This is an edited transcript of an oral history interview of Andrew Baker conducted by Volker Janssen. Topics covered in the interview include: Fort Monmouth lab, presence of Jews and African-Americans, McCarthyism; Lockheed research programs in oceanography, biological weapons, clear-air turbulence, metallurgy, aerodynamics, structures, electronics; attitudes towards Vietnam War; effects of L-1011 program on Lockheed; Lockheed workforce demographics; diversification into commercial projects in 1970s; origins of Stealth program; security clearances and classification ; briefings to CIA on foreign capabilities. Andrew Baker was a research physicist at Lockheed from 1960 to 1991, and was Lockheed’s research director and later engineering director. Andrew Baker was born in Wellington, Kansas in 1928, and his family moved to Amarillo, Texas in 1943. He attended the University of Rochester from 1945 to 1949, graduating with a degree in physics. He then earned a PhD in physics at UCLA in 1954, concentrating in solid-state physics. He took a job at Bell Labs at Murray Hill, New Jersey, but was soon drafted and spent two years in the Army, working in the Signal Corps Engineering Lab at Fort Monmouth. He returned to Bell Labs in 1956, working on transistors. In 1960 he joined Lockheed’s Basic Science Laboratory at Rye Canyon, where he set up programs in solid-state physics and lasers. He attended Stanford business school for one year, 1966-67, and became Lockheed’s research director in 1968. In the early 1980s he joined the Skunk Works working on low observables. In the late 1980s he became Lockheed’s engineering director. He retired in January 1991. [Object file name], Aerospace Oral History Project, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
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