Rich, Ben R.

Ben Robert Rich (1925-1995) was born as Ben Reich in Manila, in the Philippines, on June 18, 1925. He was the second youngest of six children of Jewish middle-class parents. His British father was born in India, his French mother in Egypt. He came to the U.S. in May 1941 with his family and changed his last name to Rich when he was naturalized as a US citizen, in 1947. His father lost his Manila lumber mill to the Japanese invasion, and the family struggled financially through the war in the U.S. Rich worked as a machinist during the war and started college at war's end at UCLA before transferring his senior year to Berkeley. He received a B.S. in mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley in 1949 and an M.S. in mechanical engineering from UCLA in 1950. On June 25, 1950 he married Faye Mayer; they had two children, Michael (b. 1953) and Karen (b. 1956). Rich joined Lockheed in 1950 as a design specialist in thermodynamics, aerodynamics, and propulsion, working on the F-94, F-90, C-130, and F-104 aircraft. In 1955 he joined Lockheed's Advanced Development Projects, also known as the Skunk Works, a group formed by Clarence "Kelly" Johnson in the 1940s. As a senior design specialist he worked on the U-2 aircraft and, from 1956 to 1958, helped design the CL-400, a reconnaissance plane for the secret Air Force program known as Project Suntan, to develop liquid hydrogen as aircraft fuel. He then worked on what became known as the SR-71 aircraft, a Mach 3 high-altitude reconnaissance plane; in particular he helped solve difficult aerodynamic and thermodynamic problems on the SR-71 engine inlets.

Rich earned promotion to more senior engineering and managing positions, and upon Johnson's retirement in 1975 Rich became head of the Skunk Works. His most notable achievement was supervising the development of Stealth technology, for low radar signatures, incorporated on the F-117A aircraft. He was known for his genial management style and his enthusiastic salesmanship, leavening briefings with mischievous jokes and anecdotes. He retired on December 31, 1990. Much of his career at the Skunk Works involved highly classified projects, but as these projects were declassified Rich gained public notice and acclaim. He published his memoirs, Skunk works: a personal memoir of my years at Lockheed, co-authored with Leo Janos, in 1994. His first wife Faye died in 1980; in 1982 he married Hilda Herman. Rich died January 5, 1995 of cancer.

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