This is an edited transcript of an oral history interview of John Cashen conducted by Peter J. Westwick. This transcript is the first of two interviews with Cashen; it covers up to the early 1980s and the Tacit Blue project. Maggy Rivas, Cashen’s former assistant at Northrop, was present for the interview and provided occasional comments. Topics covered in the interview include: role of local universities in aerospace industry; relation between aeronautical engineers and electrical engineers on Stealth design; competition between Northrop and Lockheed; secrecy and classification; absence of unions at Northrop; role of computer codes; aerospace work ethics; relation between design and manufacturing engineers. John Cashen was an electrical engineer and a designer of Northrop’s Stealth aircraft. John Cashen studied electrical engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology while working, from 1960 to 1964, for Bell Labs. Upon graduating in 1965 he accepted an offer at Hughes, studying the gas dynamics of rocket plumes and reentry wakes and their detection and tracking by radar and infrared sensors. He won a Hughes fellowship and received a PhD in electrical engineering at UCLA, in 1971. At Hughes he also researched the rocket plume of the Surveyor lander and radar discrimination for the Hard-Site ABM program. He joined Northrop in 1973, working first on lasers and then, starting in 1974, on low observables, or Stealth, for aircraft design. He worked on Northrop’s entry in the original competition for the XST (Stealth) aircraft, which was won by Lockheed and resulted in the F-117A. In 1978 he became head of systems engineering in Northrop’s Advanced Projects organization, where he oversaw the Teal Dawn cruise missile prototype and the Tacit Blue Stealth testbed. In 1982 he was named chief scientist and worked on the B-2. He retired in 1993 as chief scientist and vice president of Northrop. From 1993 to 1998 he worked for the Defense Science and Technology Organisation in Australia. [Object file name], Aerospace Oral History Project, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
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