62 miles north of Los Angeles in the city of Palmdale, California lies one of the most secretive

aircraft design and production centers in the world, Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development

Program. From this location, some of the most famous and important military aircraft in the 20th and 21st centuries were created.

And they're still working on new aircraft today.

Learn more about skunkworks, one of the world's most secretive design facilities for over 75 years on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. The history of the Lockheed skunkworks has two different starting points.

The first unofficial beginning was in 1939.

The United States ordered the creation of a high-speed, high-altitude fighter aircraft that could counter the fighter aircraft

of the Germans. They created the Lockheed P38 lightning. Lockheed took their engineers and physically

separated them from the rest of the company to work on the project, and no one else knew what they were working on.

The plane had a very distinct look with two booms and two tails.

They also integrated several unique features which were seen for the first time in combat aircraft,

including flushed rivets to help reduce aerodynamic drag.

The more formal beginning of the Skunkworks project was in 1943.

Germany had created the Messer-Schmidt-M-E-262,

which was the world's first jet fighter.

The plane was far and away more advanced

than anything the Allies had. It was the fastest fighter aircraft ever and it was over a hundred

miles per hour faster than the fastest allied aircraft. Thankfully the Germans

never created many of them but the jet engine was a huge technical advantage over anything the Allies had.

The United States Army came to Lockheed and asked them if they could develop a jet aircraft that could counter the threat of the German jet fighters.

An engineer named Clarence Kelly Johnson took a team of hand-picked engineers,

and, as they did in 1939, separated themselves from the rest of the company and went to work.

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