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Bob Loschke and Ken Dyson Interview by Peter Westwick

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Bob Loschke and Ken Dyson Interview by Peter Westwick Ken Dyson and Robert Loschke interview by Peter Westwick, 9 January 2012. WESTWICK: I'm sitting here with Ken Dyson and Bob Loschke on January 9th, 2012. Instead of the usual approach of going back and doing extended career oral histories, we're going to do a more focused one capitalizing on these two gentlemen's shared experiences, especially on Have Blue and the F-117A and Stealth. Maybe by way of getting into the conversation, if you could each just share how you made your way into the Have Blue and Stealth program. Ken, maybe start with you. Around 1976 you started working on classified programs. You're up at Edwards doing F-15 test piloting, still in the U.S. Air Force. And as a U.S. Air Force test pilot is when you got involved with the program? DYSON: That's right. I don't know if you want to start with me. Bob was aboard it before I was. But you can go ahead and lead with me if you want. WESTWICK: So let's start with Bob then. This is Bob's voice. LOSCHKE: I first started in what became the Have Blue program in about 1974. The S-3A program had just been winding down. I'd been involved in the control system on that airplane. It was a carrier-based ASW aircraft. I had had some previous contact with Ben Rich on some other work, and he recalled that I had done control system things, so he requested that I come over to the Skunk Works at that point and help them make a proposal. That was when I first met Dick Cantrell and Denys Overholser. Denys was the fellow who had developed the program for predicting and calculating what the radar cross section would be. He knew how to take a specified shape and come up with a radar cross section for it, but he was a radar engineer and he didn't know anything about aerodynamics. So Dick Cantrell and I were the ones who kind of helped to guide him along; “this is the kind of thing that you need to make a flyable airplane.” Then Denys would go away, analyze it, tell us what the radar cross section was, and say, "Well, what you want to do here is not good." So it was an iterative process. It took about six months or so, and we finally came up with a viable shape that we used in our proposal. LOSCHKE, BOB and DYSON, KEN So that was my introduction to that. We were awarded a contract then to develop the two prototype aircraft. I should go back: there was a test phase there, when the Air Force and DARPA wanted to know whether or not we were blowing smoke. Northrop was in competition with us at that time, so Lockheed and Northrop built full-scale models of their proposed design, and made them as close to real aircraft as they could. They were mounted on a pole and put out on the test range so the radar would be a known condition, and then you could rotate the model around on the pole and get radar cross section for different aspect angles and so forth. Northrop was in competition with us at that time, and they had their model also. At the end of this test phase Lockheed was awarded the contract to go ahead and build two prototypes to see if they could fly. Everybody was impressed with how low the radar cross section was. But the fundamental question was, could you actually build a real airplane that has all of the things like exhaust pipes and vents and things a real airplane has to have, and still show that low radar cross section? So that was when we went ahead and built it. And that was when I first met Ken. WESTWICK: Now, you knew that you were competing with Northrop. Were you aware of their approach and their philosophy and their geometry and all that? LOSCHKE: No, no, DARPA was very explicit about that. It was a fire wall between the two of us. They wanted to have complete independence, two different design groups working on that. So we knew that Northrop was working on something and we were working on something. I think a few Lockheed people got to see the Northrop test model, because we both tested down at RATSCAT in New Mexico. WESTWICK: This is White Sands? LOSCHKE: Yeah. But I'd say that 99.9 percent of the people who were working on it at Lockheed had no idea what the Northrop concept was. 2 LOSCHKE, BOB and DYSON, KEN WESTWICK: But you got to see their model, so you had some sense of…? LOSCHKE: I did not. WESTWICK: Okay, some people did, though. LOSCHKE: Yeah. There were a few people who happened to be down at RATSCAT, and I think they had it covered with a tarp and the wind blew it off for a second or two. [laughter] So they got a chance to see it. WESTWICK: Okay. But there wasn't any feedback coming in like, "Wow. I saw that Northrop model, and it looked totally different.” LOSCHKE: No. WESTWICK: Okay. DYSON: These guys made it by themselves. WESTWICK: It was just curious that DARPA wouldn't say, "Well, there are good ideas on both sides. Let's take all those ideas and maybe make them…" LOSCHKE: No. WESTWICK: It was a very conscious… DYSON: You know, it probably would have weakened the whole thing. One of the good things about this program was the small team: get together and hash it up and lash it up and go get it done. 3 LOSCHKE, BOB and DYSON, KEN WESTWICK: So how many people? DYSON: A small number. I don't know the number. WESTWICK: Single digits? DYSON: Oh, no. LOSCHKE: At the initial part of Have Blue there were probably about a dozen of us, no more than that. Later on, after we won the contract to build the prototype, then it built up. We had probably a hundred people working on it at that time, on the engineering. And then when we actually built the two vehicles we had to bring in some shop people. So there were probably about another hundred people involved in the shop in the building process. WESTWICK: Now, Ken, you were still Air Force, not Lockheed, right? DYSON: I was Air Force and continued to be in the Air Force all the way through. That leads into what I was doing. I was working on the F-15, as you said, and that was and still is a heck of a fighter airplane. Of course now there's an F-22 out there that's a bit more in terms of avionics and thrust et cetera. But that was a hot baby. One day at Edwards I got a call to report to the general's office. I went and reported. Tom Stafford was the Edwards commanding general then. He was a former space guy who came back to the Air Force. He said, "Relax, Ken," and described to me an opportunity, if I wished to accept it, to work on something that would keep me away from everywhere. It'd be a very secret thing, and it had a lot of potential to our country. What did I think about that? "Yes, sir, I'd like to do that," I said. And then he gave me, off the top of his head because he had nothing written about it at Edwards, a description of the program and what it was about: the smallest, beyond-imagination radar cross section of a machine that was going to go fly. We had to build it, as Bob said, and put all the things in that shape that 4 LOSCHKE, BOB and DYSON, KEN those smart guys concocted down at the Skunk Works. And then we'd go about flying it and prove it could fly. After that we would measure it in flight to see if indeed we had achieved what was done on the model that was stuck on a pole down at the special radar measuring range. I guess at this point these places are not so confidential or classified security-wise, but I still don't like to talk about them. WESTWICK: And this is about 1976? DYSON: Yes. General Stafford said, "Well, let's get with it." Immediately he told me to go down to the Skunk Works. "Do you know where that is, Ken?" "No, sir." So he told me how to drive there. Drive the freeways, get off on the appropriate street, turn into the gate and report, and say I was there for—and this has always interested me; I was to report for an unclassified visit to Norm Nelson. I'm to be a civilian, and not show any military look at all. So I did that. The guard told me how to get to building 52, I think it was. That sticks in my head. One of the old white buildings there left over from World War II, I think. LOSCHKE: I think it was 82. DYSON: 82? 82. I went there and knocked on the door, and I was met by a smart looking fellow named Norm Nelson. He ushered me in and there was a lovely California-looking woman who was his administrative assistant. She was way more than a secretary. Patty Gipple was her name.
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