[Audiobook]
I chose this book because I wanted to learn more about the Skunkworks, the secretive Lockheed R&D works based in Burbank.
Ben Rich became the leader of the Skunkworks after Kelly Johnsons retirement – this book recounts stories of his time there.
The character of the place changed with the change of leadership, the book starts with Riches taking over the leadership and describes some of the decisions he made around the development of stealth technology. He took quite a risk based on trust in his colleagues, which could easily have played out differently and lead to a book about failure rather than one about success. Then he rewinds to when he joined the Skunkworks and what lead up to his taking over.
There are many fascinating stories, including some of the unexpected engineering needed to deal with flying aircraft beyond the current limits, and what happened when things went wrong. Things like finding a fuel that would provide power at 85000 feet, finding that forgetting a screw cover on a stealth plane would increase the radar cross section by several orders of magnitude and dealing with heat generated in the leading edge of the wing when flying at Mach 3.
He is rightfully proud of the Skunkworks and his part in it, it was an amazing development facility. They could move quickly by being a tight knit team with trust in each other, they didn’t hold with all the paperwork seen in many other development groups because that stood in the way of that trust.
Between chapters there are short interludes written by other people relevant to the chapters, this brings another view of what was happening at the time.
The book concludes with a tour of skunkworks (little s) set up in other companies, mostly tech companies, and how they apply the principles in their organisations.
Overall I would recommend this book. Especially if you have an interest in aircraft, engineering or teamwork.