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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. When was Skunk Works ordered to destroy all of the tooling for the drones?

2. When did Johnson win a Collier Trophy for the creation of the Blackbird?

3. How much was Rich earning at Lockheed in 1972?

4. How much weight did paint add to the Blackbird?

5. By the time Skunk Works had created design A-11, how much were they able to reduce the radar cross section of what became the Blackbird?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why did Northrop Aircraft Company offer Rich a job?

2. What did the Skunk Works do to make the Blackbird even more safe?

3. Why wasn't the Navy interested in the stealth ship?

4. Why did Rich hesitate to tell Johnson he had been offered a job at Northrop?

5. Why did Rich think aerospace got a bum rap from its critics?

6. Where was a model of the stealth ship tested?

7. What were the tiny black dots that appeared on Blackbird windshields after a flight?

8. Why did Rich turn down a project to design a hypersonic airplane?

9. What was the most sensitive project Rich worked on at Skunk Works? The most sensitive project Rich ever worked on began in 1962 and had the code name Tagboard. The operation was to design spy drones to fly over Communist China's most remote and secret nuclear test facilities.

10. What was done to prepare the route for the truck that would carry the Blackbird to the test site?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss reasons why drones were favored for gathering sensitive information over manned spy planes.

Essay Topic 2

Using examples from the book, discuss why Soviet military operations seemed to be more of a threat than usual at the beginning of Kennedy's presidency.

Essay Topic 3

A U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down by the Soviets. Discuss the mission, what went wrong, and the reactions to the failed mission.

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This section contains 879 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample