This is an edited transcript of an oral history interview of Welko Gasich conducted by Peter J. Westwick. Topics covered in the interview include: relation between design and production engineering; relation with local universities; relation between aircraft and spacecraft; foreign military sales (Saudi Arabia, Iran); relation between finance and engineering; relation between commercial and military aircraft; absence of unions at Northrop; Stealth at Northrop and classification. Welko Gasich was born in Cupertino, Calif., in 1922. He studied mechanical engineering with an aeronautical option at Stanford and spent one summer working for Kaiser in Richmond on the HK-1 (“Spruce Goose”) airplane. He worked at Douglas Aircraft for a year after graduating, then entered the Navy during WWII and was assigned as a flight test engineer to NACA-Ames. After the Navy he got a master’s degree at Stanford in 1947 and then a professional engineering degree from Caltech in 1948, specializing in supersonic aerodynamics, and then returned to Douglas. He left Douglas for RAND for two years in the early 1950s, and then went to Northrop as chief of preliminary design. He worked his way up to general manager of Northrop’s aircraft division, overseeing 32,000 employees; along the way he worked on the T-38 and F-5, the light-weight fighter, the F-17, and the F-20, and was also involved with Northrop’s work on the 747 for Boeing. He then oversaw production of the B-2 Stealth bomber. Gasich retired from Northrop in 1988, and pursued his longstanding interest in race-car engine design. [Object file name], Aerospace Oral History Project, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
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