A New Life for a High-Flying Bird

At the "Skunk Works, "a successor to the U-2 takes shape

Though it was designed in 1954, it is still the world's highest-flying single-engine aircraft, capable of soaring more than 15 miles above the earth at speeds up to 530 m.p.h. Until one was brought down by a Soviet missile in 1960, causing a dramatic cold war confrontation, U-2s regularly flew over the Soviet Union, looking for signs of military buildup. About 30 U-2s are still in service, but a new version of the old bird, called the TR-1, is about to rise out of a mysterious Lockheed facility that produces supersecret military hardware for the Air Force Logistics Command. Last week TIME Correspondent Jerry Hannifin, the first reporter ever to tour the plant, filed this account:

It's officially called Air Force Plant No. 42, and the factory at the edge of the desert in Palmdale, Calif., is a longish way from the old green-painted hangar in Burbank where it all began. But to everyone in military aviation, it is still the "Skunk Works," after the foul-smelling still where one of Al Capp's Li'I Abner characters brewed Kickapoo Joy Juice. A fitting nickname. Over the years an incredible string of secret weaponry--including the new breed of nearly "invisible" (to radar) planes--has emerged from the Skunk Works.

It was the U2, though, that made the Skunk Works an air-age legend. When the first U-2s were being built, Chief Designer Clarence ("Kelly") Johnson and his team worked overtime and got whatever they wanted. After he told his old pal Air Force General Jimmy Doolittle, then at the Shell Oil Co., that he needed a fuel that would not boil off at the low pressures of the upper atmosphere, Shell scientists produced a special low-boil, kerosene-type fuel just for Johnson's plane. Inevitably, it became known as Kelly's Lighter Fluid No. 1.

Today the same measure of dedication sparks the Skunk Works assembly line, where much of the work is still done by hand under Johnson's successor Ben Rich. Says Engineer Don Bunce, 62, who came out of retirement to work on the new bird: "Hell, I feel good just seeing all these old tools doing a job again."

For that he can thank Johnson. After the production of dozens of planes, the U-2 assembly line was shut down in 1969. Ordinarily the millions of dollars in tools, dies and jigs for crafting the planes would have been scrapped. But Johnson had a premonition. "I hid 'em away in four different places," he recalls. "Put them in Cosmoline [a greasy preservative] just in case we'd ever get a rainy day."

That day came two years ago, when the Pentagon decided it needed a new version of the old spy plane. It would incorporate the latest "stealth" features as well as updated electronic snooping capability that can peer sideways over borders and transmit data--including TV-type pictures--directly back to military commanders on the ground. Twenty-five TR-ls will be built at a cost of $550 million. Thanks to Johnson's premonition, the bill will be a tidy $10 million less than it might have been had he not squirreled away those old tools.

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