The Angel from the Skunk Works

On a sunny December afternoon in 1954, a small group of Air Force officers and agents of the Central Intelligence Agency drove up to the Lockheed Aircraft Corp. offices in Burbank, Calif., to confer with Company President Robert Gross and Engineer Clarence ("Kelly") Johnson.

The Government people wanted to discuss a secret airplane project, so secret that not even General Curtis LeMay, then boss of the Strategic Air Command, knew about it. That night, Kelly Johnson, head of the "Skunk Works"--Lockheed's supersecret project-development division--began clearing out a hangar. "I got 23 fellows," says Johnson, "and we went to work. We didn't even give it a project name; that's a better kind of security. Later, the fellows began calling it 'the Angel.' "

"The Angel" turned out to be an ugly, long-winged bird that precipitated a cold war crisis. Its official designation was "U-2." And last week, for the first time, Kelly Johnson, 53, revealed the dramatic details of the U2's birth and some of its incredible achievements.

The Risk. The U-2 was born of necessity. In early 1952, U.S. intelligence officers recognized that the continuing revolution in weapon design, coupled with the Soviets' fanatic penchant for secrecy, had put the U.S. at a dangerous disadvantage. The U.S. was starved for intelligence information. The most obvious solution was high-altitude air surveillance. President Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson both agreed that such air reconnaissance was desirable--but they were unwilling to pursue such a project for fear of the results if a spy plane were shot down.

President Eisenhower, however, was willing to take the risk. In 1953 the CIA ordered designs for special camera equipment and sensing devices. By the time Kelly Johnson and the Skunk Works were brought into the project, the U.S. had almost everything it needed--except the airplane itself. Development of that plane was left up to Johnson. Recalls he: "Nobody ever tried to tell us what to do. We knew the problem. I knew the kind of wings I wanted."

Eighty days after he began, Johnson had built his first U2; it was an efficient machine that could cruise at 90,000 ft. In August 1955, a test pilot flew the ship successfully--in a rainstorm.

One Died. Still the plane was not perfect. At least one pilot was killed during flight tests. "We had eliminated extra weight, however we could," says Johnson. "We'd have sold our grandmothers for ten pounds, and the whole family for 25 pounds, but finally the ship was ready." Lockheed asked Air Force Hero Jimmy Doolittle, who was then a vice president at the Shell Oil Co., to have his company's experts concoct a fuel that would not evaporate at high altitude. Shell did. The results speak for themselves. Says Johnson: "We have an airplane getting four miles to the gallon and traveling ten times the speed of a truck. That's pretty good."

On its first flights overseas, the U-2 performed impressively. From the spring of 1956 until May 1960, when U-2 Pilot Gary Powers was shot down, the U-2 flew at will over the Soviet Union, brought back miles of film showing target areas, defenses, terrain, mountains, lakes, forests. In all that time, Soviet MIG pilots swarmed helplessly below. On at least one occasion, a Soviet pilot, straining to climb to within U-2 range, radioed, "We kill, Yank!" And the U-2 pilot replied: "Okay, try it!" The pilot was safe in his dare.

But then came Gary Powers' last flight. "Powers didn't really know what hit him," says Johnson. "I knew, though, and I told him what had happened, based mostly on my analysis from the Carl Mydans photographs of the wreckage that LIFE sent us. The Soviets got to Powers with a near-burst from a SAM [surface-to-air missile]. He had control of the plane for a while, but the engine was hit. Gary coasted on down to where the MIGs had a few cracks at him; then the wing came off and he bailed out. He did everything that he was supposed to do. Those guys have ways of making anybody talk; they're clever, but Gary talked only about the things he was supposed to, nothing more. He's a good man; he's working for me now, on U-2s."

Brave Men. The U-2 presumably no longer flies over the Soviet Union. But the Nationalist Chinese fly it over Red China, and the U.S. sends missions over Cuba. "That run," says Johnson, "is the toughest in the business. It's a small area and loaded with the very latest Soviet SAM systems. In the Soviet Union we could come in from various angles over open country. Cuba is full of Castro and the Russians' SAMs. It's tough, and it takes brave men."

It also takes men like Kelly Johnson. Last week the Air Force Association presented the boss of the Skunk Works with a trophy for designing and developing the U-2--and "thus providing the free world with one of its most valuable instruments in the defense of freedom."

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