Lockheed’s Skunk Works took its name from a comic strip.
In Al Capp’s Li’l Abner, the “Skonk Works” was a backwoods still where a foul brew was cooked from skunks, old shoes, and kerosene. A nearby plastics factory left Lockheed’s hush-hush jet division reeking, so in 1943 an engineer started answering the phone “Skonk Works.” It stuck, softened to Skunk Works, and built the U-2 and the Blackbird.
Lockheed Skunk Works on Brandseum