I doubt that today’s Lockheed would hire Kelly Johnson or any of the Skunk Works engineers. They’d never get past the mega coporate H.R. dept.
The real story of how he assembled that world class unit must be a helluva story. Somehow I don’t think the classified ads entered the picture.
Nor job fairs.
Not only were the designs amazing but the speed of delivering working prototypes and inventing the necessary
exotic tooling... And no modern computers.
A vanished breed.
This is the third interesting story I’ve seen out of Lockheed’s skunkworks in the last year.
The first was the development of a desalination membrane they’ve trademarked perforene. This will collapse the need for energy for desalination—which represents roughly 1/3 of the costs of desalination. The membrane needs more work. So they need more smart young engineers to do the job.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2350985-lockheed-martins-newest-innovation-isnt-what-you-expect
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed/data/ms2/documents/Perforene-datasheet.pdf
The second big announcement from the skunkworks was that the skunkworks was working on a nuclear fusion device that they hope to have prototyped in 5 years. That’s going to need more young guns to do the grunt work.
http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.html
The big technological revolutions that will make the 21st century successful—and push vast treasures to their developers — involve desalination cheap enough for agriculture and energy at least 1/2-1/4 the cost of current cheapest coal.
Lockheed is aiming right. Whether they hit the mark remains to be seen.
A lot of stuff got done using slide rules.
Amazing what was done pre-computer throughout history.