Conditions Governing Access
Conditions Governing Use
Preferred Citation
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Separated Materials
Biographical / Historical
Scope and Contents
Arrangement
General
Contributing Institution:
The Huntington Library
Title: Ben R. Rich papers
Creator:
Rich, Ben R.
Identifier/Call Number: mssRich
Physical Description:
14.9 Linear Feet
(13 boxes, 3 items)
Date (inclusive): 1940-1995
Abstract: This collection contains the papers of
aerospace engineer Ben Rich (1925-1995), who served as the second director of Lockheed's
Skunk Works in Southern California and was involved in the development of the F-117 stealth
aircraft. The papers date from the 1940s to the early 1990s.
Language of Material: English.
Conditions Governing Access
Open for use by qualified researchers and by appointment. Please contact Reader Services at
the Huntington Library for more information.
Conditions Governing Use
The Huntington Library does not require that researchers request permission to quote from
or publish images of this material, nor does it charge fees for such activities. The
responsibility for identifying the copyright holder, if there is one, and obtaining
necessary permissions rests with the researcher.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item]. Ben R. Rich papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino,
California.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Michael and Karen Rich, July 15, 2008.
Separated Materials
Some books that came with the collection have been added to the Huntington Library
reference collection; searching under Ben Rich in the library catalog will retrieve these
items. The following books represent an incomplete list:
- Roy Blay, ed.,
Lockheed Horizons, no. 12 (Burbank, CA, 1983)
- Roy Blay, ed.,
Lockheed Horizons, no. 27 (Calabasas, CA, 1988)
- Walter J. Boyne,
The Smithsonian Book of Flight (Washington, DC,
1987)
- Clyde W. Burleson,
The Jennifer Project (Englewood Cliffs, NJ,
1977)
- Paul F. Crickmore,
Lockheed R-71 Blackbird (London, 1987)
- Paul F. Crickmore,
Lockheed SR-71: The Secret Missions Exposed (London,
1993)
- Thomas J. Doubek, ed.,
Strategic Reconnaissance 1956-1976: A History of the
4080th/100th SRW
(Dallas, TX, 1976.)
- Lou Drendel,
SR-71 Blackbird in Action (Carrollton, TX, 1982)
- Jim Goodall,
F-117 Stealth in Action (Carrollton, TX, 1991)
- James C. Goodall,
America's Stealth Fighters and Bombers (Osceola, WI,
1992)
- Richard P. Hallion,
Designers and Test Pilots (Alexandria, VA,
1983)
- Lockheed Aircraft,
Days of Trial and Triumph:A Pictorial History of
Lockheed
(Burbank, CA, 1969)
- Lockheed Aircraft,
Dateline Lockheed (Burbank, CA, 1982)
- Robert and Melinda Macy,
Destination Baghdad (Las Vegas, NV,
1991)
- Mark Meyer and Chuck Yeager,
Wings (Charlottesville, VA, 1984)
- Jay Miller,
Lockheed U-2 (Austin, TX, 1983)
- Jay Miller,
Lockheed's Skunk Works: The First Fifty Years (Arlington,
TX, 1993)
- Michael O'Leary,
Fighting Lightnings: The Complete Story of Lockheed's Fabulous
P-38 Lightning During World War Two
(Canoga Park, CA, 1988)
- Steve Pace,
Lockheed Skunk Works (Osceola, WI, 1992)
- Chris Pocock,
Dragon Lady: The History of the U-2 Spyplane (Shrewsbury,
UK, 1989)
- John Riley, ed.,
Alcoa and Aerospace, 1888-1988, vol. 8, Alcoa Technology
Report, Feb 1989
(Pittsburgh, PA)
- Brian Shul,
Sled Driver: Flying the World's Fastest Jet (Chico, CA,
1991)
- Bill Sweetman,
Stealth Aircraft (Osceola, WI, 1986)
- Bill Sweetman and James Goodall,
Lockheed F-117A: Operation and Development of
the Stealth Fighter
(Osceola, WI, 1990)
- Bill Sweetman,
Aurora: The Pentagon's Secret Hypersonic Spyplane
(Osceola, WI, 1993)
- William Wagner,
Lightning Bugs and Other Reconnaissance Drones
(Fallbrook, CA, 1982)
- Bill Yenne,
Lockheed (Greenwich, CT 1987).
Biographical / Historical
Ben Robert Rich (1925-1995) was born as Ben Reich in Manila, in the Philippines, on June
18, 1925. He was the second youngest of six children of Jewish middle-class parents. His
British father was born in India, his French mother in Egypt. He came to the U.S. in May
1941 with his family and changed his last name to Rich when he was naturalized as a US
citizen, in 1947. His father lost his Manila lumber mill to the Japanese invasion, and the
family struggled financially through the war in the U.S.
Rich worked as a machinist during the war and started college at war's end at UCLA before
transferring his senior year to Berkeley. He received a B.S. in mechanical engineering from
UC Berkeley in 1949 and an M.S. in mechanical engineering from UCLA in 1950. On June 25,
1950 he married Faye Mayer; they had two children, Michael (b. 1953) and Karen (b.
1956).
Rich joined Lockheed in 1950 as a design specialist in thermodynamics, aerodynamics, and
propulsion, working on the F-94, F-90, C-130, and F-104 aircraft. In 1955 he joined
Lockheed's Advanced Development Projects, also known as the Skunk Works, a group formed by
Clarence "Kelly" Johnson in the 1940s. As a senior design specialist he worked on the U-2
aircraft and, from 1956 to 1958, helped design the CL-400, a reconnaissance plane for the
secret Air Force program known as Project Suntan, to develop liquid hydrogen as aircraft
fuel. He then worked on what became known as the SR-71 aircraft, a Mach 3 high-altitude
reconnaissance plane; in particular he helped solve difficult aerodynamic and thermodynamic
problems on the SR-71 engine inlets.
Rich earned promotion to more senior engineering and managing positions, and upon
Johnson's retirement in 1975 Rich became head of the Skunk Works. His most notable
achievement was supervising the development of Stealth technology, for low radar signatures,
incorporated on the F-117A aircraft. He was known for his genial management style and his
enthusiastic salesmanship, leavening briefings with mischievous jokes and anecdotes. He
retired on December 31, 1990. Much of his career at the Skunk Works involved highly
classified projects, but as these projects were declassified Rich gained public notice and
acclaim. He published his memoirs,
Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at
Lockheed,
co-authored with Leo Janos, in 1994.
Rich died January 5, 1995, of cancer. His first wife Faye died in 1980; in 1982 he married
Hilda Herman. His son Michael received a law degree and became a senior executive at the
RAND Corporation; his daughter Karen is a botanist at the San Diego Natural History
Museum.
Scope and Contents
This collection contains the papers of aerospace engineer Ben Rich (1925-1995), who served
as the second director of Lockheed's Skunk Works in Southern California and was involved in
the development of the F-117 stealth aircraft. The collection contains approximately 1,000
items and has been organized by subject, although some subjects can be found throughout the
collection. Chronological coverage is from the 1950s to 1990s; much material is from the
1980s and early 1990s, save for selected documents and the Technical Notes and Data series
from the 1950s. The files contain many clippings and speeches; there is relatively little
daily correspondence, except for scattered letters in the Personal and Projects series. The
Technical Notes and Data series contains binders of detailed lecture notes, handwritten
calculations, technical articles, data tables, and graphs. This material is from the mid to
late 1950s, when Rich was working on the U-2, SR-71, and other reconnaissance aircraft. Much
of the collection otherwise involves few technical details, except for a few technical
articles under Publications and a few blueprints under Projects.
There is a separate series for Rich's memoir,
Skunk Works. This includes
research material, draft chapters, published reviews and private feedback, discussion of
potential co-authors, and classification issues. Talks are filed by subject and date in the
Speeches series. Photos have been organized in a separate series; these include images of
various aircraft, Lockheed events, and portraits of Rich at various phases of his career.
Many photos are unlabeled. An Oversize series includes large photos and binders of notes
from his retirement events.
Articles on particular aircraft are filed under the Projects series instead of
Publications. For Projects, note that aircraft often had different designations at different
times. The D- 21 drone was also known as Q-12 and Tagboard. The A-12 was also called Oxcart,
A-11, F-12, R-12, and SR-71. The CL-400 started under Project Suntan. Project names
mentioned for Stealth aircraft, what became the F-117A, include XST (Experimental Stealth
Testbed), Harvey, Have Blue, Tacit Gold, Girlfriend, and Boyfriend. A Stealth cruise missile
program was known as Senior High and Senior Prom (the Kelly Johnson folder includes a small
card with the note, "I bet Ben on Prom launch, my $5.00 vs this quarter May 17 '80—I won").
The Sea Shadow project, for Stealth ships, is referred to elsewhere in the files by the name
of Ugo Coty, who was Lockheed manager for Navy programs.
Similarly, initial plans for a Trans Atmospheric Vehicle in the early 1980s referred to a
single-stage-to-orbit reconnaissance aircraft designed to make a couple orbits and then land
on an airstrip. This concept then shifted to the National Aerospace Plane, or NASP, which
was sometimes conflated with, sometimes differentiated from the Orient Express. The SR-71
folder includes material linking SR-71 design concepts to NASP (and its predecessor, the
SST); since some NASP designs contemplated liquid-hydrogen fuel they also drew on CL-400
experience. Also, in addition to the "Projects—Cost" file, there is cost information in the
files for particular projects.
There are a few items of particular interest. The F-117 file includes an "XST log" by
Rich, with brief entries describing the development of Stealth on an almost daily basis from
March 1975 through December 1977. Similar logs or handwritten histories are in the folders
for the D-21 drone and Senior Prom cruise missile. The Kelly Johnson file includes the
document "Sighting of a flying saucer by certain Lockheed Aircraft Corporation personnel on
16 December 1953." "Lockheed in 1951," in Speeches, describes the increase of women in the
workforce owing to the Korean War buildup; there is also some discussion of women in the
military in the Sheila Widnall speeches in the file for ProjectsDefense Planning.
The collection included cassette tapes of several interviews and two DVDs: "Blackbird: the
Movie," and "Ben Rich: Father of the Stealth Fighter." The interviews will be transcribed
and listed in the Huntington catalog. The collection also includes ephemera, such as
trophies and plaques, which have been omitted. The technical notes also included a well-worn
copy of Ralph G. Hudson,
The engineers' manual, 2nd edition (New York, 1945),
likewise omitted.
Arrangement
The collection is arranged in the following series:
- Personal (Box 1)
- Projects (Boxes 2-3)
- Speeches (Box 4)
- Lockheed (Box 5)
- Publications (Box 5)
- Memoirs (Box 6)
- Technical notes and data (Boxes 7-10)
- Photographs (Box 11)
- Oversize/Ephemera (Boxes 12-13, 3 items)
General
Former call number: mssRich papers.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Aerodynamics.
Aeronautical engineers -- United States -- Archives.
Aeronautics -- United States -- History -- 20th century --
Sources.
Aerospace engineering -- United States.
Aerospace engineers -- United States.
Aerospace industries -- United States -- History -- 20th century --
Sources.
Aerothermodynamics.
Aircraft industry -- United States -- History -- 20th century --
Sources.
Airplanes -- Design and construction.
Airplanes, Military.
Engineering -- United States -- History -- 20th century --
Sources.
Engineers -- United States.
F-117 (Jet attack plane)
Fighter planes.
High-speed aeronautics.
Jet planes, Military.
Lockheed aircraft.
Reconnaissance aircraft.
SR-71 Blackbird (Jet reconnaissance
plane)
Stealth aircraft.
Supersonic planes.
Transonic planes.
U-2 (Reconnaissance aircraft)
California -- History -- 20th century -- Sources.
Articles -- United States -- 20th century.
Clippings -- United States -- 20th century.
Documents -- United States -- 20th century.
Ephemera -- United States -- 20th Century.
Photocopies -- United States -- 20th century.
Photographs -- United States -- 20th century.
Slides (photographs) -- United States -- 20th century.
Videodiscs (video recording disks) -- United States -- 20th
century.
Rich, Ben R.
Lockheed Aircraft Corporation.
A-12 Blackbird (Jet reconnaissance plane)