ODIA Defense Briefing - The HIDE Project: The Untold Tale of Stealth in Tulsa, OK w/ Author Craig Baucke

Description

Oklahoma has been quietly shaping American air power since before "stealth" was a word anyone was allowed to say. ODIA welcomes Craig Baucke, author of The HIDE Project, to Tulsa — where a secret 1960s program shaped stealth drones, cruise missiles, and the B-1B — to connect that hidden history to the state's very public defense future. 

Long before the F-117A made stealth famous, a small and little-known team in Tulsa, Oklahoma was already solving the problem. In the early 1960s, North American Aviation quietly assembled a group of engineers — internally known as HIDE — to make the Hound Dog cruise missile harder to detect. What started as one program grew into a decades-long, largely classified body of work touching stealth drones flown in Vietnam, stealth-related submarine technology, and contributions to the B-1B bomber.

PANELISTS

Craig Baucke has over 40 years of experience in most aspects of Radar Cross Section design, analysis and measurement. His first real job was with Rockwell North American Aircraft in Tulsa, OK, working on the B-1B bomber as well as the Tomahawk Cruise Missile and other systems for six years.

Subsequently, Craig spent 33 years with GE Aerospace, becoming the first Consulting Engineer for Radar Cross Section and founding the Survivability Design Board.  At GE, he developed full wave computational electromagnetics, performed RCS design and led material and range measurements. He worked on numerous programs including the YF120, F414, F118, F-136 & other advanced systems. He was team leader for numerous programs including the initial deployment of an RCS field test system. 

Mr. Baucke received GE-Aviation's 2007 Perry T. Egbert award for most outstanding technical achievement. He holds numerous RCS-related patents. He is an affiliate of Georgia Tech where he has taught propulsion system RCS short courses since 2006. 

Prior to retiring in 2022, Craig felt compelled to write the history of his early mentors. The resulting story - The HIDE Project - tells the tale of early stealth pioneers in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Craig is spending his “retirement” consulting and mentoring engineers in the aerospace industry, teaching short courses at Georgia Tech, advising his Alma Mater (the University of Tulsa) and chasing his above-average grandchildren. 

Robert D. (Bob) Strattan earned a BSEE from Wichita State University in 1958 and MSEE and PhDEE degrees from Carnegie Mellon University in 1959 and 1962, respectively, after attending a one-room rural school and Newton High School. He is a retired licensed Professional Engineer in Oklahoma, a Life Senior Member of IEEE, and an active member of OSPE-NSPE, SAE, ASEE, ASEM, AOC (Association of Old Crows), Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, Sigma Xi, and Phi Kappa Phi. His service includes numerous positions with the Tulsa Engineering Foundation and Oklahoma Engineering Foundation, as well as the founding director of the nonprofit organization that established the Fab Lab Tulsa makerspace. He and his wife, Vada, have been married for 66 years and have two sons, both University of Tulsa engineering alumni. Their eldest son, Barry, recently retired after a career in stealth engineering that began in the HIDE group and continued with West Coast aerospace corporations.

Bob Strattan has been Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at the University of Tulsa since 2000. He served as head of the Electrical Engineering Department from 1968 to 1975, and his university research included microwave bioelectromagnetic hazard assessment, microwave clothes-dryer development, and secure conference-room design. After retiring, he served as an adjunct professor of mechanical engineering and, for two decades, as faculty co-advisor to the university’s hybrid-electric vehicle student design-build-compete projects. In 2016, he was inducted into the University of Tulsa College of Engineering and Computer Science Hall of Fame. In 2022, Wichita State University presented him with an Alumni Recognition Award.

Strattan was introduced to radar cross section and the survivability value of low observables during two summers at Boeing’s Wichita facilities while pursuing his doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University. After completing his PhDEE in 1962, he returned to Boeing-Wichita’s Antenna and Radome Group. There, he participated in evaluations of Boeing’s half-scale “Quiet Bird 853-21” stealth fighter concept on a small Wichita radar-cross-section range and wrote the radar-cross-section-reduction portion of Boeing’s TFX proposal, which later became the F-111. When the contract was awarded to another firm, he joined colleagues who transferred in 1963 to the HIDE project at North American Aviation-Tulsa. That project’s stealth modification of the AGM-28 Hound Dog missile introduced the use of structural radar absorbers. His first HIDE assignment was Engineering Supervisor of Design and Analysis. In 1968, when he became associate professor and chair of electrical engineering at the University of Tulsa, he shifted to part-time employment with NAA as HIDE Scientific Advisor. He continued this parallel university and aerospace career until retiring from Boeing in 2001.

Allen R. (Al) Williams attended school in Missouri and Oklahoma, graduating from Drumright High School in 1971.  With a too-low lottery number for the draft, Allen enlisted in the US Air Force, where he became a nuclear weapons specialist with duty assignments in Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota and Duluth, Minnesota.  An NCO leadership course led to his decision to go to college.  In 1975, Allen started college in Tulsa while he served in the Oklahoma Air National Guard as a Staff Sargeant. 

Allen was awarded a full scholarship to the University of Tulsa.  He was an officer in the student IEEE chapter as well as a member of Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu.  He completed his B.S. E.E. in 1979, and his M.S. E.E. in 1988.  His wife (Teresa), son (Brian), daughter (Christine) and nieces have all graduated from the University of Tulsa.  He is a Registered Professional Engineer (retired status) in Oklahoma.

After college Allen worked for PSO in the power systems planning department. Following that, he moved to the research and development department of a major oil company.

Following a phone call with Dr. Strattan in 1983, Allen moved to Rockwell International’s Tulsa RAS/RAM engineering group, working the B-1B program.  With Dick Moore as his senior lead, he supported a wide range of radar absorbing systems that dramatically improved the vehicle’s radar signature:  upper & lower inlet lips, fuselage side fairing cavities, 1122 antenna, among many others.  After the B-1B, he worked on the Navy’s A-12, the Army’s RAH-66 helicopter, and traveled frequently to El Segundo, California where he worked with North American’s advanced projects group.  

Allen retired in 2009 as the Director of Engineering for Spirit AeroSystems in Tulsa.  During his directorship, he led engineering’s growth from 50 to over 300 team members.  These later years were focused upon engineering the Boeing 737, 777, 787 major components as well as Gulfstream’s 650 and 280 wings.  

In retirement, Allen has served on the boards of multiple charities.  He and Teresa have been married 53 years with two adult children and two grandchildren.

Richard Moore, PE.  Not THE Richard Moore, just a Richard Moore.  Friends and colleagues know him as Dick; people that love him call him Grandad.  He started at the University of Oklahoma on approximately the day vacuum tubes disappeared and diodes entered the scene.  Dick credits electromagnetics as saving his career.  He received a BSEE from OU 1960, MSEE from Oklahoma State 1966 and was the first in his family to go to college.  He is a licensed Professional Engineer in Oklahoma.  Dick worked the antenna range at Boeing-Wichita, primarily on RB-47 antenna systems until learning that Tulsa was going to be involved in the Apollo program.  In 1962, he became involved in the NAA start-up in Tulsa and remained there under Rockwell International until his retirement in 1992.

Dick worked many programs involving RAS, RAM, and LO design for Navy, Air Force, and NASA and even FAA over the years.  An emotional highlight was getting to meet the seven original astronauts even though they vetoed the NASA program Dick was working on. He was developing antennas to destroy the rocket should it start to fall, due to a failure, upon a populated area. He holds one patent and submitted many others not pursued mainly to maintain secrecy.  He designed radar absorbent structures for B-1B Lancer components such as multiple radomes, the forward and aft bulkheads, as well as enhancing ECM antenna performance.  Dick was privileged to manage the HIDE group in Tulsa for 3 years preceding his retirement. He retired to SE Oklahoma to pine trees and mountains and operated a broiler chicken farm raising cattle and about 80,000 chickens every three months.    

Dick and his wife raised three wonderful daughters, all graduating high school in Cleveland, Oklahoma; two OSU grads and one Wichita State.  The family enjoyed many participatory sports and built a cabin on Keystone Lake. Dick was an instrument rated pilot (SE, land) and used his Mooney airplanes to enrich his private life experiences.