God we used to be a country – this makes me want to quit my job and go build stealth tech missiles weapons for the United States of America.

In the late 1950s as the Russians were constructing their SAM beacons in star of David patterns across the Russian motherland, unable to reach the U2 surveillance planes they would send kamikaze MIGs stripped down to be as light as possible to try to pierce up kamikaze style into the U2's; burn out; and then hopefully flare back up before crashing. They were desperate to stop the US surveillance which was untouchabled. bad ass.

Had we built the Blackbird in 2010 the world would have been amazed by its technical capabilities, the fact that the first one was constructed in 1962 as a successor to the U2 for the CIA is an unprecedented feat of technological ingenuity.

Project requirements for the Blackbird included mach 3 as a natural extension of the mach 2 capabilities of the U2. However, avoiding infrared detection immediately became an issue because of the heat signature required from the fuel necessary to generate enough thrust to reach those speeds, begging the question "how do you hide a meteor?"

I really enjoyed the anecdotes from the clients/end-users of Skunkworks tech – namely the pilots flying the U2s and Blackbirds:

couldn't have driven a nail up my sphincter with a sledgehammer

(SR-71 was a errant transposition by LBJ. It was actually called the RS-71, but he misspoke and everyone ran with it rather than identifying the president's unawareness of his military's own capabilities).

Anecdote shared by a pilot to describe the anxiety before a bombing raid on Saddam's bunkers w/the F117A w/Rich's radar:

The only way the enemy knew the F117A was in the sky above him was when things around him started blowing up

Stealth is so sick man.

Kelly Johnson became Lockheed's 33 yr old chief engineer holy moley, big shoes to fill for Mr Ben who's codename was "Ben Dover":

Kelly Johnson could clear 18 holes using just a six iron. It's good for all distances near and far.

The project was code named oxcart, which is kind of funny, and also they had 50 bodies crammed into a corner of building 82, which was the Skunkworks headquarters where they had designed the U2 and the F104 star fighter. Privacy gave way to back-to-back desk, arrangements for "collaboration" which really meant harassment. Somebody hung a sign which said "privacy sucks," which is all the funnier given the nature of what they were working on.

Lockheed Martin is probably single-handedly responsible for most machining technology for titanium materials

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