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I own a print copy of this book, it's good stuff.

I picked it up soon after reading Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed [1], an incredible book which recounts development of the U2, SR-71 and F-117A.

1: http://amzn.com/0316743003

I haven't had a chance to do more than skim the article yet, but if you get a chance, read Skunk Works by Ben Rich. The book is about the shop Kelly Johnson (the subject of the article) ran that gave us all kinds of great flying toys. It's a neat story about a legendary engineer/leader.

There was an unofficial 15th rule: Don't work with the Navy.
(From the book Skunk Works by Ben Rich who succeeded Kelly. Great book. Read it.)

Skunk Works is a great read. Highly recommend it for people interested in the defense technology.

If you like the SR-71, and are interested in other Skunk Works projects like the U-2 and F-117, the book Skunk Works is a great read (and also a great audio book).

https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/...

If you enjoyed this article, I highly recommend checking out the book Skunk Works by Ben R. Rich (director of Lockheed's Skunkworks). It covers the development of this aircraft and several others through some pretty gripping accounts of engineering during the Cold War.

Skunk Works is a fascinating book. They overcame some difficult challenges building the SR-71. There are some interesting parallels to software development in the way they ran skunkworks. Insisting that the engineers that designed things had to be physically close to the people building them.

If you haven't read it, Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben Rich is a pretty fun read into the U2, A-12 Oxcart, SR-71, Sea Shadow and other craft. And has a lot of good stories from pilots.

But the ultimate SR-71 book would be Sled Driver: Flying the World's Fastest Jet.

It was capable of bombing and A-to-A combat, but was never used for either, according to the Skunk Works book by Ben Rich.

Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben Rich is really good

I’m in the midst of listening to the Skunk Works audiobook. And it’s fascinating. It had been on my list of things to read but I just couldn’t wait. I bit the bullet and bought the audiobook. It’s worth every penny.

I just finished the book "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed"

http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed-e...

It was a great book that almost feels like the pre-scrum manifesto applied to building aircraft.

There's also "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed" by Ben Rich for a more intimate perspective.

This is one of the points made repeatedly in the book _Skunk Works_ by Ben Rich: the engineers works side-by-side with the folks building the parts, and have some manufacturing knowledge themselves. The Skunk Works fusion project that was here the other day made passing mention of that approach too.

If you enjoyed this video definitely check out Skunk Works by Ben Rich. He ran the experimental R&D wing that developed the U2, SR-71 and the F-117. It has really interesting information about the development and operation of all these planes. Some of which I was shocked as allowed to be printed.

If you're interested in planes like this, I found "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed" a good read.

Skunk Works is a great read. It's enlightening how advanced these guys were in the 60's, I tend to think of the 80s and 90s as being the time when we raced forward technically but it was probably the 60s and 70s were the fastest pace.

Kelly Johnson, who led the project to build the Blackbird, disagrees. "All of us had been trained by Kelly Johnson and believed fanatically in his insistence that an airplane that looked beautiful would fly the same way." --- Ben Rich, Skunk Works

This quote opens an essay on beauty by Paul Graham, http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html

Creativity, Inc. - Ed Catmull.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big - Scott Adams

Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed - Ben Rich

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey

I've been reading "Skunk Works" (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316743003), which talks about the development of the SR-71 and other planes (such as the U-2 and the stealth bomber) at Lockheed's Skunk Works facility. It's a good read. I think it may have been suggested by another HNer.

Catch-22. In a similar vibe (but a fair bit shorter), Slaughterhouse 5. Both cover the hell of war by examining its absurdity. Catch-22 is also the funniest book you'll ever read.

If you're into engineering books, the best I've read is Skunk Works (Ben R Rich). It's an account of the work of Lockheed's legendary skunk works division - behind the U2 spy plane, stealth fighter and the blackbird sr-17.

Second this. Skunk Works by Ben Rich is basically a real life Tom Clancy novel

While not exactly a book on leadership, I've picked up quite a few valuable lessons from 'Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed' by Ben R. Rich.

I would also recommend two more good books. They are relevant to almost every aspect of life and creation process:

- Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb[1]

- Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed
by Ben R. Rich[2]

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13530973-antifragile

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101438.Skunk_Works

I thoroughly enjoyed Masters of Doom.

At the time, I recall a number of people who read the book bemoaning 1991 as a bygone era of opportunity, as if all the good ideas and opportunities to invent had been "used up". Interesting how different people take the same text as self-defeating vs inspiring.

Also, on the topic of inspirational books, I always have to mention Skunk Works[0], one of my all-time favorites.

0: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316743003

When you read the Skunk Works book you stumble upon passages where the government has to pay for tools maintenance and storage after the project is complete.

Some bureaucrat entity always decides at some moment that paying for storage of an arbitrarily old project tooling is not worth it.

Also take a look at "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed" by Ben Rich (manager at Lockheed after Kelly Johnson). Despite the title, he also talks extensively about the U2 and SR-71 projects - Amazing pieces of engineering all.

http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/d...

There are many lessons to be found within Skunk Works by Rich.

Among them is the statement that the SR-71 was not at the edge of the design envelope. If I recall correctly, there were substantial safety margins in most areas, "like a Chevy truck" in order to ensure the speed of development and improve the likelihood that the entire project would succeed.

The HN productivity/self-help crowd will find a lot more in there.

This passage has had the highest personal impact per word as any text I've read: You don't need Harvard to teach you that it's more important to listen than to talk. You can get straight As from all your Harvard profs, but you'll never make the grade unless you're decisive: even a timely wrong decision is better than no decision. The final thing you need to know is don't half-heartedly wound problems - kill them dead. That's all there is to it. Now you can run this goddamn place.

Also: https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/who-we-are/business-are...

A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson).

It's a cursory overview of all of history (title) from the dawn of time to the evolution of humans. It seems to be only slightly dated in some information, but really interesting to learn how the knowledge we assume is true today came to fruition over time.

Before that,

Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed (Ben R. Rich)

Such an awesome book about not only the engineering feats achieved by Lockheed Martin during the Cold War Era, but the incredible ability to keep developments secret from the mostly everyone. If you want to know more about the purpose of Area51, check it out.

Just started reading Skunk Works about about Lockheed and so far its focused a lot on their stealth tech and they offhand mention that they would build something like a flying saucer if they could figure out how to power it; this was in the 60's or so, so while the government says it isn't something we or another government has created, I wouldn't be shocked.

I should have given a disclaimer: if you're not a practitioner in the area or not completely interested in the details, "Have Blue and the F-117A" can be in dry in parts.

I have not read "Area 51 Black Jets"; title clearly intended for pop appeal, but hopefully it's substantial content.

I believe I read "Inside the stealth bomber" about 15 years ago and thought it was decent. Bill Sweetman is one of the better aerospace writers out there, if a bit quick to extrapolate from some data points (makes sense given he's a journalist whose trade is to discuss things about which little info is publicly available).

The recommendation for Skunk Works by Rich (I think ghostwritten by Leo Janos who also ghost wrote for Yeager) is also seconded.

There also a few choice publications of decent length on the web:

"Winning the ATF" by Sherm Mullin, PM for the YF-22: https://www.afa.org/20140207afaorg/publications/michellinsti... -> "Winning the ATF"

"B-2: Spirit of Innovation" by Rebecca Grant: http://www.northropgrumman.com/Capabilities/B2SpiritBomber/S...

Great NASA e-book series: https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/aeronautics_ebooks_archi...

The only potential thing to watch out about the NASA books is that NASA sometimes has a tendency to play up their own contributions to programs that were very joint (e.g., AF/NASA/DARPA and Industry). Small fault to find given that NASA is awesome enough to put these high-quality publications together, employ some really great historians and photographers, and make the pubs freely available. In particular, the F-16XL story ("Elegance in Flight") is one that I'd never seen told with such completeness anywhere else. The X-29, Active Aeroelastic Wing, and Low-Boom Supersonic books are also recommended.

I'm really enjoying 'Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed' currently.

I found it really interesting that their stealth aircraft model was so good, they had to redesign the poles it sat on.

Also it talks about a Russian paper they used based on maxwells equations, that allowed them to calculate the reflected RF from 2D surfaces, which I'm curious about finding.

Kelley Johnson’s Skunk Works was successful because it rejected government controls and oversight. Read Kelley’s 14 rules of Management.

Johnson had a 15th rule that he passed on by word of mouth. According to the book "Skunk Works" the 15th rule is: "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy.“ because the Navy wouldn’t relinquish control of projects to the Skunkworks.

And it’s “funding” was paid contracts for performance, not an infinite credit line of free cash that Huawei got. Entirely different things. Huawei has sucked up a huge amount of Chinese resources, and there is no guarantee they’ve made a positive return, or ever will.

And SpaceX is a great example, just like the Skunkworks it’s NASA funding was pay for performance. SpaceX would have been out if business without the first contract, and would not be remotely as big today without the others, but those contracts have also saved NASA billions of dollars.

The vast majority of government funded projects are similar to the SLS, which has eaten up $15B+ in taxpayer funds without a launch. And when it finally launches 4+ years late it will be the most expensive launch system ever by a factor of over 2x per launch, and at least 20 times more expensive per pound than commercial launch systems. While reusing 40 year old engines!

The F-117 was retrofitted with the ability to fly a computer generated flight plan, which would not avoid radar sites but also adjust the plane's attitude in order to minimize the radar cross section. [1]

[1] Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos (page 101 on my copy)

The relevant Wikipedia article also mentions the system, but in less detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117_Nighthawk#Avion...

In Ben Rich's book, he gives a couple of examples. First, one with a proposal for a design of a stealth submarine, and then second, another example of an actual prototype of a stealth ship that underwent a year of testing (in which it performed admirably) before being rejected.

Here's a telling excerpt from the submarine adventure:

> That submarine captain epitomized the hidebound Navy at its worst. He frowned at my drawing and backhanded my concept. "We don't build submarines that look like that." He admitted that our test results were "interesting" but added, "Your design would probably cost us two or three knots in speed." I countered, "But why care about losing three knots, when you are invisible to your enemy?"

>

> He ignored me. "This looks more like the _Monitor_ or the _Merrimac_ from the Civil War," he said. "We'd never build a modern submarine that looked like _that_." [1]

Then there was the full-scale testing of a stealth ship in which nightly tests were made with the Navy trying to detect the prototype with radar, and virtually always failing. Eventually the Navy decided not to go ahead, on the grounds that they couldn't keep it secret. Rich also speculated on motivations:

> A future commander resented having only a four-man crew to boss around on a ship that was so secret that the Navy could not even admit it existed. Our stealth ship might be able to blast out of the sky a sizeable Soviet attack force, but in terms of an officer's future status and promotion prospects, it was about as glamorous as commanding a tugboat. [2]

[1] p272-273, Skunk Works by Ben Rich

[2] p278, Skunk Works by Ben Rich

> Skunk Works is/was one of the badassest engineering units in world history.

Yes, Skunk Works is amazing. But I don't think it's fair to view their accomplishments in isolation.

Skunk Works didn't have to worry about where to get money from, Lockheed provided Kelly Johnson with money and trusted him to spend in appropriately. In a normal company you have a lot of people dedicated to sales, marketing, and finance. The first two didn't apply at all to Skunk Works, and while I imagine they did have to plan and budget, I don't know to what extent they had to do controlling/taxes, etc.

> The book "Skunk works" by it's former director Ben Rich contains as an epilogue a lamentation to the new way of doing things by lengthy meandering process and bureaucracy with an inflated middle management - instead of just doing things right.

Yes, and is it not the least bit ironic that Skunk Works was within a company which got into its position through lengthy meandering bureaucratic processes which awarded them contracts for defense programs?

> And I can tell you, it does not contain an inch of Scrum, six sigma, RUP or any of that.

Please don't interpret my comment as saying "and I think the status quo in business is just fine." It's not. The current business processes we have created reward bureaucracy and paper pushing, at the expense of innovation.

This being said, I also don't think the correct solution is to have engineers running everything. It would certainly help people in management to have relevant technical experience, but I studied around and work with engineers. The average engineer would fucking hate things like controlling finances, but it's necessary for the business to comply with tax regulations, etc.

We know that the government kept the SR71 secret in the 50s and 60s and the stealth bomber secret in the 80s and 90s. There’s a great book called Skunk Works that details how massive military aviation advances were kept secret for decades.

Now, we’re 60 years on from the Blackbird and 40 years on from the stealth bomber. We know the military has operated drones for decades and that Russia has hypersonic missiles.

I find it much more plausible that these are top secret man made UFOs. In 10-20 years when this technology is outdated we’ll probably find out what it really was.

If you're into this kind of stuff the book Skunk Works by Ben R Rich is REALLY good! IMO it carries a lot of lessons into software development and startups also. Like they did random startup type things where for example the external starter motor for the planes engines was made from a couple Buick motors. They spent lavishly where they had to but were frugal and kept it simple where they could. Fun + interesting read.

What an ignorant I was.
March last year (2019), I wrote an email to Lee Holloway asking him how he could bootstrap such a great company. Now I know why I haven’t received the answer.

EDIT: I found an email:

Dear Lee Holloway,

Excuse my curiosity, as an Engineer I am not writing this kind of emails a lot, but I have read the blog series by John Graham-Cumming about the company, and it would really help me if you can answer my question about the constant flow of engineering innovations from your company.

I am a security engineer from Europe and would like to know how is it possible, that security team will start producing such a stream of innovative things like Keyless SSL, CFSSL, SIDH implementation, Red October key management server and many more your company already published?

When the "lift and shift" from the open source or vendor stops and internal building start to happen within an organization? Is it a cultural thing where only a small startup can succeed and scale later? Is it about the budget or is it a cultural shift that is non forcible upon them?
Is a prerequisite to the innovation, that almost everything is developed in house? That came to me as a contra productive strategy. I have read Skunk Works and other books, but I am still impressed how that happens regarding to the modern leading IT/infra companies.

Thank you for your time,

...

Got to see one in person at an airshow with my dad back in the late 90s. It was in an random hanger we were checking out. The main door was opened maybe five feet with a gate in front of it and guards were supervising people looking in. We had no idea what to expect. I will never forget looking around the door and there it was, gave me chills. It was the coolest thing I have ever, or will ever see.

As is hackernews tradition, I will now recommend "Skunk Works" by Ben Rich, fantastic book.

The backstory is related in Skunk Works by Ben Rich [1]; cadmium-plated tools caused embrittlement in titanium skin panels; it took them a while to track down the cause but eventually they purged the Burbank factory of everything that was cadmium plated to solve the production problem.

[1] Ben Rich and Leo Janos. Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed. Boston: Back Bay Books, 1996. ISBN 0-316-74300-3.

I am skeptical a single book can change how a person thinks about the world - at least on a practical level.

Actually transformative concepts are usually not simple, and they need to mature in the thinkers mind.

Most important subjects are ao large it would be impossible to cram them into a single book.

Books can be insightfull and amazing, and there are several that are so vivid I find chapters from them popping into my head. A few recent books I feel have been very enligthening to me:

Notes on the synthesis of form by Alexander. Skunk works by Ben Richie. Influence by Cialdini. Skin in the game by Taleb. Isaacson's biographies.

"the planning tasks (e.g. writing emails, having meetings) have grown, though perhaps not entirely linearly."

Or is it because of the cult of Process and Bureaucracy? Skunk Works is/was one of the badassest engineering units in world history. They did projects that made sense, they had high individual responsibility, very flat organization , and encouraged communication between disciplines above all.

The book "Skunk works" by it's former director Ben Rich contains as an epilogue a lamentation to the new way of doing things by lengthy meandering process and bureaucracy with an inflated middle management - instead of just doing things right.

The book is the best book on the subject on how to do great technical things - but not by way of theory, but by of example. And I can tell you, it does not contain an inch of Scrum, six sigma, RUP or any of that. They had a simple high level process, and then they drilled down on specific processes on per project basis, as needed.

I can recommend you read the book Skunk Works by Ben Rich and he'll tell you that overpriced useless planes are a government corporate welfare program designed to keep military contractors in business and skilled workforce employed.

His case in point was the B2 which was supposed to got to Lockheed as they had the better tech and could have made it cheaper but instead they gave the contract to Northrop to prevent Lockheed having too large share of the defense pie and to keep Northrop afloat as they were denied other lucrative contracts in the past.

Ben Rich's book [1] about the development of the SR-71 explains the reason behind the hammer story. Cadmium plated tools were traced to embrittlement of titanium panels; they spent quite a bit of time tracking down the source of that problem and eliminating Cd plated tools from the factory.

As far as coffee makers go, it's not always true in aircraft---especially combat aircraft---that gravity always points down. You see the same awareness in NASA Tech Briefs: coffee makers, toilet seats, even simple things like cabinet latches can't depend on gravity always having the same magnitude, or direction, or steadiness.

[1] Ben R. Rich. Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. ISBN 0-316-74300-3.

For me...

1. Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets by John Murphy

2. Options as a Strategic Investment by Lawrence G. McMillan

3. [just finished] The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right By Atul Gawande

4. [finished last week] Dealers of Lightning by Michael A. Hiltzik

5. [currently working on] Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software By GOF

6. [currently working on] Dan Appleman's Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to the Win32 API by Dan Appleman

7. [next on the list] Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben Rich, Leo Janos