by James W.
I had a 35-year career at
Lockheed, with the majority of years supporting Skunk Works projects that used
their mainframe computer. Until 1994, Skunk Works projects were performed in
multiple buildings in Burbank, California, alongside the Hollywood-Burbank
Airport. That is where I worked and where the classified F-117A stealth fighter
was designed and manufactured.
One of the challenges was
to get the completed F-117A fighters out of Burbank without anyone seeing them.
Since there are no commercial flights in or out of the airport from
approximately 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. the next morning, it was decided to fly
them out inside the belly of a C-5A Galaxy. Sometime after midnight on the
scheduled night, all of the airport lights were turned off, a C-5A landed and
the F-117 fighters (in multiple pieces) were loaded into the plane. Then the
plane would take off and fly out well before the sun came up and the airport
reopened for business. Of course the airport “neighbors” knew something unusual
and hush-hush was going on because the four giant C-5A engines made a very
loud, deep and menacing sound when the plane took off. But they did not know!
