Seventy Years and Still Counting

Such was life at The Ranch. It was situated on Groom Lake nearly 100 miles northwest of Lost Wages Nevada. In the early sixties I arrived there as Hamilton Standard's engineering representative covering our products on the top-secret plane the A-12.The plane was designed built and concealed by Kelly Johnson and his team of top aerospace engineers at a facility inside Lockheed. Kelly named the building the Skunk Works.To test fly the airplane they needed a large secure site. That was where I ran into John Gardner. I later discovered that John was Kelly's thermodynamics and heat transfer expert. Very few Hamilton Standard personnel were cleared for the program and those were sworn to absolute secrecy...