

How a WWII Jet Fighter Was Designed in 150 days & shipped in six months - lionhearted
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2578-a-look-at-the-design-process-of-aviation-innovator-clarence-kelly-johnson

======
fnazeeri
The biggest difference between now and then…what makes this impossible today
is not that our engineers are less capable, is not that we are more
bureaucratic and is not that we’re less motivated.

The difference is that back then, we were indifferent to failure that cost
lives.

And not just in development/testing. Once planes were deployed, if a plane
didn’t come back from a mission it was “lost in action” independent if the
wing just broke off in flight over some stretch of water. Read this excerpt
from <a
href="[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_P-80_Shooting_Star#Des...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_P-80_Shooting_Star#Design_and_development>Wikipedia</a>):

<blockquote>The P-80 testing program proved very dangerous. Burcham was killed
on 20 October 1944 while flying the third YP-80A produced, 44-83025. The “Gray
Ghost” was lost on a test flight on 20 March 1945, although pilot Tony LeVier
escaped. Newly promoted to chief engineering test pilot to replace Burcham,
LeVier bailed out when one of the engine’s turbine blades broke, causing
structural failure in the airplane’s tail. LeVier landed hard and broke his
back, but returned to the test program after six months of recovery. Noted ace
Major Richard Bong was also killed on an acceptance flight of a production
P-80 in the United States on 6 August 1945. Both Burcham and Bong crashed as a
result of main fuel pump failure. Burcham’s death was the result of a failure
to brief him on a newly installed emergency fuel pump backup system, but the
investigation of Bong’s crash found he had apparently forgotten to switch on
the emergency fuel pump that could have prevented the accident. He bailed out
when the aircraft rolled inverted but was too close to the ground for his
parachute to deploy.</blockquote>

So this “no bureaucracy” craze makes no sense for modern aviation design but
makes a lot of sense where lives are not at risk (as is the case with a lot of
software development, but not all).

That’s my $0.02.

~~~
zeemonkee
The introductory chapter to the Right Stuff (Tom Wolfe) describes this well.
The sheer cost of lives among test pilots in the 40s and 50s is shocking by
today's standards, but this was a generation that went through Normandy and
Bataan.

That said, that doesn't explain why the aircraft of WW2 and the early Cold War
took just a few years to go from drawing board to combat, in the days before
advanced computer modelling, yet it took 20 years to build the Eurofighter. I
suspect the lack of accountability of military contractors coupled with
government collusion (jobs programs over national security) has more than a
bit to do with it.

~~~
run4yourlives
One word: Priority.

I am a fighter jet fanatic, but let's be honest: What the hell is a
Eurofighter, Raptor, or Lightening going to do that can't also be done by an
Eagle, Falcon or Hornet to more or less the same degree?

Let's be clear: The US and NATO established air dominance over the skies in
Gulf War I in days, the Balkans in hours, and Afghanistan and Iraq in minutes
with aircraft designed in the 70's. There is really no credible threat to
western air forces that makes a new generation of fighter jet a priority.

Or at least, there wasn't. Now that Russia and possibly China are building
realistic opponents that will challenge the dominance of F-15s/F-16s and
F-18s, there is pressure to upgrade.

~~~
borism
wow, Russia and China have started building realistic opponents for
F-15s/F-16s and F-18s just now? I'm not sure whether I should laugh, cry, or
tear my eyes out...

~~~
run4yourlives
To be fair, the Russians did have that massive collapse of society to deal
with a few years back. It slowed them down a little.

The Chinese still aren't big players in this space, and they mostly take their
lead from the Russians.

The Russian's haven't exactly been twiddling their thumbs, but while they make
great aircraft, their radar and weapon systems are just now starting to
eclipse western fourth generation standards, and the Raptor is still posting
20-1 kill ratios in simulated combat.

That will probably change as the PAK-FA and J-XX come online (the Sukkoi being
the greater threat, realistically, since nobody really knows what the J-XX
actually is).

~~~
borism
I was being sarcastic.

Russia had equal opponents to mentioned 4th gen fighters since late 70s.

~~~
run4yourlives
No, they did not, actually.

~~~
borism
I will not get into arguing about that here.

Let's just say HN isn't the place to get factual information about weapons
systems - when I need that I go to Key Publishing forum and such.

~~~
run4yourlives
Keep in mind that many of the opinions around Soviet technology were overly
optimistic. Until the Mig-29 and Su-27 entered service in the 80's, they had
nothing that could match the F-14/F-15/F16 and F-18.

The kill ratios of the F-15 and F-16 speak for themselves.

------
jacquesm
> Johnson deplores the trend toward specialization with the lament of a
> designer who also knows how to handle machine tools. “Some of the fellows in
> the Skunk Works never had any cutting oil splashed on them.”

There are plenty of programmers that have never held a soldering iron either.

I'm not even sure if that's 'good' or 'bad', it seems there are advantages to
knowing what goes on under the hood but at the same time that knowledge comes
in to play less and less every day.

~~~
GBond
It is always good to learn the abstraction layer below when creating
something. For designing physical objects that will one day be physical
products, it makes a lot of sense to understand the manufacturing process and
materials involved.

To use your example of software... I've encountered one too many people who
are billed as an Enterprise software "architects" who have never coded a
single line production software in their life <cringe>. Needless to say, these
projects almost always end up a disaster.

~~~
arethuza
I think you misunderstand the purpose of that kind of architect - their job is
to wear a suit, give good PowerPoint and disappear in a puff of UML when it
comes to actually building software.

~~~
GBond
I am aware that it is common practice for a guy with a title architect be the
"smoke and mirrors" guy during the sales phase. I am referring to so called
architects who have the role of leading a group of programmer during the
building of software. Unfortunately many times their understanding of software
does not go beyond the Visio and Powerpoints but it is falsely assumed they
can still lead due to pointy-hair-boss soft skills. What ends up happening is
crapware due to a lack of understanding of fundamental software design and
process.

~~~
gaius
Unfortunately he's also the guy that tells the customer "yes we'll do it in
Blub!".

------
nickpinkston
Modern MechE's seemingly can't build anything either - at least where I went
to school. The SAE formula guys are the only ones it seemed.

I'm not sure what I think about engineers who can only CAD up a part but
couldn't make it.

~~~
redrobot5050
I don't understand this logic. Yes, in a start-up, having multiple skillsets
and job overlap comes in handy.

In the corporate world, however, that MechE will likely never do anything but
CAD up parts. They will have a machinist on staff to make his creations. Just
like how corporate programmers don't need to build their own computers or run
the company's IT.

A better analogy might be a story of a friend of mine from graduate school,
Chuck. He, and another grad student we'll call Mike, got their first year of
graduate funding through a professor with very little grant money. It was very
important that Mike had machine shop skills and could build some of their
research equipment for the lab. Mike made a name for himself -- he wasn't a
very good machinist compared to the guys on staff -- but he was building the
needed equipment, even if it was very time consuming.

Using this humble lab, Chuck and Mike worked hard for their professor and
eventually got lots of funding. It got to the point where the funding was so
much, that time was more a concern. Chuck could then overnight parts from
electronics catalogs and conduct research faster/better than Mike, who despite
having this funding, continued the frugal habit of machining all his own
parts. Mike eventually got disciplined (for not moving fast enough in his
research) and frustrated (he fixated on the fact that his skills helped them
get the funding in the first place).

TL;DR: When Time becomes greater than money, I'd rather have the CAD guy CAD
it up, and the machinist make it.

~~~
gaius
Because without the ability to machine it, you have far less of an insight
into how hard it will be to do so, or how long it will take, or how much
wastage there will be. That can have an orders-of-magnitude effect on the
cost. In your story, Chuck is ordering parts sure, but the guy who designed
those parts was a specialist in designing parts...

In my first year of Mech Eng they sent us all off to a machine shop to learn
to weld, use a lathe, etc, I couldn't give an example to you now, but it
really does make a difference, you start to think as well as "how will this
work" but also "how will this be made", "how can this be repaired", "how will
someone get at this part to replace it", etc etc.

~~~
redrobot5050
>In your story, Chuck is ordering parts sure, but the guy who designed those
parts was a specialist in designing parts...

Exactly. In the long run, re-inventing the wheel is costly. Costly enough that
Chuck graduates with his PhD, while the other ends up failing out and working
at a machine shop.

Also, a constant criticism of Chuck's counterpart, Mike, was that everything
he built was constantly over-engineered, and took to damn long. If anything,
his machine shop experience hampered his ability to design or refine his
design skills past an undergraduate level.

A semester of welding, lathing, and whatnot will likely not help a
professional MechE, as easily half their CAD designs will be fabricated
completely by machine. Understanding a precision machinist's complaints will
not come into the field.

~~~
nickpinkston
Nothing is "fabricated completely by machine" like an ink jet prints on paper.
I work in 3D printing, the closest to this fire-and-forget model, and there
are still a lot of design contraints and optimizations that any engineer needs
to know to be truly good at making parts.

If you're designing shaping, molding, machining, etc. parts having an idea of
manufacturing processes is essential to elegant solutions at low cost.

The other way would be like an artist who instructed someone to paint his
masterpiece from his initial sketch. A lot is lost in translation.

------
chwolfe
I highly recommend Ben Rich's autobiography to anyone interested in the
engineering and business practices behind Skunk Works:

[http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-
Lockheed/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-
Lockheed/dp/0316743003/ref=sr_1_1?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1285073583&sr=8-1)

~~~
SkyMarshal
Second that, one of my favorites. The guys who built the SR71 were the
ultimate hackers.

~~~
cdibona
I'll third that, its downright inspirational.

------
WalterBright
A good book on how airplanes are designed and produced is The Jet Makers
<http://generalatomic.com/jetmakers/index.html>

Yes, my father is the author.

------
scrrr
He apparently also created crappy planes that killed many people, for example
the F-104. Perhaps more bureaucracy is good sometimes.

~~~
jacquesm
Makes you wonder what the Spanish pilots did right that went wrong elsewhere.

of course they didn't fly nearly as many F104s as the other airforces but
still, a '0' where elsewhere the percentages of losses are some of the largest
of all fighter jets ever recorded should at least make for an interesting
investigation. Not that it matters anymore with the F104 being retired from
service but there might be something to be learned from that.

------
raffi
I haven't had a chance to do more than skim the article yet, but if you get a
chance, read Skunk Works by Ben Rich. The book is about the shop Kelly Johnson
(the subject of the article) ran that gave us all kinds of great flying toys.
It's a neat story about a legendary engineer/leader.

~~~
metamemetics
article summary:

> _Use a small number of good people_

------
thomasfl
"Johnson crammed a small number of capable people into close proximity, so
that “engineering shall always be within a stone’s throw of the airplane.”"

This is agile and extreme-programming at it's best.

------
MicahNance
180 days to design the P-80. They built 28 planes a day. Compare that to:
<http://www.f22fighter.com/timeline.htm>

I can't even tell how many years the design of the F-22 has taken, but that
timeline lists 13 planes delivered in 2003. 13 per year versus 28 a day.

Now, obviously modern planes are much more complex than they were in 1943, and
they should take longer to design and build. But how much longer? How much is
the bureacracy actually hurting?

~~~
jrwoodruff
From what I've read, there was a huge amount of politics involved in the F-22.
Plus, we're not in WWII, so there's less demand on pumping out high volumes of
good-enough planes and more focus on building something that really pushes the
limits of technology, which the F-22 does.

~~~
redrobot5050
Yeah. I remember reading that the F-22 or the JSF has contracts in 48 states.
They really spread around the contracts to ensure smooth sailing in Congress.
Everyone got a piece of the action (jobs to bring home) so to speak.

The problem is, it's also insanely easy to disrupt manufacturing that
distributed. If it ever came to a war where bombs/rockets/cruise missiles were
hitting our soil, it would be nearly impossible to ramp up production of this
jet, much less protect the facilities involved in designing/making it.

~~~
notahacker
If it came to war then speed of production of fighter aircraft would have a
pretty minimal impact on the US ability to achieve air superiority. The days
when Britain survived WWII by manufacturing >14000 Hurricanes are long gone

~~~
redrobot5050
You're right, but it depends on the length of the conflict. Each Apache
Helicopter is built by hand. They have individual names. We only produce 60 of
them a year.

I don't know the loss rate we've encountered in Iraq and Afganistan (I know
its much lower than the Blackhawks) but even if you're losing 61/year for a
long enough timeline....

------
balding_n_tired
As I recall the P-80 never saw combat, at least in WW II. I remember it
chiefly for killing Richard Bong, the USAAF leading ace.

~~~
philwelch
As the F-80 it saw action in Korea. But the only jet that saw action in WWII
was the Me 262.

Edit: Also apparently the Gloster Meteor (thanks arethuza!)

~~~
arethuza
The Gloster Meteor saw action with the RAF, shooting down a decent number of
V1s:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloster_Meteor>

------
JoeAltmaier
Limited meetings to 15 people or less? How is that agile? In comparison with
bloated corporations I guess.

~~~
chunkbot
They're designing and building fighter jets, not deciding what color to make a
website.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Doesn't matter what they're designing. Meetings of 15 people waste at least 10
peoples' time. People don't change just because the problem gets harder; they
can't collaborate in large groups as well as small ones. And 15 is not small.

~~~
lionhearted
Good comment and I agree with you, except maybe in this case they would have 2
pilots, 2 mechanics, 2 people from the war department, 2 people from the
treasury, the core engineering team, and a secretary - when you need
approvals, it might be easier to have a meeting also be a presentation where
people put their stamp on the document immediately afterwards instead of
running the meeting two or three different times.

