Clarence Kelly Johnson Quotes

Be quick, be quiet, and be on time.

Listen; you’ll never learn anything by talking. The mesure of an intelligent person is the ability to change his mind.

Clarence “Kelly” Johnson was an authentic American genius. He was the kind of enthusiastic visionary that bulled his way past vast odds to achieve great successes, in much the same way as Edison, Ford, and other immortal tinkerers of the past. When Kelly rolled up his sleeves, he became unstoppable, and the nay-sayers and doubters were simply ignored or bowled over. He declared his intention, then pushed through while his subordinates followed in his wake. He was so powerful that simply by going along on his plans and schemes, the rest of us helped to produce miracles too. Honest to God, there will never be another like him.

And because I had the latest advanced mathematical training, I was given the job of analyzing the retractable landing gear for Jimmy Doolittle’s Lockheed Orion 9-D, a modification of the basic Orion. That was my first contact with any of the famous early aviators who would frequent the Lockheed plant. Others included Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post, Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith, and Roscoe Turner. Doolittle, of course, was an early record-setting pilot, both military and civilian, with a master’s degree and doctorate in science from M.I.T. Then he was flying for Shell Oil Company, landing in out-of-the-way fields, cow pastures, and other unprepared strips.

Everything about this project was dark alley, cloak and dagger. Even the way they financed the operation was highly unconventional: using secret contingency funds, they back-doored payment to Lockheed by writing personal checks to Kelly for more than a million bucks as start-up costs. The checks arrived by regular mail at his Encino home, which had to be the wildest government payout in history. Johnson could have absconded with the dough and taken off on a one-way ticket to Tahiti. He banked the funds through a phony company called “C & J Engineering,” the “C & J” standing for Clarence Johnson. Even our drawings bore the logo “C & J”—the word “Lockheed” never appeared. We used a mail drop out at Sunland, a remote locale in the San Fernando Valley, for suppliers to send us parts. The local postmaster got curious about all the crates and boxes piling up in his bins and looked up “C & J” in the phone book and, of course, found nothing. So he decided to have one of his inspectors follow our unmarked van as it traveled back to Burbank. Our security people nabbed him just outside the plant and had him signing national security secrecy forms until he pleaded writer’s cramp.

If you can’t do it with brainpower, you can’t do it with manpower—overtime,” is axiomatic with me.

If you can’t do it with brainpower, you can’t do it with manpower—overtime,” is axiomatic with

The aircraft’s engines in the original design had so much power that we could not swing a propeller of the proper diameter to take advantage of it. We really needed a 17-foot propeller, which would have chopped about a foot into the fuselage! Starting with a new design, we put the engine nacelles far enough out on the wing to provide for the proper-diameter propeller. Ten feet, six inches was the largest diameter we could handle with that configuration.

Specifications for the new fighter had been very clear—two liquid-cooled engines and a speed of 367 miles per hour. We advised the Air Corps that our design would fly faster than 400 miles per hour, a speed unequaled then. Lockheed received a contract for such a plane in 1937, with construction of the first beginning in July 1938. First flight of the XP-38—X for experimental, P for pursuit—was scheduled for early 1939.

Not only a top-notch fighter, the P-38 became very versatile—as camera plane, bomber-fighter, strafer, rocket-carrier. It went through 18 different versions, the last carrying a bomb load greater than the early B-17 Flying Fortress.

It became obvious that we would have to design better wings and tails, but that if we wanted higher performance we would have to get rid of the propeller.

The titanium “sponge” from which the sheet and bar were formed for the SR-71s came principally from Australia and Japan which have it in good supply. But the basic materials for the later Blackbirds came also from Russia, which had developed its titanium-producing facilities and decided to undercut the others in price. We discontinued those purchases, however, after an initial one because we did not want to help Russia develop this industry.

The Russians are graduating five times as many engineers each year as the United States. There is no unemployment of them. Here, unfortunately, there is little or no stability in our programs. It’s train, hire, and fire.

What will be the importance of aircraft in the year 2000? For defense? For commerce? It may seem traitorous from an aircraft designer, but I see a diminished role for the manned military aircraft and more reliance on remotely piloted vehicles and missiles.

My work always has 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 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 credit Andrew Carnegie with being the most important influence on my early life through the library he had donated to Ishpeming—as he had in many other small towns whose natural resources had helped build his fortune.

We couldn’t take a dog with us in the passenger car of the train, and we could not afford the cost of shipping by crate. My last view of Ishpeming is of Putsie running along beside and then behind the train, trying to keep up.

At that time, in order to get a degree in aeronautical engineering you had to study all the different fields of engineering—civil, chemical, electrical, mechanical—leading to the study of aeronautical engineering.

One day Professor Pawlowski taught me an important lesson in keeping an open mind. He took me down to a bank vault where he had some wax impressions of hands, “spirit” hands, he had from a seance. They were entwined in a manner that could not be explained. This eminent scientist was willing to consider their validity. He wanted me to learn to keep an open mind. “Don’t automatically write anything off,” he said. “Anything.” I’ve remembered that.

That was the most excitement we encountered until we got to Lockheed in Burbank in the San Fernando Valley of California. The company had been purchased from receivers by a small group of aviation enthusiasts just that June for $40,000.

A few proposals we explored, such as streamlining wheels, the drivers refused to accept. I was given a demonstration of the argument against that one day when we were at the track for tests. It was very exciting circling the track at speeds of 130 to 140 miles an hour; but if you had solid-disc streamlined wheels, the wind across the track would just pick up the car and set it down again about four feet off course.

I think an important reason for my being hired was that I had run the wind-tunnel tests on the company’s new plane.

All of the engineers’ requirements are not always met by the pilots. Engineers don’t always act on the pilots’ complaints. The problem essentially is one of communication.

In those early days, I was so devoted to my work and so eager to get on with it that I didn’t always consider others’ reactions. Hibbard had to take me out behind the barn, figuratively, for a talk several times. Once it was because I had not taken an extra flight mechanic along on an Electra test flight, and, instead, had moved the lead bars myself to shift weight in the airplane. They weighed only 55 pounds apiece, and I reloaded them with just one man, Dorsey Kammerer. He filed a complaint with the union. I had thought I was doing the right thing, saving time and money. But it had cut one man out of a job and his flight pay.

Kelly,” Hibbard explained, “you’ve got to learn to live in the world with all of these other people, and the sooner you learn that the better off you are going to be.

I was fortunate to have begun my career in a company of gentlemen.

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

When a man fought astride his horse bareback, with only knee pressure and a pull on the mane for control, any peasant could pull him off, stab him, or knock him out with a stone ax. But when the horseman developed a flight control system—a bridle, then saddle, and stirrups—war became darned dangerous for someone on foot.

The technological battles of today will determine the outcome of any future world war. It will be won with new weapons—lasers and charged particle weapons for defense, “stealth” technology to make attacking aircraft invisible, and space satellites for navigation and missile firing. Computer capability may be the most important element of all to winning the conflict, being the controlling technology, insuring the accuracy of weapons firing.