This is an edited transcript of an oral history interview of Irving Waaland conducted by Volker Janssen.This is the first of two interviews with Waaland. The first interview covers up through award of B-2 contract to Northrop in 1982. The second interview begins with award of the B-2 contract to Northrop in 1982. Topics covered in the interview include: Computers in aircraft design; Navy aircraft; Classification and compartmentalization. Irving Waaland was an aeronautical engineer at Grumman and Northrop and was one of the principal designers of Northrop’s first stealth aircraft, including the B-2. Waaland was born in Brooklyn in 1927 and attended Brooklyn Tech high school, then enlisted in the Army Air Corps (which became the Air Force) in 1946 and served in a counterintelligence unit in Wiesbaden, Germany. Upon discharge in 1949 he entered New York University and graduated in 1953 with a degree in aeronautical engineering. He went to work for Grumman on Long Island as an aircraft design engineer working primarily in aerodynamics. His projects at Grumman included the XF10F, Gulfstream 1, F-11A, E-2, Eagle missile, F-111B, and F-14. In 1973 he went on loan from Grumman to North American Rockwell to work on the Space Shuttle. He stayed in California and took a job at Northrop starting in 1974 working in advanced design; his projects included the F-17, XST, Tacit Blue, B-2, and A-12. He retired in 199 [Object file name], Aerospace Oral History Project, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
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