In Ben Rich's book about the Skunkworks, one of the aircraft (U2? SR71?) was encountering high-altitude insect impacts on their windshields. Turns out they'd been lofted up there by nuclear tests.
I think one of the things that still blows my mind is how quickly they went from concept to first flight on the U2 (18 months?). That's the kind of things a well-focused, finely-tuned, well-funded, "cut the bullshit" engineering organization can accomplish.
