THE IMPOSSIBLE FACTORY

An engaging life of an inventor and aviation pioneer with an astonishing, if little-known, roster of accomplishments.

Kelly Johnson rarely sought publicity for himself, and, though not shy of accepting awards—his favorite being a Daniel Guggenheim medal “because it was for art and design”—he wasn’t a self-promoter. Yet, writes journalist Dean, no fewer than 40 aircraft had their origins on Johnson’s drawing board. Born at the dawn of aviation, Johnson was an ardent reader of books about science and engineering, bent, as he later put it, on being “like Tom Swift.” Later, he took on the works of Albert Einstein, intending to be one of the first people to understand them. Those around him recognized both Johnson’s genius and drivenness, including a flight instructor refusing to take money for instruction and instead telling Johnson to spend the fee on college. Johnson then went to California to take a job with the firm the brothers Loughead, later simplified to Lockheed, founded before going bankrupt. He started in the reborn company as “an eighty-three-dollar-per-month tool designer,” though, as Dean notes, Johnson and his colleagues were “Swiss Army knives” who could do anything. In time, Johnson led the “Skunk Works,” becoming an adept at new technologies—such as the wind tunnel and, in his spare time, streamlining a car that would win the Indy 500. He also came into the orbit of the aviation heroes of the time, among them Amelia Earhart and Wiley Post. Johnson’s Lockheed came into its own in World War II, with him designing a range of warplanes. After the war ended, the company was bound up with the defense industry, although Johnson tried constantly to defeat the bureaucracy while coming up with things, like the U-2 spy plane and the stealth bomber.

A key figure in the annals of aviation technology, Johnson well merits this detail-packed life.