Monday, February 27, 2006
This Day in History
On this day in 1910, Clarence Leonard "Kelly" Johnson is born in Ishpeming, MI. He became an aeronautical engineer and, working for Lockheed, designed or contributed to the design of 40 aircraft, some of them pretty darn famous. He lead the secret aircraft design department at Lockheed called the Skunk Works. Among the planes he designed are the F-80 Shooting Star, the T-33 training jet, the F-104 Starfighter, and the U-2 and SR-71 spyplanes (which are too good, apparently, to retire). He also contributed to the P-38 Lightening (A is for attack, B is for bomber, F is for fighter, and P is for pursuit) which planes were used, in conjunction with warrantless intercepts of Japanese coded communications, to shoot down the plane on which Admiral Yamamoto flew on April 18, 1943, thus changing for the worse the fortunes of the Japanese in the Pacific thereafter.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 3:18 AM 
