The only person who even compares to Johnson is Rutan. Distantly. Just the most awesome plane ever built.
Never mind his engineering know-how, Kelly Johnson’s project management skills are often ignored. These were not the fake orthodoxies now taught to the mediocre, on how to get mediocre people to produce mediocre results in a predictable, low-risk, undemanding amount of time; these were project management skills used by the best, in order to get the best from the best. And Mr Johnson, to the “best” of my knowledge, didn’t even have any extra letters after his name or nifty-looking certificates from project management institutes.
I am hoping that these skills are being rediscovered by the private companies now designing space transportation systems.