[147] The NACA was the first to realize that it no longer led the world in aeronautical research. Not for nothing had it labored in the 1920s and 1930s to become a clearinghouse of aeronautical information. The problem was not the awareness of danger, but the national will to act upon it. For two years after learning of the frantic pace of aeronautical research in Europe, especially in Germany, the NACA was unable to convince the Congress or the Bureau of the Budget that a crisis was in the making, a crisis requiring a crash program in aeronautical research. Instead, these years were dominated by the same constraints of domestic politics that had robbed the NACA of its world preeminence over the course of the 1930s.1
Throughout 1936, news of what was happening in Europe reached NACA headquarters with ever clearer portent. In March, the Executive Committee heard a report from John J. Ide, describing greatly expanded aeronautical research in England, France, Italy, and Germany. In May, Charles Lindbergh - a member but infrequent attender of NACA meetings - reported from his home in. England on the aviation developments there and their possible effect on the United States. In August, George Lewis accepted an invitation to cross the Atlantic on the airship Hindenburg as guest of the Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei. Ames approved this trip explicitly so that Lewis could become better informed on aeronautical research in Germany and Russia. When Lewis reported back in the fall, he brought grave if not dire news.2
In the company of Dr. Adolf Baeumker, head of government aeronautical research in Germany, he had toured the vast facilities initiated or expanded under Hitler and had come to appreciate the unparalleled German commitment to aeronautical supremacy. Baeumker worked directly for General Goering, whom he described as "intensely interested in research and development." Goering in turn reflected the policies of....
...."Chancellor Hitler," who reportedly had removed aeronautics from the Ministry of Transportation and made available for its development practically unlimited funds. "The cost is not considered," reported Lewis, describing the unprecedented facilities then in place or under construction. Much of the research equipment had been modeled on the NACA's; when Baeumker first visited Goering, he had taken with him as a conversation piece a photograph of the NACA full-scale wind tunnel, and Goering decided on the spot to build one for Germany. Since then, reported Lewis, the growth of aeronautical research facilities had been explosive. The old facilities at Aldershof and Göttingen had been greatly expanded - the former, said Lewis, "looks like a construction camp" - and two entirely new laboratories were being built. Yet it was not the facilities that concerned him most, for in 1936 he [149] still believed "that the equipment at Langley Field is equal to or better than the equipment in the German research laboratories." "But," he continued, "the personnel of the German research laboratories is [sic] larger in number, and the engineers have had an opportunity of having special training, which has not been afforded to many of our own engineers." Here, of course, he referred to the NACA practice of taking young engineering graduates right out of college and training them on the job. The quality of America's aeronautical engineers, at least in comparison with Europeans, had bothered Joseph Ames as far back as 1925, and apparently neither the Guggenheim Fund nor the growth of aeronautical-engineering education in the intervening years had closed the gap. Lewis estimated that Aldershof alone employed 1600 to 2000 persons compared with the 350 then at Langley. If the engineers among these were better trained than their American counterparts, then the prospects were grim indeed.3
Faced with this crisis, the NACA did what it had done in the past - it created a committee. In fact, it created two committees. The Special Committee on Aeronautical Research Facilities was formed in March 1936 in response to the warnings from Ide. It quickly recommended a deficiency appropriation for 1936 and an increased budget request for 1938. Government expenditures for research were just then turning sharply upward in response to the later New Deal and the sabre-rattling in Europe, so the NACA requests carried.4 The Special Committee on Relation of NACA to National Defense in Time of War, formed in October after Lewis's report on his trip to Germany, acted less quickly, unable or unwilling to formulate any recommendations until the summer of 1938. In spite of the worsening situation in Europe and the growing concern of the NACA, domestic politics continued through 1937 and most of 1938 to retard the expansion of aeronautical research that was deemed necessary to keep the United States in pace.
The most damaging and troublesome event of these years, from the NACA perspective, was the 1937 report by the Brookings Institution on government activities in the field of transportation. Commissioned by the Senate to suggest possible economies through elimination of duplicating or overlapping agencies, the Brookings report recommended abolition of the NACA and transfer of its research functions to a proposed department of transportation. As with many critics before and after, the Brookings staff found no great fault with the way the NACA executed its responsibilities. Rather, it criticized the NACA as an irrational anomaly, an independent establishment of unique composition running counter to the conventional wisdom about government structure and chains of command. At Brookings, as later at the Bureau of the Budget, the critics of the NACA preferred a traditional [150] bureaucracy, hierarchically organized as a pyramid of officials capped by a single officer, answerable to an immediate superior who could evaluate an agency's performance and correlate it with all similar work being conducted by the federal government.5
The response of the NACA was swift and predictable. First it published a detailed rebuttal of the Brookings report, objecting to the methodology of the investigation and concluding that the Brookings staff had not gained sufficient knowledge of how aeronautical research was conducted in the United States to make an informed recommendation. In this, as in a subsequent attempt to negotiate a retraction, the NACA staffers talked past the Brookings staff and vice versa. The Brookings people were talking structure while the NACA talked function. To the Brookings people, who no doubt were unqualified to evaluate the technicalities of aeronautical research, the structure of an organization determined how efficiently it would function. To the NACA staff, how the agency functioned was the sole criterion of success. Since the agency functioned to their own satisfaction (and purportedly the satisfaction of all who were concerned with their work - that is, their clients) the structure should not be tampered with. As was their custom in such disputes, the NACA spokesmen claimed broadly that their independence and their committee system of organization were essential to their success, but they never made it entirely clear why. Their assertion that aeronautical research would fall under the sway of politics if they were absorbed by another agency always rang a little vague, and was contradicted in any event by the influence the armed services already exerted in the NACA meeting room.6
The Committee's second response to the Brookings report was equally familiar and in the long run probably more effective. It mustered political support to fight the recommendation on Capitol Hill. Specifically, Harry Guggenheim was selected to take up the matter with his old friend Harry Byrd, chairman of the Senate committee that had commissioned the Brookings report. Congress, as it turned out, was not about to buy the Brookings recommendation for a department of transportation; failing that, it had no enthusiasm for recasting the NACA.7
This did not mean that the Brookings report was without effect on the Hill. The Senate cut $100,000 from the fiscal 1939 appropriation, apparently in response to the Brookings report, and only the heroics of the Committee's old friend Congressman Woodrum got the funds restored in conference. The Brookings report merely intensified the conviction of those in Congress who were suspicious of the NACA and anxious to see its power reduced, regardless of the growing menace in Europe.8
[151] Other domestic concerns were also distracting the NACA and delaying its response to the German challenge. The Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 divided the old Bureau of Air Commerce into a Civil Aeronautics Board and a Civil Aeronautics Administration, altering the composition of the NACA in the process. The bureaucratic rearrangement was in many ways a change without a difference, "dictated more by political than substantive consideration," but the alteration of the NACA was real and significant. First, it legislated that the NACA include two members of the CAA on its Main Committee. This placed civil aviation on an equal footing with the army and navy, and reestablished by law the traditional majority of government membership on the Committee. Since 1929, a representative of the Bureau of Air Commerce had consistently held one of the at-large positions on the Committee, but the NACA had not been legally bound by this custom. Furthermore, the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 limited the term of office of nongovernment NACA members to five years, bringing NACA practice in line with that of other regulatory and advisory bodies in Washington.9
The act's main effect on the NACA was to increase the influence of commercial aviation. Like the Air Commerce Act of 1926, the Civil Aeronautics Act was specifically designed to foster commercial aviation, which now had two of its highest officials on the NACA, giving it a stronger voice in Committee decisions than it had ever enjoyed. Still the NACA guarded itself against the machinations of politics and against CAA encroachment on its own domain. It refused to be drawn into development work on commercial aircraft like that which the services sponsored for military aircraft, and it won inclusion of a provision that "nothing contained in this act shall be construed to authorize the duplication of the laboratory research activities of any existing governmental agency." The NACA was pleased to see commercial aviation win increased support and representation, but it would not allow that to upset the delicate balance of research roles that had been worked out over the years with the services and the industry.10
Some domestic pressures the NACA could not resist. The aircraft manufacturers, recovering from the scandals of 1934 and the subsequent reorganization of the industry, were again becoming strong and vocal, with the aid of lucrative new military contracts prompted by the worsening situation in Europe. As before, the industry hoped for better response from the NACA to its requests for research, and it sought to channel the Committee's programs along lines of interest to the industry. The Committee's most dramatic reaction to this pressure was its elevation of the Subcommittee on Structural Loads and Methods of Structural Analysis to a full Committee on Aircraft Structures. Airframe manufacturers had long desired more attention to the problems of [152] structure, and as the military also increased the pressure to produce more and better planes, the NACA found itself compelled to respond.11
So too was the NACA compelled to increase its aid to aeronautical research in universities. In its first years, the NACA had contracted with universities for specific research projects and had published the results of this work and other university research in its technical publications. As its own research capability grew in the 1920s, however, the percentage of university work sponsored and published by the NACA declined dramatically. In 1928, at the urging of Harry Guggenheim, the NACA created a Subcommittee on Aeronautical Research in Universities to continue the work begun by the Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics. This subcommittee, composed of NACA representatives and professors at Guggenheim-sponsored university laboratories around the country, met in 1929 and 1930 to exchange views and to foster closer cooperation between the NACA and the universities. It did not, however, provide NACA funding for university research, nor did it represent a major commitment on the part of the Committee. The Guggenheim Fund made its last university grant in 1930, and the NACA Subcommittee on Aeronautical Research in Universities was discharged the following year.12
In 1935 the NACA once again reviewed its relationship with universities, this time at the prompting of the Federal Aviation Commission. Appointed by President Roosevelt in compliance with the provisions of the Air Mail Act of 1934, the five-man commission, which included Jerome Hunsaker and Edward Warner, had reported its findings and recommendations early in 1935. The commission had voiced unstinting praise for NACA research, but recommended expanding ties with academia to take full advantage of talent and resources available there. The NACA thereupon appointed a Special Committee on Aeronautical Research in Educational Institutions, which concluded that the NACA should continue its pattern of cooperation and should supplement it with an appropriation request of $25,000 for fiscal year 1936. With this money the NACA was to support specific investigations in universities "upon a showing of their probable usefulness and value to aeronautics." It went on to recommend, however, that "no allotments be made for the specific purpose of supporting aeronautical activities in universities." The special committee was discharged with thanks, and the $25,000 was requested and approved later the same year. While this sum was far short of what some university professors recommended, it nearly doubled the entire amount invested by the NACA in university research in its first 20 years, and it opened a channel for still larger appropriations in succeeding years.13
[153] In its internal deliberations, the NACA revealed its reasons for keeping the universities at arm's length. Alexander Klemin, head of the Guggenheim School of Aeronautics at New York University, had prepared a brief for the Federal Aviation Commission on "Cooperation between the Universities and the N.A.C.A." When a copy came into the hands of the NACA, Ames and Victory noted their objections in the margin. The most telling comments came from Ames. Next to Klemin's assertion that aeronautical research, "if it is to be original and progressive, [should] be decentralized so as to bring entirely independent minds into service," Ames wrote "this means to undo good." Where Klemin observed that, while "in other industries, companies encourage University research," the aeronautical industry "naturally leans on the NACA, since problems may be solved at Langley Field at public expense, and turns to the University laboratories for routine testing if at all," Ames noted "Right!" - a surprising remark from a university president. Where Klemin asserted that "research at the Universities is infinitely less expensive than work done by governmental agencies, Ames wrote "not true." NACA personnel believed that the universities were suited for teaching and testing, perhaps for some theoretical work, but the NACA system of centralized fundamental research was too efficient and productive to be compromised by a shift of power and funds to academia.14
In the midst of these political struggles at home and the looming conflict in Europe, Dr. Ames succumbed to time and fatigue. In 1936 he suffered a stroke that deprived him of the use of his right side and confined him to his home in Baltimore. Immediately he resigned as chairman of the Executive Committee, the real working body of the NACA, though he retained the largely ceremonial post of chairman of the Main Committee. Dr. Willis R. Gregg, chief of the Weather Bureau, succeeded Ames as chairman of the Executive Committee in 1937. When Gregg died the following year, he was succeeded by committee freshman Vannevar Bush, soon to be dean of the "scientists against time" who came to Washington to win World War II. The old guard was changing even before the crisis broke.15
The NACA finally rode into active preparation for war on the coattails of military preparations. The Special Committee on Relation of NACA to National Defense in Time of War, formed by the NACA in 1936 after hearing Lewis's report on German aeronautical research, had taken second place to domestic events through most of 1936, 1937, and 1938. In August the committee at last submitted its report. Included in it was what came to be known as the Mobilization Plan of [154] the Aeronautical Board, approved by President Roosevelt in June 1939, which formalized the NACA's status in national emergency. Of more moment for the NACA - and unexpected until shortly before the Committee submitted the report - was the recommendation that the NACA establish another laboratory. Maj. Gen. Oscar Westover, chief of the Army Air Corps and chairman of the special committee, told the NACA that aeronautical research was being hampered by "the congested bottleneck of Langley Field"; another laboratory was needed both to relieve the workload at Langley and to disperse the Committee's research facilities so that they would not be vulnerable to a single attack. He suggested a second laboratory in the central United States or on the west coast. He envisioned that this second laboratory would replace Langley, which would be allowed to sink into obsolescence.16
General Westover did not live to see his suggestions acted upon. His Special Committee was charged with making a long-range study of the best location for a second laboratory, but he and Willis R. Gregg, then chairman of the Executive Committee, both died in September, leaving only the third member of the Special Committee, Rear Adm. Arthur B. Cook, to carry on the work. In October Admiral Cook was appointed chairman of a new Committee on Future Research Facilities, charged with examining the need for additional facilities for both military and commercial aviation, establishing more effective coordination of existing research functions, and recommending a suitable location for a new laboratory.
By the time the Cook committee reported in December, the world had become a different place. Any optimism remaining after the Munich compromise of September was quickly dissipated in the ensuing weeks. Charles Lindbergh visited Germany in October and confessed himself incapable of conveying in a letter the extent of German aeronautical development. National Aeronautics in October called for "awakening our legislators and government leaders to a consciousness of the dire need for increased appropriations for aeronautic research and experimentation." The NACA Annual Report for 1938 played upon the theme of the "crisis in Europe in the fall of 1938." It came as no surprise to the NACA when the Cook committee recommended on 30 December the expansion of Langley Field and the establishment of a new station at Sunnyvale, California.17
Gone was the Westover notion that this second laboratory replace Langley; for the foreseeable future, the United States would need all the research facilities it could muster. Gone too was the notion of locating the laboratory in the central United States where it would be comparatively immune to attack by sea or air. Although Lewis reported in November "a strong feeling among a number of the members that a second station of the Committee should be established somewhere [155] inland," the NACA finally settled on a location just as vulnerable to Japanese attack as Langley was to German. Even in 1938, such thoughts were very much on the minds of men in Washington concerned with national defense."18
Why then did the Committee choose Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, California, just 20 miles from the coast? In a word, industry. In 1939, 80 percent of America's aircraft manufacturing industry was located within 200 miles of either coast. Almost half of it was on the west coast, principally in southern California. The NACA was being drawn into working more closely with the aircraft manufacturers as part of the military buildup that had been under way since 1936. The military asked the NACA what was possible, then drew up specifications to match. The industry, left with the task of building to these specifications, naturally wanted NACA advice and assistance. It brought to the NACA problems for solution, prototypes for testing, ideas for evaluation. Each trip from a southern California factory to the Langley lab, each trip from the Langley lab to southern California, was expensive in money and time.19
Industry, therefore, was turning to other sources, and the most important of those sources now posed a real threat to the NACA's position in American aeronautical research. Since 1927, when Daniel Guggenheim had endowed an aeronautical laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, GALCIT (as it came to be called, for Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology) had grown in size and importance, along with the aircraft-manufacturing industry of southern California. The increasing military requirements of the late 1930s taxed GALCIT beyond its capacity and prompted the chairman of the Caltech Executive Council, Robert A. Millikan, to ask Washington for help in expanding. Alive to the sensibilities of the NACA, and reluctant to intrude on the Committee's territory, Millikan cast his request in terms of a research function complementary to that of the NACA. In so doing, he set off a debate about the NACA's role that was to have a major impact on the Committee's history.20
Millikan differentiated between basic and applied research. Conceding basic research to the NACA, he claimed that there was a great and growing need for applied research. Whereas basic research was "concerned with fundamental problems not associated with any specific aircraft design (a definition the NACA could love), applied research, he argued, "deals with questions arising in the development and design of a particular machine." It was into this field that he wanted to expand the GALCIT facilities, to serve the manufacturers in southern California who were overloading his laboratory with test requirements and asking questions that his old Guggenheim-funded tunnel could not [156] answer. Would the government (he asked General Hap Arnold, chief of the Air Corps) fund a new wind tunnel at GALCIT to supplement the research being done at Langley and at Wright Field?
Arnold, in passing the request to NACA, went Millikan one better by suggesting that there were really three kinds of aeronautical research. Like Millikan, he envisioned basic research on fundamentals, in which the NACA would be preeminent if not entirely alone. Applied research, which he described as the "application of new aerodynamic theories, principles, and discoveries to the particular problems of military aircraft," would be divided between military laboratories and the manufacturers. Production research, which he considered the responsibility of the manufacturers, should "be conducted in the facilities available at Universities or other private or civilian institutions in the vicinity of the manufacturer concerned." NACA was the obvious organization to coordinate this tripartite division of responsibilities, so Arnold forwarded Millikan's proposal to the Committee for action.21
Not to be outdone, John Victory prepared an internal memorandum covering Arnold's formulation of aeronautical research activities with one of his own. Leading his list was "scientific laboratory research," which he ascribed entirely to NACA. "Military experimental engineering" - obviously a lower order of activity - was the responsibility of the army and the navy. It entailed the "immediate application of the results of scientific laboratory research conducted by or under the cognizance of the N.A.C.A." Finally, "industrial experimentation and development" was to be performed by the "engineering staffs of the various aircraft and engine factories" using the "enlarged facilities of the NACA ..... whenever adequate facilities are existent or available at the wind tunnels of educational institutions."22
Victory, and indeed the rest of the NACA staff, were walking a narrow path here. Their own request for expansion at Langley and for another laboratory was working its way through the executive branch and Congress. They wanted to do nothing to endanger that. On the other hand, the military seemed favorably disposed to the GALCIT request, and the industry on the west coast was beginning to flex considerable muscle in support of the proposition. Some congressmen already felt that the NACA was trying to preempt the field of aeronautical research, and NACA opposition to the GALCIT tunnel could arouse suspicion of mere obstructionism.23
The real threat from Caltech, however, was territorial and functional, and it ran to the very heart of the NACA's justification for continued existence. Understanding it requires a perspective not only on the specific issue of developmental wind tunnels for Caltech but also on the division of research roles in the United States, not just in aeronautics, but in all branches of science and technology. A. Hunter [157] Dupree has described the situation in the 20th century in the same terms used by Millikan:
As can be seen in Victory's memorandum on research roles, the NACA generally shied away from the dichotomy of basic versus applied research. The Committee, in agreement with General Arnold, saw a spectrum of research in which the NACA could play a variety of roles, concentrating whenever possible on fundamental research. A concept might originate in a theoretical investigation, very often at a university. The NACA would test the theory for soundness and practical application. The military services would use the results to draw specifications for advanced aircraft; industry, to design and develop prototypes meeting those, specifications. In postulating a research spectrum, the NACA was interested more in dividing the ground with its clients, the military services and the industry, than in contesting roles with the universities, which before 1930 had contributed little besides engineers to American aeronautical development. Witness the lukewarm liaison with academia as late as 1935.25
Now Millikan, by raising the dichotomy again, was endangering the NACA position in two ways. First, by ascribing basic research to the NACA, he was associating the Committee with the universities at one end of the research spectrum, separating the NACA more clearly than it wanted from the applied research that he left to the services and industry. Second, Millikan was proposing that the government help Caltech move into applied research to assist the west coast manufacturers. If that were done, what part of the research spectrum could the [158] NACA call its own? It had always been willing, at least after Munk's departure, to concede to the universities an edge in theoretical work, retaining for itself the incomparable wind tunnels needed to convert that theory into fundamental data useful to the military and industry. If the universities started building similar tunnels with government funds, Congress would soon cry duplication.
To make matters worse, GALCIT was then run by Theodore von Karman, who revealed another chink in the NACA armor. Von Karman was a brilliant aerodynamicist whose career bore striking similarities to and sad contrasts with that of Max Munk. Both had been students and protégés of Ludwig Prandtl, and both possessed the rare ability to comprehend aerodynamics in the abstract and to apply that insight in fruitful experiments and techniques. Though both had been trained in engineering, their real strength lay in theoretical insight that informed and directed their research. It was for these research gifts that both were brought to the United States, Munk to the NACA in 1921 and von Karman to GALCIT in 1930. While Munk's prestige deteriorated after he left the NACA, von Karman's grew through years of productive teaching and research at GALCIT, culminating in election to the National Academy of Sciences and undisputed recognition as dean of American aerodynamics. Of course, all good aeronautical research - whether done in the laboratories of GALCIT, the NACA, the military services, or the industry - required ad hoc mixing of theory, experimentation, testing, and ingenuity, and no institution had a monopoly on any of these ingredients. Still, for the NACA to agree to place government funded research tools in von Karman's hands was to arm a rival and loose him in a field the NACA meant to command.26
How could the NACA get out of this bind? The answer was to build its new laboratory in Sunnyvale, California, forestalling a Caltech monopoly in aeronautical research on the west coast. The danger of Japanese attack was more remote than the danger of GALCIT's preempting NACA's role. General Arnold apparently felt that locating a NACA laboratory in southern California would answer the needs of the industry there, for he elected to build a new military wind tunnel at Wright Field in Ohio instead of supporting the Millikan-Cal tech proposal. For the time being, at least, the ties between the NACA and the army were proof against pressure from industry and the educational community.27
There were signs, however, of changes to come. When the Millikan proposal failed to win army support, Congressman Carl Hinshaw (whose district included Caltech) introduced a bill to fund a Caltech wind tunnel. Commenting on this proposal, Jerome Hunsaker reported that Caltech was appealing to the government only because the manufacturers in southern California were unwilling to support the tunnel [159] themselves, even though they were to be the main beneficiaries. They were happy to endorse proposals to build tunnels at government expense but - unlike manufacturers in other parts of the country - less willing to use their own funds. When forced to it, however, they later began to build their own wind tunnels rather than share university facilities and staffs with competitors. In time, both government and industry would contribute to university wind tunnels, but the failure of the CalTech proposal left the NACA position undisturbed for the time being.28
Meanwhile, the NACA's request for a new laboratory at Sunnyvale had cleared what seemed the major hurdle (the Bureau of the Budget) and had been forwarded to Congress by President Roosevelt on 3 February 1939. Then came the unexpected. The traditionally friendly House Appropriations Committee approved the expansion at Langley, but reported adversely on the Sunnyvale item. This surprising reversal - the first congressional rejection of a major NACA proposal - seems not to have been the result of any rancor or lack of confidence. When Congressman John Z. Anderson of California asked subcommittee chairman Woodrum on the floor about the rejection, he was met with sweetness and obfuscation. Said Woodrum:
What the NACA was up against here was the pork barrel. Woodrum was not opposed to seeing funds for the expansion of the NACA pour into Langley Field, within his own state, but he was a little more circumspect about the advisability of sending such funds all the way across the country (especially if he knew of General Westover's original plan to replace Langley entirely with the new laboratory). Other members of his committee - none of them from California - apparently shared his reluctance.30
Here was a new challenge for the NACA, one to which it was entirely unaccustomed. Its modest budgets in the past had gone to the Washington headquarters or the Langley laboratory, and Judge Woodrum had greased the way. Now the Committee was contemplating a huge new investment that could only result in continued growth and [160] expansion. Dealing with Congress on those terms required an entirely different approach. Nothing daunted, John Victory set about a new brand of politicking. On the day Woodrum's committee turned down the Sunnyvale request, Victory wired to Smith J. DeFrance, a Langley staffer doing advance work in California: "Entire project disapproved.....You proceed quietly and alone and learn what you can for we still have hope."31
The NACA strategy for surmounting this new obstacle included collecting endorsements, appointing a new committee under a prestigious chairman, and generally skirting the issue. The day after the Appropriations Committee vote, General Arnold and Admiral Cook signed a joint statement declaring that "the Sunnyvale research project is emergency in character and of vital importance to the success of our whole program for strengthening the air defense of the United States." Ames sent this to the president and tried unsuccessfully to have the Senate reintroduce the Sunnyvale proposal.32
Failing that, the Executive Committee met in June and appointed a Special Survey Committee on Aeronautical Research Facilities, chaired by Charles Lindbergh and composed of General Arnold, Admiral John Towers, and Robert H. Hinckley, chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Authority. During the subsequent congressional rehearing of the Sunnyvale proposal, a neat compromise was achieved, facilitated by the prestige of Lindbergh and the power of the other members of the Special Committee. The NACA proposal for another laboratory was approved, but the provision establishing it at Sunnyvale was deleted. Instead, the NACA was to choose a site within 30 days after the bill passed. The bill passed on 3 August. Lindbergh's committee then evaluated all the site proposals made since the original Sunnyvale plan was unveiled and settled (not surprisingly) on Sunnyvale. The Committee got the laboratory it wanted at the site it wanted, but not without some fancy footwork.33
True to its title, Lindbergh's Special Committee on Aeronautical Research Facilities went beyond mere endorsement of the Sunnyvale site; it also addressed the question of engine-research facilities. On 19 October 1939, after the Sunnyvale scheme was approved, the Special Committee "urgently recommend[ed] that an engine research laboratory be constructed at the earliest possible date, in a location easily accessible to the aircraft-engine industry." This recommendation, already current in NACA circles, received immediate endorsement by the Executive Committee. As was its wont, the NACA appointed a Special....
....Committee on New Engine Research Facilities within a week of Lindbergh's recommendation.34
Lindbergh's report said that "the reason for foreign leadership in certain important types of military aircraft is due in part to the superiority of foreign liquid-cooled engines," and that this in turn was partially attributable to the "serious lack of engine research facilities in the United States" which could not "be compared with the facilities for research in other major fields of aviation." Two historical currents had led the United States to this dangerous situation. First, the choice between liquid and air-cooled engines remained difficult throughout the late 1920s and 1930s. Each type of engine had strengths and weaknesses that suited it for some applications and disqualified it for others. The Europeans, especially the British and the Germans, had divided their research more or less equally between the two types. The United States, however, had concentrated on the air-cooled engine because during much of this period it provided more efficient propulsion at low altitudes, where the navy and commercial airliners did most of their flying. Some research on liquid cooled engines had been done in the United States, sponsored largely by the Army and the manufacturers themselves, but by 1939 the Europeans were far ahead.35
[162] The second major reason for the dearth of aviation-engine research facilities in the United States dated from the aviation-engine manufacturers' conference sponsored by the NACA in 1916. The participants then agreed that the automobile industry and the new engine manufacturers had sufficient expertise and resources to conduct their own research and development, given some funding and research assistance from the military services. Over the next two decades the NACA and the National Bureau of Standards did some engine research, but never did this branch of aeronautics receive in the United States the kind of interest and support given to aerodynamics. During most of this time the NACA Power Plants Committee had been chaired by the director of the National Bureau of Standards, and most of the NACA funds earmarked for engine research went as transfers to the Bureau, where aeronautical engine research was conducted in connection with other engine research. Beyond that the NACA had seen little need for fundamental research in aircraft engines.36
As late as 1937, Joseph Ames could write to an administrative assistant at the Bureau of the Budget:
The thinking behind that formulation differs little from the consensus reached at the 1916 conference. When a member of the House Appropriations Committee asked George. Lewis in 1933 why the United States was spending its money on air-cooled engines while the British were producing the more powerful liquid-cooled Rolls-Royce engine, Lewis lamented to Ames that here was one more misguided soul with "the big engine complex."37
In 1939, Lewis and Ames were deriding this complex no more. At the urging of Hunsaker, Lindbergh, and others, the NACA had come late to the conclusion that engines were retarding the development of faster military aircraft. Speed was the key to military success in the air, and improvements in power were likely to produce greater advances in speed than were the refinements of aerodynamic design.38
Resolved to make up for lost time by devoting a substantial effort to engine research, the NACA faced the harvest of its own neglect. It had neither the staff nor the experience to plan, design, and run an [163] engine research laboratory. Research in this field had been left largely to the industry since 1916, and it was to industry that the NACA turned in 1939. Eight days before the Lindbergh committee recommended an engine-research laboratory for the NACA, George J. Mead, recently retired as vice president for engineering of United Aircraft Corporation, was appointed a member of the Main Committee. Six days later he took the oath of office. Two days after that he was appointed vice-chairman of the NACA. One week later he became chairman of the new Special Committee on New Engine Research Facilities. Before the year was out he succeeded Vannevar Bush as chairman of the Power Plants Committee. Never before had anyone moved into such powerful positions within the NACA in so short a time. Part of the explanation lies in the urgency of the international situation in 1939. Most of it, however, reflects how completely the NACA was dependent on industry expertise to launch its engine-research program.39
Mead was as close as the NACA had yet come to placing an industry representative on the Main Committee or in the chair of one of the main technical committees. Jerome Hunsaker had been a member of the Main Committee even while serving as a consultant to firms directly involved in American aviation (including Mead's United Aircraft Corporation); but always his major tie had been to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he headed the Department of Aeronautical Engineering from 1936 through 1951. Edward P. Warner had been a member of the Main Committee while he was editor of Aviation, and had even retained his membership after becoming a fulltime consultant to United Airlines. Presumably his work at Aviation was considered nonpartisan as far as competition among aircraft firms was concerned, whereas his work at United was in the operation of aircraft, with which the NACA was not directly concerned. Clearly, the NACA had dallied with the idea of industry representation on the Main Committee, but it was not yet ready to make that plunge in 1939. Retired Brigadier General Walter G. Kilner was appointed to the Main Committee from private life on 19 December 1939. When he notified Chairman Bush the following February that he had accepted a post as consultant with Curtiss-Wright, his resignation was duly accepted. The distinction between his affiliations and those of Hunsaker and Warner was a fine one; but presumably a private citizen whose principal employer was an aircraft manufacturer represented too close a link with industry.40
George Mead was immune to such charges because he had retired from United Aircraft the previous June. Still, his background and ties were almost entirely with the aircraft manufacturing industry, and his appointment led to major changes in the composition of the NACA. [164] Counting Mead, half the members of the Special Committee on New Engine Research Facilities came from industry, including Mead's successor at United Aircraft. The Committee on Power Plants, of which Mead was also chairman, was soon reorganized "to include members from outside the governmental agencies for the purpose of strengthening the Committee and to make it national rather than federal in character." Again, counting Mead, half the members of the committee were now drawn from outside the government. Mead had been a critic of the NACA for some years, and his staff at United Aircraft did not cooperate as closely with the Langley laboratory as did those of some other manufacturers. Judging by his actions after coming to power in the Committee, he shared the familiar objection that the NACA was less responsive to the needs of industry than it should be and in fact was dominated by government interests in Washington.41
Had Mead restructured only the engine-research component of the NACA, his influence would have been great enough. But the change did not stop there. Taking his cue from Mead, Edward P. Warner, chairman of the powerful and prestigious Aerodynamics Committee and himself a sometime critic (though friendly and supportive), asked if the standards of industry and university representation being adopted for the Power Plants Committee would apply to Aerodynamics as well. The sense of the Main Committee was that they would. At the next meeting of the Executive Committee, the same question arose regarding membership on the Committee on Aircraft Structures. Bush stated that the NACA had not adopted a general policy applicable to all committees, but expected to hear separate proposals from each committee. With the barriers crumbling, however, there was little doubt about the course of events. From that time on, industry representation on NACA committees increased dramatically, from 9 percent of the total memberships in 1938 (before the change in policy) to 40 percent in 1948 and 44 percent in 1958. Adding to these the other members drawn from private life raises the representation from outside the government to more than half the committee memberships from World War 11 on. Nothing less than a revolution had occurred, almost overnight, in the composition of the technical committees of the NACA. Only the Main Committee remained free of industry members, and even there the barrier was soon to collapse.42
The broadened membership of the NACA technical committees raised many ethical and legal questions, but in the fervor of preparation for war, most of these were trusted to patriotism and good will. In 1940 the possibility that a particular industry or company would exploit its privileged position on NACA committees seemed less important than getting the best people from every field and enlisting their [165] support for the NACA program. Surely that was the case with Mead's Committee on Power Plants, which started the avalanche.43
A year had passed since the proposal for a new laboratory at Sunnyvale had gone to Congress, a year that saw the invasion of Poland and the increased likelihood that the United States would be drawn into the war. The proposal for an engine-research laboratory met much less resistance than had the Sunnyvale proposal. The plan was more thoroughly thought out when it went to the White House, and the president quickly approved it. Though the Bureau of the Budget trimmed the funding somewhat, the basic NACA plan went to Congress in May of 1940 with the firm backing of the administration. One suggestion arose on the floor of the House that instead of funding a new laboratory for the NACA the Congress ought simply to allocate funds to the manufacturers for them to conduct their own research. This proposal was quickly defeated and the engine research, laboratory approved. The NACA was then in a position to win almost any request it made of the Congress, partly because of the war situation, partly because of the Committee's reputation for efficiency and economy.44 Getting approval to build the laboratory proved to be less troublesome than selecting a site. As Victory wrote to William F. Durand shortly after the appropriation was passed:
More than a whiff of politics had hung over the selection of the Sunnyvale site. Now the whole process was about to begin again, this time with far more players. Before the selection was made, proposals had been received from 62 cities covering 72 different sites. The Committee realized at the outset that its selection procedure would have to be objective, fair, and above reproach, for it had 61 congressmen to disappoint and only one to please.46
A Special Committee on Site was appointed under the chairmanship of Vannevar Bush. The Special Committee in turn appointed a Special Subcommittee on Site Inspection, chaired by Victory. The Special Subcommittee drew up a set of requirements for the proposed site and established a rating system. Both were circulated to the interested parties in advance of any inspections to ensure that all agreed at the [166] outset that the rules of the game were fair and objective. All concurred that the system might be subject to error, but it had no built-in bias.47
Between 12 August and 4 October 1940, Victory and his committee visited 37 cities, spoke with local officials, inspected proposed sites for the laboratory and completed evaluation sheets on each site. Three times the Victory subcommittee presented its findings to the Bush Special Committee and three times the ratings were juggled. The day before the first reshuffling, Victory had written to Bush that throughout his investigations he had kept records that could "be disclosed with credit to the Committee, should the procedure ever be investigated." Eight days after the last reshuffling, Victory sealed the rating summaries in an envelope labeled "Confidential. Do not open without authority of J. F. Victory."48
As with the selection of the Sunnyvale site, the juggling surrounding the engine research site seems to have been done for political reasons. As with Sunnyvale, the NACA ended up with the site that it had chosen in the first place, Cleveland. Between the time when Cleveland was first selected on 10 September and finally selected on 16 October, Victory's committee visited some other sites and made adjustments to the ratings it had awarded certain cities. The effect of the first two adjustments was to elevate Glenview, Ohio, to first place, reducing Cleveland to second. In the final shuffle Glenview came in second, with Dayton (for which Orville Wright had argued) a close third. The records do not make clear why the shuffling was done, nor do they suggest any dark motive or unethical conduct on the part of the committee members. Any of the top five sites would apparently have been about as acceptable, and Cleveland seems to have been merely the first among equals. In only two criteria out of the nine used to rate the various sites did Cleveland rank decisively above all the rest; the more important of those two was accessibility to engine manufacturers. If anything made Cleveland the most desirable site for the engine-research laboratory, it was the same factor that made Sunnyvale the 49 most desirable site for the new aerodynamics laboratory: industry.49
The Committee's decision was accepted gracefully by most of the cities not selected. For, whatever juggling might have been done behind closed doors, the public impression was that the NACA had chosen well and impartially. As soon as the evaluation of the Victory subcommittee was substantiated and the legal arrangements made, work began on the NACA's third laboratory.50
While the NACA was fighting for the new facilities it needed to answer the growing aeronautical superiority of Germany, it was preparing [167] in more somber ways for the apparently inevitable conflict ahead. Most important, it reached an agreement with the armed services on its role in the event of war. The Westover Committee on Relation of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics to National Defense in Time of War (whose comments on the bottleneck at Langley Field had precipitated the NACA campaign for additional research facilities) had submitted in August 1938 its report on the status of the NACA in a national emergency. It recommended that the NACA become an adjunct of the Aeronautical Board, a joint army-navy board for coordination of all military aeronautics. Although this arrangement would deprive the NACA of the independence it enjoyed in peacetime, this was felt necessary "in the interests of National Defense." The Aeronautical Board in turn drew up a plan embodying these recommendations. It was approved by President Roosevelt on 29 June 1939.51
The Westover report also addressed the increasingly critical question of the role of NACA personnel in war. The boom in aircraft manufacture in the late 1930s had already drained the NACA of key personnel, unable to resist the higher salaries offered by the now flush industry. Were this drain to be compounded by enlistment or drafting of NACA personnel in a national emergency, the Committee's ability to perform its mission would be seriously impaired. Since the Westover report had declared that mission "essential," it could not escape the conclusion that NACA personnel would have to be exempted from military service in the event of war. Although it did not call for "blanket deferment" of NACA personnel, the report declared the Committee an "Essential Industry" whose personnel would be exempted on a case by case basis. The Aeronautical Board accepted this recommendation also, and embodied it in the plan approved by Roosevelt.52
Everyone realized that the wartime role envisioned for the NACA entailed far less fundamental research than the Committee was wont to conduct. The NACA would be drawn instead into testing, cleanup, and refinement of military prototypes of immediate use in the war. Long-range research leading to improved aircraft in the future would have to be abandoned for the duration. Of course, the fund of basic knowledge and data could be exhausted if it were not constantly replenished, but there seemed no real alternative. With some concern (and a faint hope that some of its work might still address fundamental questions, even in the crush of war), the NACA resigned itself to an inevitable lowering of its sights.53
The increased pace of aircraft manufacture in the late 1930s and the planning for a national emergency also altered the relationship of universities to the national program of aeronautical research. The Caltech campaign for government funding of a wind tunnel in which to conduct research for the aircraft industry of southern California had [168] demonstrated that industry was being driven to new sources of aeronautical research as its production increased and the tunnels of the NACA and the military services became glutted with projects of their own. The NACA was able to coordinate the research projects of the government but, because it largely excluded industry from Committee membership (at least until late 1939) and because universities were only randomly represented in NACA councils, it had no way to ensure that their programs were not duplicating those of the government. The NACA had always looked to the universities for theoretical aeronautics, and after 1920 had assigned itself the vague task of coordinating university research in aeronautics. Since 1930, when the Guggenheim endowment had expired, the NACA had been taking an increased interest in university work and had been trying with mixed success to increase its own funding of that research as one mechanism for encouraging and controlling it. By 1939, however, these informal methods appeared inadequate to the existing and projected scope of aeronautical research in universities. What was needed, the NACA concluded, was a coordinator of research, one staff man within the NACA who would make it his business to stay apprised of the research capabilities, programs, and needs of industry and academia and to advise the NACA on how best to coordinate these with the activities of the federal government. 54
The NACA appointed the usual special committee to select a coordinator of research and work out a program for his office. Hunsaker was chairman, Lewis a member. Between them they hammered out a program representing a compromise between their very different views on how such a coordinator should operate. Hunsaker, critical of the NACA, wanted a powerful coordinator who would give the industry and the universities the attention that they had long warranted. Lewis, in contrast, did not want to weaken his own position at the heart of the research authorization process by introducing a new locus of power, especially one that could deal directly and influentially with the powerful (and manipulatable) Main Committee. Bush openly admitted that he placed Hunsaker and Lewis in juxtaposition on this issue in hopes that out of their conflicting views "something worthwhile would ....evolve."55
What evolved was worked out between Hunsaker and Lewis by correspondence during August 1939. They agreed that the coordinator of research should be "primarily our field man." He would inform himself of activities in industry and the universities and coordinate these with the appropriate technical subcommittees of the NACA, ensuring that the programs complemented each other and avoided duplication. Their great point of difference was the relationship between the director of research and the new coordinator. Hunsaker saw Lewis as [169] the executive officer of the Main Committee, whose function was to "arrange or negotiate or otherwise get the projects carried out." He should not, felt Hunsaker, "stand between" the coordinator and the subcommittees, and he "ought not to take over part of the staff function of filtering advice." In line with this implied criticism, Hunsaker stated that the committees themselves needed to have greater industry representation and to become more active in the formulation of the research program, instead of passively accepting what Lewis fed them. "The subcommittees need to do some work," he said, "not just sit back and be informed."56
In September Hunsaker's special committee agreed upon the "Duties and Responsibilities of Coordinator of Research" without really resolving the issues in dispute between Hunsaker and Lewis. Only in practice, it seemed, could the varying interpretations of the role of Lewis and the coordinator be worked out. In the ensuing months, the NACA sought a candidate for coordinator who would be both diplomatic and competent to deal with the technical side of aeronautics, a sort of John J. Ide for the homefront. When their first choice (a retired naval officer) declined, Lewis suggested S. Paul Johnston, Ed Warner's successor as editor of Aviation. Johnston accepted the appointment on 6 January 1940 and reported for duty three, days later, perhaps unaware that the post he assumed was the center of a continuing controversy between Hunsaker and Lewis. The United States would be at war before that controversy was settled.57
Meanwhile, still other personnel changes were taking place, changes that were to have a far greater effect on the course of NACA history. On 7 October 1939, Joseph Ames resigned as chairman of the Main Committee, to be succeeded by Vannevar Bush, who had already taken over his duties as chairman of the Executive Committee. Virtually incapacitated for most committee business since his stroke in 1936, Ames had nonetheless been retained as chairman against his will, partly because the NACA profited by his stature and partly because the Committee was truly grateful for his years of service. Since his appointment as a charter member of the NACA almost a quarter-century earlier, Ames had influenced the course of NACA history as have few other men. Much of his influence was masked by Lewis and Victory, through whom he worked. Very often he dealt with them orally, leaving no written record now to show how much of their activity was a reflection of his wishes. Still, the esteem they felt for him and the frequency and deference of their consultations with him leave little doubt that his was the power behind the scenes. The quiet, conservative, methodical style of the Committee can be attributed in large measure to this gentle man. The NACA named the new research....
.....station at Sunnyvale the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory in 1940, just three years before its former chairman's death.
The term of Ames's immediate successor was short. In 1941 President Roosevelt called on Vannevar Bush to head the new National Defense Research Committee, soon to be absorbed in the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Replacing him as chairman of both the Executive Committee and the Main Committee was Jerome C. Hunsaker. Like Bush and other scientists and engineers taking up posts in Washington, Hunsaker brought with him new perspectives, new blood, and not a little criticism of the way things had run in Washington between the wars. In appointing Hunsaker chairman of the committee to establish an office of coordinator of research, Bush had said to Lewis: "Jerry, as you know, has been critical, and the best way to handle this is to give him a chance to get at things." Now Hunsaker would have his chance to get at everything.58
Lewis probably greeted this appointment with some misgivings, not only because of his 1939 encounter with Hunsaker on the issue of a coordinator of research but also because outsiders like Mead and Hunsaker who were coming to power within the Committee appeared to be bent on reforms not entirely to Lewis's liking. He mistrusted the increased representation of industry and academia on the technical committees. He doubted that the expanded NACA facilities could be managed as efficiently as the Langley laboratory had been. He resented intrusions on the power base he had established at the very heart of the NACA. But he was a good trouper and the written record suggests that he kept his misgivings to himself. The war effort, after all, was now....
....the greatest concern, and in that cause he would sacrifice and subordinate his own judgment with the best of men.
Preparations for war in the late 1930s had brought three major changes to the Committee. In the event of war the NACA was committed on paper to applied research, foregoing if need be its basic mission of fundamental research. Second, it had set afoot an expansion of facilities that would soon triple the Committee's physical plant and staff, changing irrevocably the style and procedures of Committee operations. Finally, the old order was passing, and a new generation of leadership was coming into positions of power. Lewis and Victory still held the center, as they had for twenty years. But the Committee charter clearly gave power to the committees; if these had failed to exercise that power in the preceding two decades, or rather had delegated much of it to Lewis and Victory, there was no guarantee that the new leaders were so disposed. On the contrary, they plainly meant to institute reforms that had been on their minds for years past. War would be the crucible in which to begin those changes.
1. The chronology of events dominating this chapter maybe be found in "Some Important Facts Regarding Expansion of NACA Research Facilities War-Time Status of NACA," unsigned typescript apparently prepared by Victory 46.
2. Minutes, Executive Committee meeting, 3 Mar. 1936; W. Gray, Frontiers of Flight: The Story of NACA Research (New York: Alfred A. pp. 22-24; Victory to Lindbergh, 16 June 1936; George W. Lewis, "Report on any and Russia, Sept.-Oct. 1936," undated typescript, 22 pp. plus 10 pp. of handwritten notes. The latter document is the source of the description and quotations concerning German aeronautical research facilities that follow.
3. Ames expressed his reservations in testimony before the Morrow board. See Aircraft: Hearings before the President's Aircraft Board (4 vols.; Washington, 1925), 1: 345-46. Lewis summarized his report on the trip to Germany in a letter to Reginald M. Cleveland of the New York Times, 4 Jan. 1937:
4. The files of the Special Committee on Aeronautical Research Facilities are in 57 A 415 (18), 20-2. On the upswing in R&D funds, see A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government A History of Policies and Activities to 1940 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 363. Although the NACA requested funds from the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act of 1938 or the Public Works Administration Appropriation Act of 1938, it got none; 64 A 125 (18).
5. Brookings Institution, Institute for Government Research, report 12, published as Senate Select Committee to Investigate the Executive Agencies of Government, Investigation of the Executive Agencies of the Government, S. Rept. 1275, 75/1, 1937. Several years later, Harold G. Moulton, president of the Brookings Institution, tried to explain to Vannevar Bush why the report had recommended transfer of the congress.
Moulton expressed sympathy with Bush's view that this had been "a conclusion which is naturally not pleasing to a committee which has gotten along very happily in its independent status and would like to be left alone."
6. The NACA rebuttal appears in the 15 Dec. 1937 "Report of the Brookings Institution on the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics" reproduced in appendix H. William P. MacCracken tried unsuccessfully to get the institution to revise its recommendation on the NACA, but he was met with the staff's "Memorandum to Report No. 12 on Senate Select Committee making Recommendations Relative to National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics," 8 Nov. 1937, also reproduced in appendix H. See Victory to Harry F. Guggenheim, 29 Oct. 1937, and Moulton to MacCracken, 8 Nov. 1937,
7. Victory to Guggenheim, 29 Oct. 1937; Ames to Guggenheim in, 29 Nov. 1937; Guggenheim to Harry F. Byrd, 7 Dec. 1937. Even before Guggenheim intervened, Victory wrote to Lindbergh: "The present Congress in all probability will not create a Department of Transportation, and reliable assurance has been received that the N.A.C.A. will not be disturbed." (27 Oct. 1937)
The Brookings report provides one more sidelight on NACA history just as Brookings began its investigation, Lewis wrote to his friend Porter dams (prophetically, as it turned out) on what he feared the institution might do and why h distrusted it:
8. See 57 A 415 (74), appropriations, for evidence that the budget cut was prompted, at least in part, by the Brookings report. The NACA fought the cut by appointing a special committee on the 1939 budget; its 1 Mar. 1938 report to Ames was subsequently used to good effect by Woodrum, as reported in Victory to Ames, 9 Mar 1938.
9. On the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, see Nick A. Komons, Bonfires to Beacons: Federal Civil Aviation Policy under the Air Commerce Act, 1926-1938 (Washington: Federal Aviation Administration, 1978), chap. 14. The effect on the NACA is outlined in AR 1938, pp. 3, 38-39. See also "Analysis of Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938," a 5-page typescript prepared for the Executive Committee meeting of 21 June 1938, probably by Victory.
10. On the delicate question of why the NACA should not get into commercial aviation development, see Edward P. Warner to Sen. Royal S. Copeland, 25 May 1938, reprinted in appendix H.
11. On the rapid expansion of the aircraft-manufacturing industry in the late 1930s, see Elsbeth E. Freudenthal, "The Aviation Business in the 1930's," The History of the American Aircraft Industry: An Anthology, ed. G.R. Simonson (Cambridge: MIT Press 1968), pp. 98-115; and John B. Rae, Climb to Greatness: The American Aircraft Industry, 1920-1960 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968), pp. 98-113. Another bureaucratic response to commercial aviation needs in these years was the Special Subcommittee on Aerodynamic Problems of Transport Construction and Operation proposed by Ed Warner, which sat from 1936 to 1938. See also Lewis to director, Bureau of the Budget, 31 Dec. 1936, in which h asks for increased funds to meet the research demands of the engineers' committee of the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce.
12. AR 1928, pp. 21-23; AR 1929, pp. 23-24; AR 1930, pp. 18-19; Victory to chairman, NACA, "Subcommittee on Aeronautical Research in Universities under Committee on Aerodynamics," 26 Jan. 1934.
13. U.S. Senate, Report of the Federal Aviation Commission, Sen. Doc. 15, 74/1, 1935; AR 1935, p.38. Victory to Willis Gregg, 6 Dec. 1935, enclosing "Cooperation between the Universities and the N.A.C.A." On increased appropriations for university research in later years, see, for example, House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Independent Offices, Independent Offices Appropriation Bill for 1941, hearing 76/3, 1941, pp. 337-38.
14. Alexander Klemin to Earl M. Findley, 16 May 1935, identified "Cooperation between the Universities and the N.A.C.A." as a statement prepared by him on behalf of the American Engineering Council and approved by Grover Loening chairman of the council. The marginalia are in the NACA copy, cited in note 13.
15. See appendix B.
16. House Committee on Appropriations, hearings on the Sundry Civil Bill, 1941, 76th Cong., 3d. sess., 4 Dec. 1939, pp. 328-29; minutes of Executive Committee meeting, 19 Aug. 1938; Lewis to Ames, 19 Aug. 1938, 57 A 415 (20) 21-2,
17. Lindbergh to Ames, 4 Nov. 1938; Clinton Macauley, "Millions for Research Abroad!," National Aeronautics, Oct. 1938, pp. 22 23; AR 1938, pp. 1-2. Victory wrote to Russell Owen on 16 Feb. 1939:
18. Both Lewis and Victory wanted the laboratory located inland. In an 8 Nov. 1938 memorandum, Lewis listed as one of the desirable objectives for the new lab that it be 500 miles from either coast. (47 A 415 (33), 22 -1, 1938 1939). In a 4 Nov. 1938 memorandum for Adm. Cook, Victory stated that the "site should be accessible from Washington, preferably within four to five hours by air." In 1938 the transcontinental speed record was over ten hours, so Victory could not have been thinking much beyond the Mississippi River.
19. Rae, Climb to Greatness, p. 108.
20. Robert A. Millikan, The Autobiography of Robert Millikan (London: Macdonald & Co., Ltd., 1951), p. 253; Millikan to H.H. Arnold, 10 Dec. 1938 enclosing "Discussion of a Proposal to Establish an Aeronautical Laboratory for Applied Research."
21. Arnold to Lewis, 5 Jan. 1939, reproduced in appendix H.
22. Victory to Lewis, 9 Jan. 1939, reproduced in appendix H.
23. Clark Millikan and von Karman visited Dr. Lewis while the NACA request for a new laboratory in California was pending before the Bureau of the Budget. Lewis told Henry Reid that in the conference he did "a great deal of listening and very little talking." Later he apologized to Millikan, saying he "felt rather embarrassed at not being able to discuss it in more detail." Lewis to Reid, 2 Feb. 1939; Lewis to Millikan, 25 Feb. 1939.
Lewis had been advised as early as 14 Dec. 193 just four days after Millikan's first proposal to Arnold that within the Army Air Corps 'consideration was being given to the construction of the wind tunnel on the West Coast at some educational institution. "Lewis, memorandum for the chairman, re: visit of Major A.J. Lyon, 14 Dec. 1938. On industry support of the Caltech proposal, see Millikan to Congress man John Costello, 29 Mar. 1939, and Jerome C. Hunsaker to E.E. Wilson, 6 Jan. 1940.
When the NACA and the army finally rejected the Caltech proposal, Congressman Carl Hinshaw (whose district included Caltech) said in Congress that "there seems to be a certain feeling on the part of the N.A.C.A., which I can hardly describe, but the best way to describe it is that they would like to retain a concentration research facilities entirely within the N.A.C.A. They do not seem to be inclined to favor allowing these facilities to be spread out among the several qualified educational institutions. I do not just know whether it is the old question of professional jealousy or the old question of expanding bureaucracy or some other queer incomprehensible angle." (Congressional Record, 77/1, Vol. 87, Pt. 1, 1941, p. 416)
24. A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities to 1940 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 296-97.
25. See pp. 152-153.
26. On von Karman's remarkable career, see R. Cargill Hall, "Shaping the Course of Aeronautics, Rocketry, and Astronautics: Theodore von Karman, 1381 1963.. " The Journal of Astronautical Sciences, 26 (Oct. Dec. 1978): 369-86.
27. Even industry landed in the NACA camp on this issue. John H. Jouett, chairman of the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce of America, wrote to Clark Millikan on 22 May 1939 that "It seems to be Sunnyvale or nothing" and asked him to support the NACA plan.
28. Hunsaker to E.E. Wilson, 6 Jan. 1940.
29. Congressional Record, 76/ 1, Vol. 84, Pt. 3, 1939, p. 3110.
30. House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Independent Offices, Independent Offices Appropriation Bill for 1940, hearings, 76/3, 1940, facing title page.
31. Victory to DeFrance, TWX, 22 Mar. 1939, in 57 A 415 (33), 22 -1, 1938-1939. Notes prepared by Victory for his own history of the NACA said that Drew Pearson at this time wrongly blamed Woodrum for the failure of the Sunnyvale proposal. This interpretation suggests that members of Woodrum's committee were the ones gathered around the pork barrel, not the chairman himself
32. "Some Important Facts Regarding Expansion of NACA Research Facilities and War-Time Status of NACA, typescript, 17 Jan. 1945.
33. Minutes, Executive Committee meeting, 23 June 1939; Victory to Ames, 3 Aug. 1939.
34. AR 1939, pp. 2 3, in which is printed the "Report of the Special Survey Committee on Aeronautical Research Facilities." See also Victory, "Memorandum for the Chairman, NACA, on "Origin and Status of the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory," 7 Oct 1941. On 6 Jan. 1940, Hunsaker wrote to E.E. Wilson: I, personally, am pressing the N.A.C.A. (now with George Mead's active support) to ask Congress for a Power Plant Research Laboratory. The implication is that this urging was not new. For confirmation of this, see Hunsaker to Lewis [ca. 18 Aug. 39].
35. Rae, Climb to Greatness, pp. 25-30, 107; Robert Schlaifer, Development of Aircraft Engines (Boston: Div. of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1950), pp. 246 86. Schlaifer also maintains that the American system of engine development gave the industry de facto a stronger voice in determining what lines of development to pursue, and industry naturally followed those that promised commercial as well as military applications.
36. Up to 1939, for example, the NACA had published only 670 reports on propulsion, compared with 2437 reports on aerodynamics, and much of the engine research was on fuels and supercharging and control. See appendix G on reports, and the author's tables from which that appendix was compiled.
37. Ames to F.J. Bailey, 25 June 1937; Lewis to Ames, 10 Jan. 1933.
38. Compare Thomas P. Hughes' concept of "reverse salients in an expanding technological front" in "The Science Technology Interaction: The Case of High Voltage Power Transmission Systems," Technology and Culture 17 (Oct. 1976), 646-59.
39. See Mead's card in the running card file at NASA Headquarters of NACA committee members. NACA veteran Ira Abbott makes a comment on the NACA dilemma that could well apply to other aspects of the Committee's history: "Industry would have been and [was] the first to object to encroachment by the NACA on their territory. As soon as industry did not meet the needs of the military, they were also the first to declare it was because of the neglect of their needs by the NACA. It was strictly a no win situation." Abbott to Monte D. Wright, 30 April 1980, enclosure, p. 13.
40. Hunsaker's ties to industry are revealed in box 7 of his papers at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C. On Warner's career, see T.P. Wright, "Edward Pearson Warner, 1894 1958: An Appreciation," The journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society, Oct. 1958, pp. 3 143. On Kilner's brief tenure, see AR 1940, p. 19; Kilner to Bush, 9 Feb. 1940; Victory to Kilner, 5 Mar. 1940; Kilner to Bush, 12 Mar. 1940; Victory to Kilner, 16 Apr. 1940; and Kilner to Victory, 22 Apr. 1940 (all the correspondence in NA RG 255, entry 3, box 27, Kilner, 1939 1940.) Although the Kilner correspondence evidences no bad feelings, there is an obvious coolness in the NACA's response. On the tenures of all three men, see appendix B.
In 1931 Ames recommended appointing industry representatives to the Main Committee but by 1938 he was advocating their continued exclusion from the Aerodynamics, Power Plants, and Structures committees. Ames to President Hoover, 3 Nov. 1931; Ames to Victory, 5 Nov. 1931; and Ames to Executive Committee, 7 Dec. 1938. The last letter was probably written by Lewis and signed by the failing Ames.
41. Mead had been an engineering undergraduate at MIT when Hunsaker was establishing a program in aeronautics there. Since then, his career had been confined almost exclusively to industry, most notably as chief engineer of Wright Aeronautical Corp., then as engineering founder and vice president of Pratt and Whitney Aircraft Co., whence he rose to be vice president, director, and member of the executive committee of the present United Aircraft Corp. to which Pratt and Whitney was subsidiary. Mead left in June 1939, reportedly in a dispute over advocacy of liquid cooled engines. Who Was Who in America, II, 1943-1950 (Chicago: A.N. Marquis, 1950), p. 366; Schlaifer, Development of Aircraft Engines, p. 290.
The membership of the Special Committee on Aeronautical Research Facilities is listed in the minutes of the annual meeting of the NACA, 19 Oct. 1939. The membership of the reorganized Power Plants Committee and the quotation explaining the change appear in the minutes of the Executive Committee meeting, 7 Feb. 1940. On the friction between Mead and the NACA, see Mead to Hunsaker, 19 Jan., and Hunsaker to Mead, 21 Jan. 1937.
As recently as 1937, Lewis had written, "it is the Committee's policy that there shall be no representation of the industry or of engineering societies on the Committee on Power Plants for Aircraft." (Lewis to C.B. Veal, 6 Jan. 1937, in 55 A 312 (5), 14-3, Crane, H.M.)
42. Warner raised the issue at the 7 Feb. 1940 meeting of the Executive Committee. At the 12 Mar. 1940 meeting of the Executive Committee, the chairman of the Committee on Aircraft Structures raised the issue again, eliciting Bush's response. (Minutes.) On the composition of NACA technical committees, see appendix B.
43. In Apr. 1940, for example, Warner sent to Bush a proposed new membership list for the Aerodynamics Committee, expressing the hope that the new membership would be "reasonably representative of the industry." (Warner to Bush, 27 Apr. 1940, in 60 A 635 (11), 101.1, Bush, Vannevar.) This issue of industry representation was later to become a source of misunderstanding and friction between the NACA and the industry. See pp. 207-211.
In a letter of 20 May 1940 Mead pointed out that the NACA staff lacked the technical expertise to establish a new engine research laboratory. (NA RG 155, entry 1, box 3, Executive Committee.) In the Executive Committee meeting of 7 Feb. 1940, Bush stated that the major misgiving over industry representation on the main technical committees was access to classified information; he did not mention conflict of interest. On the patriotic service of industry representatives in NACA engine research, see Leonard S. Hobbs to Hunsaker, 1 Jan. 1942, and Hunsaker to Hobbs, 9 Jan. 1942; Mead to Frank. Caldwell, 28 Dec. 1939 and Caldwell to Mead, 4 Jan. 1940.
44. Harold D. Smith, director, Bureau of the Budget, u dated memorandum for the president [ca. 7 May 1940]; Smith to L.C. Martin, 7 May 1940; "Mr. A'Hearn" to Martin and Smith, 11 May 1940; Congressional Record, 76/3, Vol. 86, Pt. 7, 1940, p. 8084, 12 June 1940. On 25 Jan. 1940 Victory wrote to Lindbergh: "I was recently told by a veteran correspondent who had chatted with members of the Appropriations Committee that various members of the committee had said that the N.A.C.A. could have whatever it asked for."
45. Victory to Durand, 7 June 1940, in 59 A 2112 (10), 17-3, Durand, 1931-1951.
46. The following account relies heavily on John D. Holinfeld, "The Site Selection for the NACA Engine Research Laboratory: A Meeting of Science and Politics," NASA History Office HHN 69, 1967. Holinfeld concludes, as do I, that politics and objectivity were about equally involved in the selection of a site.
47. Victory to Bush, 7 Oct. 1940.
48. The quote is ibid.; the sequence of events is in Holmfeld, "Site Selection" and "Report of Special Committee on Site, Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory," 24 Oct. 1940; the confidential file is in 62 A 35 (8), 123.
49. Holmfeld infers that one reason for settling on Cleveland was the close and comfortable relationship Victory established with the local officials there. He also notes that the Glenview site would probably have been disqualified in any event because it was not publicly owned, even though the navy was then negotiating for its purchase from the Curtiss Wright Corp.
The criteria used to evaluate proposed sites were (1) general characteristics of flying field, (2) details of site proposed, (3) vulnerability From strategic standpoint, (4) electric power, (5) water, (6) proximity to industrial center, (7) accessibility to engine manufacturers, (8) climate and weather, and (9) accessibility to centers of scientific and technical activity. Cleveland also ranked first in (2) and (5), but not in all the subcategories that made up those criteria. Furthermore, it had been tied with Glenview in criterion (2) before the shuffling began.
50. Holmfeld, "Site Selection," chap. 8.
51. "Westover Committee Report," 19 Aug. 1938; minutes of Executive Committee meeting, 15 Sept. 1939. See also Victory to chairman, NACA, 2 Mar. 1939; and 57 A 415 (1), 1-1.
52. On the drain of personnel by industry, see Lewis to E.E. Wilson, 17 Jan. 1937, in 57 A 415 (48), 38-4, July Dec. 1937; and the two page typescript summary of "Budget Hearings" of the NACA before the Bureau of the Budget, 9 Oct. 1937. As early as the fall of 1936 members of the NACA staff had expressed concern over their status in the event of war. See Starr Truscott to engineer in charge, LMAL, 12 Nov. 1936; minutes of annual meeting, 22 Nov. 1936.
53. At its regular meeting on 24 June 194 1, the Executive Committee resolved:
54. At its semiannual meeting 22 Apr. 1920, the NACA had resolved:
55. Bush to George H. Brett, 30 June 1939, appointing him a member of the Special Committee on Coordination. The other members were Warner and Sydney M. Kraus. The quote is from Bush to Lewis, 30 Aug. 1939.
56. Hunsaker to Lewis [ca. 18 Aug.]; Lewis to Hunsaker, 26 Aug.; Hunsaker to Lewis, 29 Aug.1939.
57. Special Committee on Coordination, "Report Submitted to Executive Committee," 15 Sept. 1939; Lewis to Hunsaker, I Dec. 1939; "Report of the Coordinator of Research to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics," 7 Feb. 1940.
58. Bush to Lewis, 30 Aug. 1939. Bush had offered the chairmanship to Lindbergh in 1939, but Lindbergh had refused. Charles A. Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), p. 208.
That Hunsaker associated his criticisms of the NACA with Lewis personally is revealed in a 21 Jan, 1937 letter to Mead:
He was more laudatory in a 2 May 1940 memo to General Arnold, in which he observed of the NACA that "the physical plant is superb ....., the staff ..... is working both vigorously and with imagination...., section heads constitute the country's experts in their specialties..... [and] research programs have been wisely selected." On the negative side he reported that "the NACA is not functioning as an advisory body in accordance with its original purpose," and that "the over all picture or trend is not disclosed. That is, we have no machinery for bringing out the cumulative significance of our work." This last criticism anticipated a complaint that Hunsaker was to get from George Mead just a few days later:
Hunsaker apparently became the spokesman for this kind of complaint because he was himself critical of the NACA and because he kept an o en mind. At the end of a long and candid critique of the NACA in 1939, Lindbergh remarked poignantly:
