Books

Skunk Works 

The story of Lockheed’s justifiably fetishized engineering A team as told by the man who ran it. 

Let me start by saying that this book is fun. Spellbinding even.

But it’s also a piece of critical education on how to get shit done inside a behemoth bureaucracy. In short: split off a group of the top performers, give them important tasks, and install a leader at the top who insulates them from the rest of the organization’s bullshit. 

Lockheed churned out a parade of the greatest hits of military aviation with this approach (p38, U2, sr71, etc). And the whole startup scene applies roughly the same model to solving tech problems. A good startup is, itself, like a Skunk Works. 

It has just enough aeronautical engineering to give it an exotic flavor without bogging it down. Ben Rich tells just the right number of stories about the planes’ exploits in the world to make you feel how high the stakes were. 

It’s even better than you’d imagine. Five stars for its class.

Kelly Johnson / Ben Rich is up there with one of the greatest of all time aerospace duos like Gene Kranz / Glynn Lunney (Mission Directors from the Apollo / Mercury / Gemini program)

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