YouSaid · the spoken record

Kelly Johnson

lines on the record: 32
first: 2026-05-16
most recent: 2026-05-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Much as I love my work and always have, perhaps more than most people, I always believe life should be shared to be really meaningful. And he really means it the last chapter is called A Good Life, and I think his perspective is a perfect way to end a book, a career, and a life. My work has always been exciting to me and still is. Very serious study, while demanding always has been a joy. I literally love aerodynamics, mathematics, physics, machinery, all of the tools of my trade. I consider myself very fortunate to have lived my professional life doing exactly what I always wanted to do. I will have had more than my share of it all poverty and wealth, struggle and success, obscurity and recognition, sickness and strength, sorrow and joy. Happiness and love more than my share.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And these pressures are so intense that he's got these reoccurring ulcers. They dehabilitate him. At one point they cut away part like half of his stomach. And so anytime he has a big problem, he's under a lot of stress at work. These ulcers come. He says, with more responsibility came more ulcers. Whenever one of our aircraft had an accident, particularly a fatal accident, I would develop a stomach ulcer in about 24 hours.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“During the design and creation of the SR71, he says, I reverted to my old axiom. Keep it simple, stupid. The more complexity, the more potential for problems. And then he has a great advice on how to handle talent. It's difficult to get an old-time machineist to change his ways. He wants to discover on his own how to do something. So in skunk works, we put them in the experimental shop under the engineer's direction and made them a party to developing the data. That always is a good tactic. Involve the employee in the whole program as much as possible to arouse his interest and inspire his best performance. So he actually loves to be a rancher. He loves being outdoors. He likes riding horses. He likes raising cattle. And I think this one sentence gives you a summary of how important it was to him. He says, it was life-saving escape from the pressures of work.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so it is during LBJ's presidency that the skunk works and Johnson, Kelly Johnson that is, create the SR seventy one Blackbird that flies at three times the speed of sound. It is the most advanced aircraft in the world at the time and still the fastest, and this is where he goes in where it's like, okay, not only are we having to invent new products, we have to invent the manufacturing methods to invent the new product. Everything about the aircraft had to be invented. So he says aircraft operating at those speeds and altitudes, it's at 80,000 feet in case I didn't already say that. Aircraft operating at those speeds and altitudes would require development of special fuels, structural materials, manufacturing tools and techniques, hydraulic fluid, fuel tank sealants, paints, plastics, wiring, and connecting plugs as well as basic aircraft and engine design. Everything about the aircraft had to be invented. Everything.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of an aircraft they shot down and published it in the media. Now they actually did shoot down a U two, but the pictures they publish were not of the U two, and so the CIA contacts Kelly and they want him to speak out about it. He says the CIA wanted me to provoke and insult the Russians into revealing more about the incidents. So I challenged them publicly. Hell no, I was quoted in the press, that's no you too. It was about that time they were suggested to me by security people that I not go to work and come home by the same route or establish regular patterns of movement. And for a few years during this and other secret aircraft developments I slept with an automatic pistol.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he talks about the kind of people you have to recruit. These are obviously mission driven people, people obsessed with aeronautics, and people willing to just make unbelievable personal sacrifices. So he says in Skuckworks, we never had trouble getting workmen to go wherever we needed them because they knew wherever it is the work will be exciting and challenging. They cannot, of course, take their families with them for security reasons, but they can return home once a year. Think about that. Once a year on long assignments. That's an incredible level of sacrifice. And Kelly had personal sacrifices, including threats on his personal safety. This is during the Cold War with Russia. He is the one that designed the U two. It flies at like 70,000 to 80,000 feet. And it's used for reconnaissance. So eventually, the Russians are able to shoot one down. And then they take pictures.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Worldwide was 2,500 aircraft. He is constantly hounding on costs. He says this over and over again. Cost must be considered. Aircraft are getting to be so expensive they are hardly worth it for what they can do. With the price of a fighter aircraft now running more than thirty million dollars per plane with all the equipment, not including pilot costs, I can foresee the day when the fighter pilot will be on the ground flying an unmanned fighter with a missile in it. It's almost like he's predicting drones, but he's writing this in 1985. I think this can be done remotely at a great savings and aircraft cost and of course great savings in manpower to say nothing of the greater safety for the pilot. This is worth considering.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Manufacturing, there is a lot of accidents. There's a lot of people losing their life. And this is where redundancy in his systems, he says, just became mania with me. With everything we build, we make sure that we can relight, restart, and keep flying. And he talks about the planning and how spending a few days actually saves a ton of money. So he says, every time we release an engineering drawing to our manufacturing director to build a part for our experimental airplane, we also released a group of production engineers with these instructions. Find every alternative way of making this, ruling out adverse effect on drag, maintenance, or cost. You can affect all of these characteristics favorably. When we finish building the prototype, we had a thick report on how to build a production model. We sat down for three days with that book to choose the best way to build the airplane from every point of view. On this particular project, it saved ten to twenty thousand dollars for every airplane built. The total production”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“in the strict secrecy of wartime and simply for efficiency and to avoid distraction, we allowed no one who wasn't working on the project to wander in and out. He wants to drastically accelerate how fast they move, so let's say this was to deliver the aircraft in 180 days. They have a giant number and says we counted off the contract days on a big scoreboard. We had scheduled the work on the basis of a 10-hour day six-day week. No one worked on Sunday. We had to enforce that rule because even with the sickness rate during the last few weeks as high as fifty percent daily, it was midwinter and we had poor facilities in which to work and almost no heating. We could not afford to lose even one of our small supervisory staff to illness. On day one hundred forty three, the plane was accepted by the Army Air Corps and ready for flight. We had beaten the schedule of one hundred eighty days, that is the XP eighty. As you can imagine, they're on the very cutting edge and the frontier of aircraft design.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so we're about a decade into his career until he asks his bosses, hey, the way we're doing things isn't working, let me try and experiment. Let me set up a separate unit. This is, of course, Skunk Works. And so the pitch was, let me set up an experimental department where the designers and shop artisans could work together closely in development of airplanes without the delays and complications of intermediate departments to handle administration, purchasing, and all other support functions. I wanted a direct relationship between design, engineer, and mechanic and manufacturing. I decided to handle this new project just that way. And this is when they build the shop out of old wooden boxes and a circus tent. And he says somehow I got together twenty three engineers counting myself. I simply stole them from around the factory. I wanted people whose work I knew. And then he went about eliminating all these complications that you see in a big company. We had our own purchasing department, and every function we needed to operate independently of the main plant.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then they test it as fast as possible. And again, this is an absence of process. He says, well, we had located our trouble and we were ready to fly. No committee inspections, no review. In those days, when we were ready to fly, we flew. Next day, first flight. And so even when there was these other organizations that would inhibit his ability to move quickly, he would find ways around it. So NACA, which is the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which is a precursor to NASA, had a wind tunnel that Kelly Johnson would need to use because he needed wind speeds over 300 miles per hour, which his wind tunnel could not do. And they tell him no. So he says, our own wind tunnel could not achieve the required high speeds above 300 miles per hour. NACA officials protested every time they hit approach such speeds in their tunnel, the model had thrashed around so violently they feared it would cause damage to their tunnel, and that was a risk they did not want to take.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Technology. And this goes back to the fact that he just loves learning and loves being a student. And so he says it was and is important for an engineer to keep up with the advancing technology. Studying still held for me the same fascination that it had when I discovered the Carnegie Library. On one vacation in those early years, I reworked all the problems in Fred Week's classic book Aircraft Propeller Design. On another vacation, I reworked every problem in Dr. Clyde E. Love's differential and integral calculus. I was determined not to lose my capability in mathematics, and I enjoyed both those vacations. For many years after I began my work at Lockheed, I would attend a Wednesday afternoon seminar conducted by the eminent scientists and engineers at Cal Tech. And then there's several sections of the book where it's just like these few sentences I'm going to read to you where you realize the process is in many cases like an absence of process. So they have a failure. A part fails. They find it as fast as possible. They fix it as fast as possible.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And say, come back on Monday. They were so impressed that this little company had the gumption to address their problem that they invited us to England to talk to their technical people. They immediately go to England, they have this meeting, and they get another series of updates of what the British are looking for. And so Kelly says, it was a three-day holiday weekend. I worked a solid seventy-two hours on this redesign, not taking any time for sleep, just catnapping briefly when absolutely necessary. I was a rumpled figure. When I finally fell into bed for some very sound sleep, it was the first time I had removed my clothes in seventy two hours. I was twenty eight years old, and the result of this air ministry gave Lockheed an order to build two hundred airplanes. This was the largest aircraft production order placed up to that time in the United States. And then he talks about anytime you're working on the frontier trying to invent something new, you have to stay on top. You have to be constantly learning and stay on top of the new.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So after a few years of being hired, he's promoted to be chief research engineer for Lockheed. This happens in 1938. This is very important because World War II teaches them the importance of designing and then mass producing aircraft, which they had never done before the war. And many of these stories that he tells around this time is the importance of speed, of just watching how fast they move. So officials from Britain are coming to the United States to see if Lockheed and other manufacturers can build what they need to fight the Germans. And Kelly Johnson is notified of this visit just five days before the British officials get there. They're looking for an aircraft that can destroy submarines. So within five days, they build a prototype. Then the visit happens. The British suggests some changes, and Kelly writes, we incorporated what changes we could over the weekend and called them on Monday for another inspection. So that visit was on a Friday. They worked through the entire weekend. They make the change.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so he has this, I guess he likes lists a lot. So he has this five point list of his philosophy of living. So number one, belief in God. When you're in a difficult situation, ill or in danger, and wonder if you're going to make it through to the next morning, your faith is one of the most important thoughts that will sustain you. Number two, health. Without it, one cannot be truly happy. It certainly has been important in my life, and there's a devastating story in the book where his first wife gets diagnosed with cancer relatively young. And so he sees when health is taken away from you and what happens to your life. Number three, purpose. We must have a purpose in life, doing something we want to do and doing it well. This will provide the necessity. Security, money, and the rewards of other sorts. Number four, a wife or husband who loves and understands you. Number five, respect of the people for whom you work and who work for you. That sums up my philosophy of living.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shared the concern of the pilot. That's so important. So our purpose is like putting us with the customer, right? I've shared the concern of the pilot. I've shared the concern of the customer. I figured I needed to have the hell scared out of me once a year in order to keep a proper balance and viewpoint on designing new aircraft. Now it gets into where I would say he deviates from Elon, where early in his career Kelly did not consider other people's reactions. And so one of his mentors had to take him out and talk about this over and over again. And he says, you've got to learn to live in the world with all these other people. And the sooner you learn that, the better off you're going to be. And so he says, my mentor taught me that it's much better to lead people not to drive them. Drive yourself if you must, but not anybody else. And so then in the late 30s he comes up with this like philosophy for living. And again, the way I would say about Kelly, he's just like very practical. He said, you know, we're just trying to apply common sense to really tough problems. Kind of does that to the art of living.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Figure out how to create and design safe airplanes first for the military and then obviously for And so he's Kelly Johnson is with this guy named Eddie Allen, who's a test pilot. He says he's an excellent teacher. And so he is serving as a flight test engineer. And remember, these are brand new planes that they're making. And so you go up in the plane that you just designed and you're with the pilot. And the pilot is doing, it's like they're diving the plane. It says dive test, stalls, spins, everything. They have to test what this plane can do. Could you imagine being in the seat? And listen how Kelly describes this. It was an excellent indoctrination to the art, skill, science, adventure, all that goes into flight testing. He taught me what it was all about, what was important, what to record, and he was unflappable. And as a result of this, this is the philosophy that Kelly built and spread and used. I have a philosophy that those who design aircraft should also fly them. The engineer knows where the quarter inch bolts may be marginal, where the flaps are likely to, what the flaps are likely to do or not do.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was a little bit taken aback and I wasn't so sure that we should have hired the guy. But then I thought better of it, and his response was excellent. That's what he did. Kelly, you've criticized the wind tunnel report on the design. Why don't you go back and see if you can do any better with the airplane? So he goes back to the University of Michigan, takes the plane into the wind tunnel. It says it took 72 tunnel runs before I found the answer to the problem. This leads Lockheed to promote Kelly to engineer. I remember when he said that if you're going to engineer and design something, you have to be with the pilots testing it in the actual aircraft that you're designing? It's almost right away in his career when he understands how important it is. So he's always riding with this test pilot named Eddie Allen. This is, I can't describe this book to you. I highly recommend, obviously, read it. But we are the beneficiaries to the work. Like, how safe is air travel now? It's the safest form of travel for any humans, right? And yet so many people are dying or being injured as they're trying to...”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“no open openings in engineering so he's hired to do tool design and the first thing he does is tell the two lead designers that their plane is unstable and i love this response so he goes when i announced that locky that the new airplane the first design by the reorganized company and the one on which its hopes for the future were base was not a good design and it was actually unstable they were somewhat shaken it is not the conventional way for a young person to begin employment it was in fact very presumptuous of me to criticize my professors and experienced designers and so one of the engineers was this guy named Hibbard Hibbert himself was a fine engineer with a degree in aeronautics from MIT, and he wanted to get some quote new young blood fresh at a school with new ideas into the engineering department, as he explained. And then this is what Hibbard says about Kelly Johnson. He looked so young I was almost afraid that he couldn't read or write. We got some fresh new ideas, believe me.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So he drives across the country to try to get a job at Lockheed. Lockheed is a tiny company at this point, and it is in dire financial straits. So he says we get to Lockheed and the company had just been purchased from receivers by a small group of aviation enthusiasts for forty thousand dollars. The company was in the process of being reorganized. They were already a big name as designer and builder of fast plywood aircraft. They're building wooden planes. There was no jobs for engineers yet, so he talks to the chief engineer at Lockheed, and the chief engineer tells him, hey, look, something's going to come out of this. Why don't you go back to school and then come out again next year? By then, we should have something for you. Now remember all that time he spent in the wind tunnel, that becomes really important because then he goes back the next year and he gets a job. He's hired at Lockheed in 1933. They have no availability.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Companies at the time and making a bunch of money. And then one thing he has in his personality is he's learning a lot from them, but he's constantly questioning. He wants to be correct. And so he says, respectful, though I was of the great experience and knowledge of my professors, I was not so deferential that it would not argue back if I disagreed, and I did. I bring this up because this is really important because this helps him establish respect and a good reputation when he gets Lockheed because it's one of the first things. It might be the first thing he does when he gets hired. So he's describing the kind of focus and intensity he had. Most of the time I was working or studying. I completed three years of university work in two. There was little time to play. I knew I had to work hard to become a good engineer and I enjoyed it. I didn't have time for romance either and I deliberately avoided any entanglement. There would be no detours from my goal. And real quick before we get back into this, I need to tell you about Vanta. Vanta Vanta, Vanta Vanta helps your company prove your secure so more customers will use your product or service. You can think of Vanta as you're always on.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Chemical engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering that then leading you to the study of aeronautical engineering. He says it was an excellent curriculum because it provided a very good basic education in everything it took to design and build an airplane. And you see he's very entrepreneurial in two different ways. One, he's always trying to find the people with minds worth examining. And so he builds these relationships with a bunch of his professors at the time. Some of the ideas that he got from his professors, he'd use his entire life. One of them was the fact that you just have to keep an open mind. You never know which ideas are actually going to work. And so his professor would repeat over and over again, do not automatically write anything off. Anything. Do not automatically write anything off. Anything. And the second thing is he's working in the wind tunnel. He's doing wind tunnel testing and he realizes that the wind tunnel is not in use most of the time. So he asks his professor, can I rent the wind tunnel when it's not needed by the university and get some jobs on my own? And so he starts renting out the wind tunnel to cars.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so when he's 10 years old, he has to learn a trade. He has to go to work. He decides to learn the trade of lathing So again, think about how poor you have to be if you're charging your 12-year-old son for room and board. And he says, from that point on, from 12 years on, I was self supporting the way he described himself was an impoverished but high spirited and determined boy. And so through a high school and college, he says, I was always talking about aviation. In junior college, I was able to take engineering courses for the first time. I studied physics, mathematics, and calculus. He will talk about as an old man still being in love with all these subjects. He had to work his way through high school and college. Since in the summers, I worked for the Buick Motor Car Company swinging fenders on the production line and repairing motors. I would be so dirty and oily after days work that it was not allowed to sit down on the streetcar going home. I was reading and studying all the time. And this is when he realizes to pursue his goal of being an aeronautical engineering. He has got to learn all these other fields of engineering first. So he says in those days you had to study civil engineering.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I went to the library almost every day. It opened a whole new world to me, and so he actually credits a work of fiction for inspiring him down the path that he chose for his career, something he does his entire life. And he's reading these books on Tom Swift. He said Tom Swift was a very highly skilled designer engineer, pilot, and operator of many kinds of locomotion, and an adventurous young man. It became my goal to be just like Tom. So he's reading all these fictions and then he picks up all these books on aircraft and reads every single one. And as a result of this reading that came because of a gift from Andrew Carnegie, he says I was twelve years old when I decided I would be an aircraft designer. My whole life from that time was aimed at preparing for that goal. I continued to read everything I could get my hands on about aviation. My enthusiasm for the subject spilled over”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Build toys for me. He was a proficient carpenter and mason, an all around craftsman. My respects for tools and machinery I learned early in life from his example. He taught me a great deal about construction. It was to be very useful to me. Our parents instilled a love of learning in us children when he talks about the fact that he learned from his father. He says next to my father, I credit Andrew Carnegie with being the most important influence on my early life. Why, he's growing up in this poor community in Michigan, I think it's called Ish Feming. And he says Carnegie had donated these libraries as he had in many other small towns whose natural resources had helped build his fortune. So in those little town that he's living in, in this very rural area, it's where Carnegie got a lot of his iron ore to build his steel company, and the way that Kelly Johnson describes this gift to the community from Carney is excellent. He returned an even richer.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And of course, as you can imagine, being a poor family with nine kids, they put the kids to work too. So he starts working from like seven years old and he would pick up and deliver laundry. And he would do it in his wagon when there wasn't snow on the ground and when there was snow on the ground, he would do it in a sled. He was ferociously curious and loved to learn and so much so that he's going to be made fun of by other kids in his class. He says school was always interesting to me. I was always eager to go and I would show up early and be first in line to enter the building. And he describes the way he was raised. Our parents were stern but not severe. Serious in manner but considerate of us children I was never struck by either of them. We children were expected to show responsibility. I had access to my father's tools and a workshop from the time I was seven or eight years old. I could use any of his tools so long as I didn't break or lose them and I always put them back in their place. Some of my earliest lessons in construction were in watching my father.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Technically it was not the highest job in the company, says three times I was offered a company presidency at Lockheed, and three times I declined it. To me there is no better job within the corporation than head of advanced development projects, which is what Skunk Works was called. I was doing what I wanted to do since I was twelve years old. Okay, so now I want to go back to the beginning of the book. Let's get into more of the biography and like the life story of Claire Johnson. Like, how, what were the circumstances to cause this person to become the best in his field? And why was he perfectly suited for the profession that he picked? So he is the seventh in a family of nine children. And he describes his childhood this way. We were very poor. His father would work in construction. He says my father could lay two thousand bricks in a day. My mother, in addition to raising nine kids, had to take in clothing and wash clothes for the wealthier people in town.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Gives his definition of what skunk works is and why it exists. The skunk works is a concentration of a few good people solving problems far in advance, and at a fraction of the cost of other groups in the aircraft industry by applying the simplest, most straightforward methods possible to develop and produce new projects. All it is really is the application of common sense to some pretty tough problems. And then this is the promise that he would make to skunkwork's employees, and he said it still applies to this day. I owe you a challenging, worthwhile job providing stable employment, fair pay, a chance to advance, and an opportunity to contribute to our nation's first line of defense. I owe you good management and sound projects to work on, good equipment to work with, and good work areas. And then I think one of the most important parts of understanding why this is so successful is because this is what he wanted to do most.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Immediate decision. So let's say he's building something for the Air Force, he can call up his counterpart, who's in charge on their end, and who has to stay with the project to its conclusion. He can call them up and get a decision that same day. And Kelly Johnson says, that's just not possible in standard operating procedure. And so he says, at a typical day for me, it would start at 7 a.m. And I would immediately hold a meeting with the engineers working on key problems. So what's our biggest problem? Who is the person responsible for it? That is who Kelly Johnson is talking to. And he says these meetings were short and informal. And then he contrasts his approach with some of the ways these other companies were doing. And so he's looking at this project. And as they're trying to build this aircraft, he discovered that there was 1,200, 1,206 people employed just in quality control. Remember, he built the world's fastest aircraft with 135 engineers.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Flight testing as a method of inspection to see how well you have engineered and built the bird. Working with pilots in testing and development has taught me a great deal over the years. And then he goes back to hating committees. There's a tendency today, which I hate to see towards design by committee, reviews and recommendations, conferences and consultations by those not directly doing the job. That is so good. There's a tendency today, which I hate to see, towards design by committee by those not directly doing the job. Nothing very stupid will result, but nothing brilliant either. And it's in the brilliant concept that a major advance is achieved. Development of some of this country's most spectacular projects, the sidewinder missile, the nuclear powered submarine all were accomplished by methods other than the conventional way of doing business. And then he insists on the ability to get it.”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Something about it. The people on the assembly line should be able to immediately grab a designer and engineer and say, why did you make it this way? Kelly Johnson says if a part needs fixing, it will be fixed quickly. They're in close contact with the airplane, with the product the entire time. And then he talks about, well, if our methods are not secret, why is no one else doing this? Most companies, while desiring the benefits, will not pay the price in revised methods and procedures for setting up a skunk works type operation. They will not delegate the authority to one individual, as Lockheed did in my case. The theory of skunk works is to learn how to do things quickly and cheaply and to tailor the systems to the degree of risk. There is no one good way to build all airplanes. I talked to Toby Luquet, the founder of Shopify, he told me the exact same thing. He said there's probably a hundred different ways, a hundred good ways to try to accomplish what you're doing. Back to Kelly Johnson. I believe that the designer and the builder of an airplane should also test it. That is important to his ability to design future aircraft. I have always thought of”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've been trying to convince others to use our principles and practices for years. Remember, he's writing these words as a 75-year-old man. He knew what he wanted to do since he was 12 years old. And I think his career at Lockheed was something like 44 years long. So he says, I've been trying to convince others to use our principles and practices for years. The basic concept as well as specific rules have been provided many times, very seldom has the formula been followed. Before we get back into this, I want to tell you about the presenting sponsor of this podcast ramp. One of the main themes in the history of SpaceX is constantly attacking and questioning your costs. RAMP helps many of the most innovative businesses in the world do exactly that. The median company running on RAM cuts their expenses by”
2026-05-16 · Founders · #419 Kelly Johnson: Skunk Works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT