Skunk Works: Beyond the Blackbird (2025) | The Complete Story of Lockheed's Secretive Company

The complete Skunk Works story and Kelly Johnson's biography. Full documentary.
Skunks Works is the Company that Gave Us The F-104 Starfighter, SR-71 Blackbird, The U-2 Dragonlady, the P-80 Shooting Star, the F-22 Raptor, and many other fantastic Aircraft. Learn about Kelly Johnson, Ben Rich, and witnesses of the birth of the California company.

The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace manufacturer. Founded in 1926, it merged with Martin Marietta in 1995 to form Lockheed Martin. Its founder, Allan Lockheed, had founded the similarly named but otherwise unrelated Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company, which operated from 1912 to 1920.

Allan Loughead and his brother Malcolm Loughead operated an earlier aircraft company, Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company, from 1912 to 1920. The company built and operated aircraft for paying passengers on sightseeing tours in California and developed a prototype for the civil market. However, it folded in 1920 due to the flood of surplus aircraft deflating the market after World War I. Allan entered the real estate market. Malcolm formed a successful company marketing brake systems for automobiles.

On December 13, 1926, Allan Lockheed, John Northrop, Kenneth Kay, and Fred Keeler secured funding to form the Lockheed Aircraft Company in Hollywood (spelled phonetically to prevent mispronunciation). This new company utilized some of the same technology originally developed for the Model S-1 to design the Vega Model. In March 1928, the company relocated to Burbank, California, and by year's end, reported sales exceeding one million dollars. From 1926 to 1928, the company produced over 80 aircraft and employed more than 300 workers who, by April 1929, were building five aircraft per week. In July 1929, majority shareholder Fred Keeler sold 87% of the Lockheed Aircraft Company to Detroit Aircraft Corporation. In August 1929, Allan Loughead resigned.

The Great Depression ruined the aircraft market, and Detroit Aircraft went bankrupt. A group of investors headed by brothers Robert and Courtland Gross and Walter Varney bought the company out of receivership in 1932. The syndicate bought the company for a mere $40,000 ($660,000 in 2011). Ironically, Allan Loughead had planned to bid for his own company but had raised only $50,000 ($824,000), which he felt was too small for a serious bid.

In 1934, Robert E. Gross was named chairman of the new company, the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, which was headquartered at the airport in Burbank, California. His brother Courtlandt S. Gross was a co-founder and executive who succeeded Robert as chairman after his death in 1961. The company was renamed the Lockheed Corporation in 1977.

The first successful construction that was built in any number (141 aircraft) was the Vega, first built in 1927, best known for its several first- and record-setting flights by, among others, Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post, and George Hubert Wilkins. In the 1930s, Lockheed spent $139,400 ($2.29 million) to develop the Model 10 Electra, a small twin-engined transport. The company sold 40 in the first year of production. Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, flew it in their failed attempt to circumnavigate the world in 1937. Subsequent designs, the Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior and the Lockheed Model 14 Super Electr, expanded their market.

Watch more aircraft, heroes, and their stories and missions ➤ https://www.youtube.com/@Dronescapes
To support/join the channel ➤ https://www.youtube.com/@Dronescapes/join

IG ➤ https://www.instagram.com/dronescapesvideos
FB ➤ https://www.facebook.com/Dronescapesvideos
X/Twitter ➤ https://dronescapes.video/2p89vedj
THREADS ➤ https://www.threads.net/@dronescapesvideos

#Lockheed #skunkworks #aircraft