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...