Ben Rich was one of the greatest aircraft designers of his generation. During the Cold War, he designed some of the world’s greatest designers, succeeding the infamous Kelly Johnson as head of Lockheed’s Skunk Works.
Due to his contributions, mostly to stealth aircraft, he is commonly referred to as the “Father of Stealth”. Without him, there would arguably be no F-117, SR-71 or even the F-22!
He is arguably the most important aircraft designer that you’ve never heard of!
Before Lockheed
Benjamin Robert Rich was born in Manila, Philippines on June 18 1925. He was the eldest of five children born to British-born lumber mill superintendent Isidore Rich and his wife Annie.
Isidore Rich had moved to Manila during the 1910’s with his wife, becoming one of the first Jewish families to settle there. Here, the family was quite well off, being in the upper middle class.
The onset of WWII in Europe had seen lumber become a scarce resource, making those who milled it, like the Rich Family, very well off. However, the family chose to emigrate to the US just weeks before the Pearl Habor attack.
Upon arriving in the US, the Rich Family made their way to Los Angeles, California, where the family would stay until Ben Rich’s death in 1995. Here, Rich and his father began working at a nearby machine shop.
During this time, Ben Rich also attended the local Hamilton High School. Following his graduation from high school, he began studying mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley.
After, he graduated from UC Berkeley, Rich continued to UCLA, studying aeronautical engineering, instead of going to medical school as he’d planned. Whilst at UCLA, he earned his master’s degree.
Following this, Rich enrolled in Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program. Here, he would get valuable lessons that he would later utilize at Lockheed Skunk Works.
Lockheed
After Rich graduated from UCLA, Lockheed offered Rich a job as a thermodynamicist. As a part of his job, Rich worked on heat-related problems with Lockheed designs.
Rich soon began to specialize in engine inlets. For the most part, Rich worked on generic designs, however, soon began working closely with Lockheed’s Skunk Works division on their aircraft.
During this time, Rich designed the inlets for the C-130 Hercules, F-104 Starfighter and XF-90 fighter. This allowed the first two of these aircraft to be very valuable to the USAF and other militaries.
This work led to Rich patenting his first invention. Whilst working on these projects and others, Rich encountered a problem: the fuselage was freezing. So he developed a solution to stop this from killing everyone inside.
Rich realized that if you mixed nickel, chromium and iron you got a material called nichrome. This alloy could be made into a thin strip and insulate the interior of an aircraft, without adding too much weight!
Skunk Works
Due to his work, both with and without Skunk Works, Rich caught the eye of Skunk Works boss Kelly Johnson. Johnson was having an issue with the U-2’s design, mostly to do with the inlet ducts.
As such, Johnson decided to recruit Rich to the Skunk Works division in December 1954, in order to fix it. Within a matter of weeks, a problem that had plagued the U-2 for months was fixed in its entirety.
Following this, Rich led a team that researched how to power an aircraft with liquid nitrogen as fuel. This project was a part of Project Suntan, the pre-1960 replacement for the U-2.
During this time, Ben Rich and Kelly Johnson became very close. When either hit a snag in their designs, the would look at it together, often working late into the night in one of their offices.
Johnson retired in 1975, leaving Rich in charge of Skunk Works. This is a position that Rich would hold well into the 1980’s, similarly denying promotions to C-Suite executive (as Kelly Johnson had once done).
Rich divulged greatly from where Johnson had left. Johnson believed that the future of aircraft was speed- the greater speed an aircraft can reach, the better it is. Ben Rich believed the future laid in stealth. He was right.
Aircraft
During his tenure at Lockheed’s Skunk Works division, Rich designed several aircraft, most of them being stealth aircraft.
XF-90
Following the introduction of first generation jet fighters like the North American FJ-1 Fury, the USAF was looking for other fighters that could replace and/or supplement them.
One of the designs was submitted by Lockheed. This aircraft was labelled as the Lockheed XF-90 and did seem, on its own, to be a quite impressive aircraft for its time.
As such, the USAF allowed Lockheed to develop two prototypes for evaluation. These prototypes were flown by the infamous Tony LeVier, Lockheed’s poster boy test pilot.
This was the first aircraft that Rich helped to design the engine inlet ducts of the aircraft. This element of the design was almost completely done by the still relatively new Ben Rich.
It was also the first time that Rich had come into contact with Lockheed Skunk Works, meeting with many of their higher ups. When Tony LeVier gave engineers pointers, they consulted with Rich in terms of the engines.
Despite all of this hard work, compared to the other aircraft submitted by other manufacturers, it wasn’t enough. The other aircraft were superior, cheaper and handled far better than the XF-90.
F-104 Starfighter
Despite the failure of the XF-90, Lockheed continued to design new fighter jets. In the early 1950’s, the USAF was looking to develop the second generation of jet fighters to replace their first generation ones.
The early 1950’s had seen the onset of the Korean War, pitting first generation American jets against first generation Soviet jets. Most American pilots felt as though the Soviet counterparts had better equipment.
Kelly Johnson and a small team flew to Korea to interview these pilots and ask them what they wanted. They relayed this to the USAF brass and the USAF sent out their requirements.
As such, Lockheed submitted several sketches. One of these sketches, the XF-104, was chosen to be developed into a working prototype to be evaluated by the USAF to enter service in the late 1950’s.
Skunk Works asked Ben Rich to help them design the engine inlet ducts, due in part to his work on the XF-90. Here, Rich designed some of the most aerodynamic and most advanced inlet ducts ever.
This helped the XF-104, and eventually the F-104 Starfighter, be one of the most maneuverable fighters of its time! This also helped it to have one of the highest service ceilings of any aircraft.
U-2
During WWII, the US had very little idea of Japanese strengths and intentions. This led to the Pearl Harbor attack, which thrust the US into WWII against the Japanese and eventually, the Germans.
The US military had learned their lesson and wanted an aircraft that could could prevent it. The Japanese were no longer the enemy, but the Soviets now were. The US military wanted to know their strengths and intentions.
However, no aircraft existed that could do the job without being shot down. So, the US military contracted Lockheed to look into it. Lockheed, in turn, gave it to Kelly Johnson’s Skunk Works division.
It was here, where Johnson brought in Ben Rich. He helped to develop the engine inlet ducts, that the other engineers were having an issue designing. Whilst this may seem small, it was vital to the U-2’s success.
With this, the U-2 was aerodynamic enough to fly higher than any other aircraft ever built. This fact alone made the U-2 almost invincible (until it wasn’t). The Soviets couldn’t see it, and they couldn’t shoot it down.
For the most part, this was due to Ben Rich’s inlet duct design. Without it, the U-2 would’ve flown several thousand feet lower, right on the edge of Soviet radar capabilities.
SR-71 Blackbird
In 1960, Gary Francis Powers’ U-2 was shot down. Before this, the US military had believed that the U-2 was invisible to Soviet radar and unreachable by Soviet jets of the era.
However, this was wrong. Due to the U-2’s design, weapons were a no-go and fighter escorts would be seen as an act of war. Instead, the US military contracted Lockheed to build a new aircraft to replace the U-2.
Lockheed contracted its Skunk Works division, then under the leadership of Kelly Johnson, to design a new long range spy plane. Johnson gave the most important job to his right hand man, Ben Rich.
Johnson tasked Rich to design and develop the spikes and engine inlet systems. This is what set the SR-71’s design apart from others of its time and helped to make it among the fastest aircraft ever!
The spikes at the front of the engines allowed the SR-71 to have less drag around its engines. For most other aircraft, including most subsequent aircraft, the engines on the wings are one of the biggest sources of drag.
Whilst designing this, Rich also had the task of designing the engine inlets. Rich designed both to be as aerodynamic as possible, whist also having the least radar cross section of any aircraft of its time!
F-117 Nighthawk
Following Johnson’s departure from Lockheed in 1975, Ben Rich became Skunk Work’s head. Here, he changed the direction of the company, away from speed and towards stealth.
During Vietnam, Soviet-supplied SAMs downed a lot of American bombers. As such, the US military wanted an aircraft that could avoid being shot down by SAMs as much as possible.
Lockheed found the writings of a Soviet engineer and mathematician on the ability to use angles in order to deflect radar pulses away from radar sites. Whilst the Soviets had dismissed this, the Americans were willing to look into it.
The USAF awarded Lockheed a contract to design and build two demonstrators, with the option for a full blown contract if the military were interested in the project.
Ben Rich led the team, however, worked a lot on the engine inlet systems. Rich was also a part of the team who’s job it was to develop the radar-deflecting shell of the aircraft.
Throughout his time on the new project, which eventually became the F-117, Rich was known for giving “crash courses” on stealth technologies to new engineers. many of these engineers still work for Lockheed Martin today.
F-22 Raptor
However, the F-117 wasn’t perfect. Whilst the F-117 was invisible to modern radars employed by the USSR and their allies, older radars from WWII could still detect the F-117. And eventually one did.
At the same time, the USSR began to introduce newer and more maneuverable fighters like the Mig-29 and Su-27. The US had no aircraft that were as maneuverable as the Soviets had.
With that, the US military contracted Lockheed to design a new aircraft that was superior to what the USSR was producing. Lockheed put its Skunk Works division on it, of which Ben Rich was its head.
Lockheed Skunk Works designed the YF-22 fighter, the aircraft that would eventually become the F-22 Raptor. Despite Rich being the head of Skunk Works, he still actively participated in the F-22’s design.
During the design, Rich worked heavily on the F-22’s inlets and engine systems. A lot of the stealth technology was also developed by Rich. Much of his ideas were inputted into the YF-22 and eventually the F-22.
Due in part to the F-22’s incredibly stealth design, the F-22 can’t be exported. Much of this is due to Rich’s work and subsequent convincing of Lockheed (Martin) and the US government of the F-22’s importance.
Awards
Despite his amazing contributions to the aviation industry, almost singlehandedly developing stealth aircraft as we know them today, not to mention his invention of nichrome, he is truly a forgotten aviation pioneer.
The success of his boss, Kelly Johnson, has eclipsed Ben Rich’s achievements, which are as important, if not more so. This is perhaps best seen by his autobiography, published in 1996, mostly being a failure.
Despite this, throughout his career, he received plenty of awards for his work. The only problem being that most of this work was classified, therefor, his awards were also classified.
For his work on the F-22 Raptor, Rich was awarded the Collier Trophy in 2006, over a decade following his death. Prior to this, in 2005, Rich as listed in the National Aviation Hall of Fame for his work on stealth aircraft..
This is perhaps best seen by one of the few awards we know he received for his classified work: Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service. He was awarded this in January 1981 for his work on the F-117.
He was awarded this medal by then-Secretary of Defense Harold Brown. The government permitted him to show this medal to his children, but, forbade him from telling them why he got the medal, as the F-117 was still top-secret.
Many at Lockheed referred to him as the “Father of Stealth”, something that has continued to this day with Lockheed Martin.
Legacy
Ben Rich left one of the largest impacts on the aviation industry. Not only did he leave an impact on Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin) but also aircraft design (with the latter being in an incredibly big way!)
Lockheed
Rich’s designs have helped to put Lockheed on the map. Before him and Kelly Johnson, Lockheed was a mid-level aircraft manufacturer trying to get by with a mixture of commercial and military aircraft (mostly the latter).
Following Rich and Johnson’s tenure, Lockheed, and now Lockheed Martin is known for their military aircraft. In particular, they are known for the stealth aircraft, producing all four stealth aircraft used by the USAF, ever.
The USAF (and other militaries around the world) know that if they receive a design proposal from Lockheed Martin, it’s going to work. They also know that it is going to be on the cutting edge of technology, thanks to Ben Rich.
Most of these militaries know that the design they get from Lockheed Martin will be decades in front of anything else. And the funny part is? Ben Rich probably designed it!
Aircraft Design
Rich’s work on early stealth aircraft set the groundwork for many of the future’s aircraft. The success of the F-117 and F-22 in particular has led to most subsequent fighter jet designs being stealth.
Even sixth generation fighter jets, those currently being designed, are stealth aircraft. Much of the work that Rich pioneered in the 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s is vital to the work currently being done on new fighter jets.
Rich invented nichrome, a light alloy with heating properties. Today, nichrome is used on almost all aircraft built since 1990. Due to this, turboprop cargo aircraft don’t freeze their goods or passengers.
Nichrome also allows modern airliners to be lighter. Before, airliners needed to be packed with tons worth of insulation, but now, it only needs a few hundred kilograms of nichrome to do the same job!
Has the story of Ben Rich inspired you? Tell me in the comments!