ScienceDirect - Technol Rep Tohoku Univ ... - Garryck Osborne

NICK COOK 247
leaders" of the day, he'd helped to shape the modern U.S. aerospace
industry.
His officiai biography describes him as an "innovator and a maverick"
and the "first engineering leader to totally integrate airframe, propulsion
and avionics into a single weapon system, the B-58."
What it does not say, but what I had gleaned from others, was that he
blended these skills with those of a pastor, acting as guide and mentor to
his team. In the 1950s, the pressure on GD Convair to outperform its
rivals was intense, but the atmosphere inside the plant was informal and
shirtsleeves—almost familial. To many of the younger engineers, Bob
Widmer wasn't just a brilliant designer, but someone they could turn to
for advice—something of a father figure, in fact.
We started by talking about Convair's own black ops capability, a
special projects facility that stayed in the shadows, unlike Johnson's
entity over at Lockheed, which reveled in its status as black world aviation's
one-stop shop for special programs.
"Kelly was the catalyst, the guy who did things differently," Widmer
said, "but, hey, we had a 'skunk works,' too; the difference was, we never
spoke about it."
Widmer's slight, sinewy body, so much frailer than it had been in the
black-and-white shots from the '60s, trembled with excitement. His
small eyes shone.
As the talk drifted into the early days of the Cold War, a time when
GD Convair came into its own as a reconnaissance specialist, I could see
that the minder assigned to me from the PR department was beginning
to lose interest. An individual I hadn't come across before, he was there
as a matter of routine to ensure that I did not encroach upon matters that
would put Lockheed Martin in a bad light or compromise national
security. But since this was history, history from way back at that, it
hardly constituted a threat to either. It was late and the minder looked
tired. His eyes were closed, to focus on the conversation more intently
perhaps? But if I hadn't known better, I'd have said he was asleep.
In this atmosphere of near-conviviality, I asked Widmer about
Kingfish.
At first, he was reluctant to say a great deal, but seeing that I knew
some of the details already, he began to open up. As we talked, I could
hear the anger in his voice; anger, I thought, that stemmed from the fact
that the CIA had chosen Lockheed's plane, not his, for the contract.
This portrait of Kingfish—the one that Widmer now began to talk
about—was markedly different from the official CIA version. And here