for building small fleets of extremely advanced aircraftoften used for highly secretive missions. During World War II, they
had built the United States' first operational subsonic jet fighter, the
P-80. They skipped the Mach-1 era altogether and jumped right to
fielding the United States' first fighter capable of speeds in excess of
Mach 2, the F-104 Star Fighter. Along the way came the high-flying
U-2, the higher-flying SR-71, the hypersonic D-21 drone (which
would ride piggyback on an SR-71 until released), and other things
not yet named.

In Rich's own words, the unsung hero of Lockheed's effort was an

anonymous staff mathematician and electrical engineer named
Denys Overholser. Overholser and his mentor, another
mathematician named Bill Schroeder, had discussed the possibilities
of utilizing some of the equations associated with optical scattering
(how electromagnetic waves bounce off variously shaped objects) on
this project. Both had the rather odd hobby of reading obscure
Russian mathematics papers and had made the ultimate "nerd's
nerd" discovery. They had stumbled across a paper published in
Moscow a decade earlier titled "Method of Edge Waves in the
Physical Theory of Diffraction." It had been written by Pyotr
Ufimtsev, the Soviet's chief scientist at the Moscow Institute of
Radio Engineering and the last in a long line of scientists developing
a long series of wave equations originally derived centuries ago by
the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell.
The U.S. intelligence community had helped translate this research
and brought it to the West. The paper was in no way classified or
related to weapons development at all. It was purely theoretical
math. Years later, Ufimtsev immigrated to the United States to teach
at the University of California, Los Angeles, and only then discovered
his inadvertent contribution to the development of stealth aircraft.
The equations that Ufimtsev had developed made the reflections of
radio waves off hard surfaces predictable. Not invisible, transparent,
or tactical in any way-just predictable. The problem for Lockheed
was that the calculations were so ferociously difficult that the most
advanced supercomputers in the world at the time could only
compute results for flat surfaces. Any attempt to perform the
calculations for the curved surfaces you would find on a conventional
aircraft-well, those machines would still be grinding away toward a
solution today.
Schroeder recognized how these equations could be applied to
Lockheed's current project. The solution was not even to attempt to
design an aircraft with any curved surfaces, but to build one with

dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of individual flat triangular and

rectangular plates. Then the challenge was to compute the reflection
from each and every flat surface before adding them all together to
build a picture of the aircraft's total radar signature. Once you knew
where every bit of radar reflection was coming from, you could then
reorient those individual plates so that the reflection would go off in
a direction away from the radar looking at it.
The process became known as "faceting." And that became the real
secret-not to absorb all the radar or make the plane somehow
transparent, but to make the plane's signature predictable. That
predictability could then be used to shape a tactically useful aircraft.
The jet would also be covered in thin sheets of RAM, but the bulk of
the stealth effect was achieved by its shape.
Traditionally, a single engineering specialty will take the lead during
the design of a new aircraft. An aerodynamicist may be in charge of
pushing through a new wing or fuselage shape, as happened with the
early delta wings and area-ruled fuselages of the "Century Series" of
interceptors. Sometimes it may be the power-plant guy: "Here's the
engine we're going to use, build us a jet fighter for it." This is how
the P-80 came about. Occasionally it may be the armaments peoplethe A-10 is fundamentally a massive 30mm Gatling cannon with a
plane built around it. In this particular case, this was the first time
the lead was owned by an electrical engineer.
The computer program designed by Overholser's team to make these
calculations was called Echo- 1. Armed with that tool, the first test
subject, the Hopeless Diamond, was built. It was described as a
diamond for obvious reasons and "hopeless" for its aerodynamic
qualities (or rather, its complete lack thereof).
Early radar testing of the Hopeless Diamond turned out to be
staggeringly successful. The White Sands experimental radar range
near Holloman AFB was used. When the radar was fired up for the
initial testing, the only thing that showed up was the reflection of

the pole on which the test model was supposed to be mounted.

Assuming that the model had fallen off the pole, the radar operators
sent technicians downrange to fix the problem. To their surprise, the
ten-foot model was still in place.
To test the model at all, Lockheed then had to design an invisible
"stealth pole" to mount the model utilizing the same technology as
the proposed fighter. The results were once again astounding, and
incredulous USAF officials were called in to witness and verify the
data.
The first opportunity to impress these officials almost resulted in
embarrassment. When the radars were turned on, the reflections,
while still very small by airplane standards, were orders of
magnitude larger than what the USAF officials had been led to
expect. They could still clearly see a small radar return from where
the model was mounted.
While the Lockheed engineers were trying to explain this
discrepancy, a radio call came in from a technician downrange. He
reported that a bird was perched on the ten-foot model. The quick
reply was an order to blow the horn of the pickup truck the guy was
sitting in. As the startled bird flew away, the radar reflection on the
test scope disappeared.
The very idea that a combat aircraft could be made so invisible as to
hide behind a bird was an opportunity that couldn't be passed up.
Everything associated with the program became classified at the
highest levels. The program was transferred from DARPA to the
USAF special projects office. The word "stealth" was forbidden to be
mentioned in any unclassified document. And in April 1976, the Ford
administration gave Lockheed the go-ahead for a full-scale aircraft.
The Skunk Works was officially in the stealth fighter business.

Stealth Fighter: A Year in the Life of an F-117 Pilot by Lt. Col. William B.
O'Connor USAF (ret.) is reprinted with permission from Zenith Press. All
Rights Reserved

Stealth Fighter: A Year in the Life of an F-117 Pilot by Lt. Col. William
B. O'Connor USAF (ret.) is available from Amazon.

Stealth Fig
5 purchased by

Buckeye_Fan Lt. Col. William B. O'Connor USAF (ret.)

4/17/12 10:39pm

Actually the F-22 is the most advanced stealth fighter. It has a

smaller radar signature than the F-117

slaw Buckeye_Fan
4/18/12 12:46am

Technically the term "fighter" shouldn't even be brought up

when discussing the F-117 because it was designed primarily as
a ground-attack aircraft, with barely any air-to-air combat
capability.

nachobel TOTORO!
4/18/12 6:04am

slaw

If by "barely any" you mean "literally no", then yes.

chris209 Buckeye_Fan
4/18/12 10:42am

The F-22 is also decades newer and more advanced (the F-117
is also technically a bomber).

slaw nachobel TOTORO!

4/18/12 4:55pm

I've been told that the F-117 was theoretically capable of

mounting a single AAM for the purposes of sneaking up on and
taking out high-value aircraft like the Soviet Mainstay.

I suppose I Lt. Col. William B. O'Connor USAF (ret.)

4/17/12 10:30pm

"America's most advanced stealth jet"

While the F-117 is amazing, its successor, the Northrop
Grumman B-2 is definitely the most advanced (and sexiest)
stealth fighter that we know about.

Buckeye_Fan I suppose I
4/17/12 10:39pm

The B-2 is a bomber....... not a fighter

Roen Buckeye_Fan
4/17/12 10:44pm

Agreed. The F-22 with its litany of problems is the world's most
advanced hypersonic cruise capable stealth fighter -well when
its functional that is. ^^

DingoJunior I suppose I
4/17/12 10:44pm

Er... Except that the B-2 isn't the F-117's successor.

I suppose I DingoJunior
4/17/12 10:50pm

That's true. I recognized that as soon as I posted that but didn't

want to edit. B!=F lol.
AND they were developed at around the same time so it
couldn't have been the successor.

nurflugel9 Lt. Col. William B. O'Connor USAF (ret.)

4/17/12 10:18pm

Correction: America's first subsonic jet fighter was the Bell P59 Aircomet. The Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star was the second.

wagnerrp nurflugel9
4/17/12 10:43pm

That's debatable. It was intended as a fighter, but was an utter

failure, and ended up cancelled, with what planes that had
already been built being delegated as jet trainers.

OttoMaddox wagnerrp
4/18/12 4:08pm

The P-59 wasn't exactly an utter failure. Bell did produce 50

examples, even as the USAAF gave up on it as an operational
fighter, which were used to familiarize pilots with the
performance and handling characteristics of jet aircraft. The
USAAF realized that America was behind the curve in jet aircraft
development and didn't have high expectations anyway. But the
Airacomet program created the nucleus of jet aviation in the US,
from engine development, airframe design, maintenance and
support as well as pilot training. The fact that the plane itself
wasn't great was almost beside the point. By the time the P-80
entered service as America's first OPERATIONAL jet fighter
there were pilots who could fly them and ground crews that
could maintain them. [www.joebaugher.com]

wagnerrp OttoMaddox
4/18/12 4:51pm

The Brit's tried it, and found it lacking compared to even the
Meteor. The Navy tried it, and couldn't use it for carrier
operations. It wasn't even competitive compared to modern

piston fighters in anything but very high altitude operation.

First jet aircraft, sure. It no doubt gave the pilots and ground
crews valuable experience on the use and maintenance of jet
aircraft during the transition from older piston aircraft, but as a
jet fighter, it was a failure.

dpoles64 Lt. Col. William B. O'Connor USAF (ret.)

4/18/12 9:16am

Why was is designated a fighter with an F designation? I have

always wondered. It is a bomber, no guns or missiles. It
essentially snuck in, opened a bomb bay door and dropped a
smart bomb. I assume there is some pentagon procurement
subterfuge going on there.

Dabamash dpoles64
4/18/12 1:31pm

A higher up comment suggested that it was to attract pilots to

the program. Makes sense. Why fly a bomber, when you can fly
a fighter!

duodsg Dabamash
4/19/12 3:22am

Going to the National Museum of the USAF multiple times per

year for nearly two decades, and being around lots of USAF
personnel, I've heard something altogether different.
The "F" designation was to mislead any foreign espionage as to
the real purpose of the aircraft. After all, you wouldn't expect a
fighter to go into enemy airspace to bomb sensitive locations,
would you?

Dabamash duodsg
4/19/12 1:49pm

That makes a lot of sense as well :)

HammerheadFistpunch
4/17/12 10:15pm

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

skunkworks by Ben E. Rich is also a great read on the subject.

driggity HammerheadFistpunch
4/17/12 10:19pm

Came here to post this. I read the book about 4 or 5 years ago
and it's really good.

DingoJunior HammerheadFistpunch
4/17/12 10:39pm

Yep, totally loved that book.

MrCrash HammerheadFistpunch
4/17/12 10:42pm

That's one of my favorite books!

rds2431 HammerheadFistpunch
4/17/12 11:02pm

Read that book in college. Years later I mentioned it to my dad,

turns out he worked on the A7's with the "stealth" pods
mentioned in the book

chiggerfruit Lt. Col. William B. O'Connor USAF (ret.)

4/18/12 12:18am

Ah yes, my favorite airplane of all time. I would kill to

fly/own(hah!) one of these things. I just think they're the best
looking aircraft ever created. The stealth bit was also made it

pretty bad ass to me. A lot of people don't think they look great,
but I think those people are crazy. I also love how the P90 looks
for a gun, so that might explain my tastes more...

bugstomper2 chiggerfruit
4/18/12 2:59am

AND you can! LOL!

chiggerfruit bugstomper2
4/18/12 3:18am

Oh. My. God. You just made my childhood. This will be mine by
the end of the year.

Sprzout chiggerfruit
4/18/12 3:46am

I've heard they're incredibly hard to fly, that they want to roll
over because of the design of the body.
Then again, that seems to be common for spy planes - I seem
to remember that the U-2 had such a narrow window for lift
that pilots had to make a really wide, sweeping turn in them.
But you're right, they're awesome looking!

Turbineguy aka Will Alibrandi

4/18/12 9:42am

Sprzout

They'd be impossible to fly if it weren't for the flight control

computer keeping the shiny side up. (if there was a shiny side,
that is) The plane is so aerodynamically unstable the FCC
continually makes many flight control inputs to keep the plane
in the air. It's a fly-by-wire setup where pilot control inputs to

the FCC are translated into flight control surface movements.

IIRC that FCC is triply redundant because a failure would result
in the loss of the aircraft.

chris209 Lt. Col. William B. O'Connor USAF (ret.)

4/18/12 10:43am

Another interesting fact is the F-117 was technically a stealth

bomber, not fighter. They used the 'F' designation to attract
pilots to the program.

SpainIsInYurp chris209
4/19/12 4:07pm

And to misinform the Soviets.

phimuskapsi Lt. Col. William B. O'Connor USAF (ret.)

9/13/15 9:34pm

I also highly recommend Skunk Works as a great read. Its all

about the F117s development.

MrvinTheMarshn
4/18/12 9:42am

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

My wireless network at my old appt was named Skunk Works...

Good article

Unicorn_Turdz Lt. Col. William B. O'Connor USAF (ret.)

4/17/12 10:27pm

Awesome.

DingoJunior Unicorn_Turdz
4/17/12 10:45pm

Heh, nice and stealthy :)

Picklehaube Unicorn_Turdz
4/18/12 10:35am

'MMMMMMerica!
-Nibbles chewing comments and spitting them out since 2011

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