Willis Moore Hawkins (December 1, 1913 – September 28, 2004) was an

aeronautical engineer Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is sim ...

for Lockheed for more than fifty years. He was hired in 1937, immediately after receiving his bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

. Prior to that, he was in the first graduating class of

The Leelanau School The Leelanau School is a co-educational non-profit boarding high school located in Glen Arbor, Michigan. The school was founded in 1929 and has a historical association with Christian Science. The school is a small, college-preparatory school wi ...

, a boarding school in

Glen Arbor, Michigan Glen Arbor is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Glen Arbor Township, Leelanau County, Michigan, United States. A small tourist town, Glen Arbor lies on an isthmus between Lake Michigan and Glen Lake. It is adjacent to S ...

. He contributed to the designs of a number of historic Lockheed aircraft, including the Constellation,

P-80 Shooting Star The Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star was the first jet fighter used operationally by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) during World War II. Designed and built by Lockheed in 1943 and delivered just 143 days from the start of design, prod ...

, XF-90,

F-94 Starfire The Lockheed F-94 Starfire was a first-generation jet powered all-weather, day/night interceptor of the United States Air Force. A twin-seat craft, it was developed from the Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star trainer in the late 1940s. It reached ope ...

, and F-104 Starfighter. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, he was part of the group of Lockheed designers who designed the first American attempt at a jet plane, the

Lockheed L-133 The Lockheed L-133 was an exotic design started in 1939 which was proposed to be the first jet fighter of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) during World War II. The radical design was to be powered by two axial-flow turbojets with an unu ...

Jack Real, left; Willis Hawkins, center; Joseph Ware, Jr

In 1951, he led the design team that created the proposal for the Lockheed Model 82, which would become the C-130 Hercules, with Joseph F. Ware, Jr. as Flight Test Engineer in charge. Hawkins started the

Lockheed Missiles and Space Company Lockheed Missiles and Space Company (LMSC) was a unit of the Lockheed Corporation "Missiles, Space, and Electronics Systems Group." LMSC was started by Willis Hawkins who served as its president. After Lockheed merged with Martin-Marietta the ...

and served as president. He was elected a Vice President of the Lockheed Corporation in 1960 and later served on the corporation's board of directors. Hawkins served as Assistant Secretary for Research and Development for the

US Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

from 1962 to 1965, where he was instrumental in starting development of the M1 Abrams main battle tank. He retired from Lockheed in 1980, but Lockheed chairman Roy Anderson brought Hawkins back to run the Lockheed—California Company on an interim basis in the 1980s. Hawkins retired for good in 1986. He died in 2004 at the age of 90, after witnessing the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the C-130's first flight on August 23, 1954.

References

An obituary of Willis Hawkins from the Marshall Institute

"Willis Hawkins and the Genesis of the Hercules", by Jeff Rhodes, from ''Code One''

OAC Willis M. Hawkins Papers, 1920-2009

"Youtube with interview sequences of Willis Hawkins" 1913 births, Hawkins 2004 deaths American aerospace engineers Lockheed people Hawkins University of Michigan College of Engineering alumni Lockheed Missiles and Space Company people 20th-century American engineers {{US-engineer-stub