The Story of Skunk Works
The origin of a Skunk Works dates back to 1943, during World War II, when the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation was hired by the U.S. War Department to secretly design and manufacture America’s first fighter jet, the P-80 Shooting Star.
A crack engineering team, hand-picked and led by Kelly Johnson, delivered it in just 143 days.
To accommodate the engineering team, legend has it that a closely guarded incubator was set up in a space walled with wooden engine crates and roofed with a circus tent as resources and space were tight within the growing Lockheed Martin company during the Second World War.
Nearby the circus tent was a noxious plastics factory.
Strong smells wafting into the tent reminded one of the Lockheed engineers, Irv Culver, of the foul-smelling “Skonk Works” factory in Al Capp’s popular comic strip of the time, Li'l Abner, where a strong beverage called Kick-a-pooh Joy Juice was brewed from skunks, old shoes, and other unusual ingredients for a purpose no one knows.
As a gag, Culver showed up to work one day wearing a gas mask and began answering the Lockheed house phone, "Skonk Works!, spelled with an "o". When the term Skonk Works spread, Lockheed changed it to Skunk Works to avoid having to pay royalties for the use of a copyrighted term in a comic strip.
Skunk Works has been a legend ever since for getting complex and challenging projects built and working in record time.
If you have a project stuck on the drawing board or blocked in development, call Blood & Treasure to see how a Skunk Works methodology combined with an Agile Sprint process work well together.
© Lockheed Martin
© Capp Enterprises, Inc.
© Lockheed Martin
