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Clarence Leonard Johnson: (February 27, 1910 – December 21, 1990)

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✪ Clarence Leonard “Kelly” Johnson was an American aeronautical and systems engineer; recognized for his contributions to a series of important aircraft designs, most notably the Lockheed U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird. Besides the first production aircraft to exceed Mach 3, he also produced the first fighter capable of Mach 2, the United States’ first operational jet fighter, as well as the first fighter to exceed 400 mph, and many other contributions to various aircraft platforms.

As a member and first team leader of the Lockheed Skunk Works, Johnson worked for more than four decades and is said to have been an “organizing genius.” He played a leading role in the design of over forty aircraft, including several honored with the prestigious Collier Trophy, and acquired a reputation as one of the most talented and prolific aircraft design engineers in the history of aviation.

Kelly Johnson was born in the remote mining town of Ishpeming, Michigan to parents who were Swedish immigrants who came from the city of Malmö, county of Scania. His father ran a construction company. When Johnson was 13 years old, he won a prize for his first aircraft design. He attended Flint Central High School and graduated in 1928, then went on to Flint Junior College, now known as Mott Community College, and finally to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he received a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Aeronautical Engineering.

While attending grade school in Michigan, Johnson was often ridiculed for his first name, Clarence. Some boys started calling him “Clara.” One morning while waiting in line to get into a classroom, one boy started with the normal routine of calling him “Clara.” Johnson tripped him so hard the boy broke a leg. The boys then decided that he was not a “Clara” after all; and instead started calling him “Kelly.” The nickname stuck and Johnson carried it for the remainder of his life. The name came from the popular song at the time, “Has Anyone Here Seen Kelly? (Kelly from the Emerald Isle)”. Henceforth, he was always known as “Kelly” Johnson.

In 1937, Johnson married Althea Louise Young, who worked in Lockheed’s accounting department; she died in December 1969. In May 1971, he married his secretary Maryellen Elberta Meade of New York; she died after a long illness on October 13, 1980, aged 46. He married Meade’s friend Nancy Powers Horrigan in November 1980.

At the University of Michigan, Johnson conducted wind tunnel tests of Lockheed’s proposed Model 10 airliner. He found the aircraft did not have adequate directional stability, but his professor felt it did and told Lockheed so. Upon completing his master’s degree in 1933, Johnson joined Lockheed as a tool designer on a salary of $83 a month. Shortly after starting, Johnson convinced Hall Hibbard, the chief engineer at Lockheed, the Model 10 was unstable.

Hibbard sent Johnson back to Michigan to conduct more tests. Johnson eventually made multiple changes to the wind tunnel model, including adding an “H” tail, to address the problem. Lockheed accepted Johnson’s suggestions and the Model 10 went on to be a success. This brought Johnson to the attention of company management, and he was promoted to aeronautical engineer.

After assignments as flight test engineer, stress analyst, aerodynamicist, and weight engineer, Johnson became chief research engineer in 1938. In 1952, he was appointed chief engineer of Lockheed’s Burbank, California plant, which later became the Lockheed-California Company. In 1956 he became Vice President of Research and Development there.

In 1958, Johnson became Vice President of Advanced Development Projects (ADP). The first ADP offices were Johnson & the site where his secretive team built the first P-38 was nearly uninhabitable; a smelly former bourbon distillery. Moving from the distillery to a larger building, the stench from a nearby plastic factory was so vile that Irv Culver, one of the engineers, began answering the intra-Lockheed “house” phone “Skonk Works!”

In Al Capp’s comic strip Li’l Abner, Big Barnsmell’s Skonk Works — spelled with an “o” — was where the Kickapoo Joy Juice was brewed. When the name leaked out, Lockheed ordered it changed to “Skunk Works” to avoid potential legal trouble over use of a copyrighted term. The term rapidly circulated throughout the aerospace community, and became a common nickname for the Lockheed research and development offices.

Johnson led or contributed to the development of a number of aircraft. A few examples illustrate the influence of his work. In the late 1930s, Johnson led the team that developed the advanced twin-engine fighter, the P-38 Lightning. Eventually, almost 10,000 Lightnings were built and they played a significant role in World War II. Johnson also worked on the development of the Constellation for Howard Hughes’ TWA airline

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Johnson is sometimes cited as the originator of the KISS principle: and his famed “down-to-brass-tacks” management style was summed up by his motto, “Be quick, be quiet, and be on time.” He ran Skunk Works by “Kelly’s 14 Rules:”

In 1943, responding to United States Army Air Forces’ concerns about Nazi Germany’s development of high performance jet fighters, Johnson proposed to develop a jet airplane in six months. The result was the P-80 Shooting Star, which was completed on time and was America’s first operational jet fighter.

In 1955, at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency, Johnson initiated construction of the airbase at Groom Lake, Nevada, later known as Area 51. This project provided a secret location for flight testing the Lockheed U-2.

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Johnson also helped to design the Lockheed AQM-60 Kingfisher a decade before the famous SR-71. The Kingfisher was a highly successful single-engine Mach 4.3-capable ramjet aircraft composed mainly of steel, which was used to test American air defenses against nuclear missiles. The information and experience Johnson gained was later used to produce the A-12 spy plane for the Central Intelligence Agency. Johnson then used the combined knowledge of the Kingfisher and A-12 to produce the SR-71 Blackbird.

Johnson also led the development of the entire SR-71 Blackbird family of aircraft. Through a number of significant innovations, Johnson’s team was able to create an aircraft that flew so high and fast that it could be neither intercepted nor shot down. No other jet airplane design since has matched the Blackbird’s performance.

Johnson served on Lockheed’s board of directors from 1964 to 1980 & became a senior vice president in 1969. He officially retired from Lockheed in 1975, but continued as a consultant at the Skunk Works. In June 1983, the Lockheed Rye Canyon Research and Development Center in Santa Clarita was renamed Kelly Johnson Research and Development Center, Lockheed-California Company, in honor of Johnson’s 50 years of service to the company.

A number of factors contributed to Johnson’s extraordinary career. He was a naturally talented designer and engineer who could quickly and accurately estimate design characteristics such as mass, characteristics which usually were determined through lengthy calculations. He was also ambitious and an excellent salesman, aggressively promoting ideas while also earning others’ trust. In addition, he created teams and a work environment where creativity and productivity were encouraged to flourish.

In 2003, as part of its commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ flight, Aviation Week & Space Technology ranked Johnson eighth on its list of the top 100 “most important, most interesting, and most influential people” in the first century of aerospace. Hall Hibbard, Johnson’s Lockheed boss, referring to Johnson’s Swedish ancestry, once remarked: “That damned Swede can actually see air.”

Johnson died at the age of 80 at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank due to natural causes brought on by the onset of senility.  He is interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.✪