[219] For a general overview of NACA history, I relied on Alex Roland's Model Research: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1915-1958 (NASA SP-4103, 1985), based on documents from the Washington Office, and James R. Hansen's Engineer in Charge: A History of Langley Memorial Research Laboratory (NASA SP-4305, 1987), which draws extensively on documents from Langley's archives. I found many of the views in Arthur L. Levine's dissertation, "United States Aeronautical Research Policy, 1915-1958" (Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1963), provocative, if not solidly documented. Levine's views should be supplemented by Ira H. Abbott's "A Review and Commentary of a Thesis by Arthur L. Levine Entitled U.S. Aeronautical Policy 1915-1958" (April 1964, typescript, NASA History Office, Washington, D.C.). Jerome C. Hunsaker presents an uncritical review of NACA achievements in "Forty Years of Aeronautical Research, 1915-1955," Smithsonian Report for 1955 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1956), p. 241-271. See also the portrait of Lewis drawn by James R. Hansen in Aviation's Golden Age: Portraits from the 1920s and 1930s, edited by William M. Leary (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989). Two histories of Ames Aeronautical Laboratory are also helpful: Elizabeth Muenger's Searching the Horizon: A History of Ames Research Center, 1940-1976 (NASA SP-4304, 1985) and Edwin P. Hartman, Adventures in Research: A History of Ames Research Center, 1940-1965 (NASA SP-4302, 1970). Frontiers of Night: The Story of NACA Research (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948) by George W, Gray is a concise descriptive history of the NACA to 1948; it contains some good detail on the early years of the Cleveland laboratory.
John Holmfeld's unpublished study, "The Site Selection for the NACA Engine Research Laboratory: A Meeting of Science and Politics" (Master's Essay, Case Institute of Technology, 1967), presents a well-documented story of the influence of personalities over objective criteria in the selection of the Cleveland location. I supplemented Holmfeld's work with the Greater Cleveland Growth Association Records, 1881-1971, Minutes of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, Ms. 3471. Also, Corporate Records of TRW, Inc. Ms 3942, Records 1900-1969, Series 1: Corporate Records; Sub-series B: Loose Papers consisting of correspondence 1926-66 and Series II: Histories, Series V: outside activities. They provide a dearer picture of the role of Frederick Crawford, whom I also interviewed.
The only published source for Lewis history is Liquid Hydrogen as a Propulsion Fuel, 1945-1959 (NASA SP-4404, 1978) by John L. Sloop. It contains many revealing historical details, particularly about the period of the 1950s. Although Sloop focuses on the historical development of the use of liquid hydrogen as a propulsion fuel, he relates the work at Lewis on high-energy [220] rocket fuels to general developments in the field. Mr. Sloop also provided me with valuable documents from his personal files.
I located Lewis records after consulting a log containing Records Transmittal and Receipt forms. These included boxes 220, 221, 231, 257, 290, 295, 296, 297, 298, and 299 listed under Code 1300. These records, although historical, are no longer complete, but the product of considerable consolidation by records managers. I refer to documents from these boxes in my text as NASA Lewis Records, although I understand they will soon be shipped to the National Archives and Records Service. The photograph collection is stored at Plum Brook. A chronological log of photographs, with short descriptions, can be found in the Photography Laboratory. In addition, there is a Motion Picture Log and a separately prepared catalogue of NACA films, many of which are of considerable historical interest.
The Lewis Library has nearly all the back issues (1942-present) of the Lewis newspaper, called successively Wing Tips, Orbit, and Lewis News. In addition, the telephone directories from 1943 to the present have been bound. These are helpful for lists of personnel and, in the later years, organizational charts. The library has retained loose-leaf notebooks of NACA Inspections held every three years from 1947 to 1966. In addition, I used a loose-leaf notebook marked "History" which contains the texts of the "Smoker Talks" given by visiting dignitaries and staff talks given by the division heads in the early 1940s. The notebook also contains additional miscellaneous material, such as clippings and quotations from magazine and journal articles.
I found the references in NACA technical papers to be valuable historical sources. I used NACA Annual Reports, Wartime Reports, Memoranda, and Notes. In particular, the Langley file, an index of NACA reports by author, was useful as reference. The Lewis Technical Library has a good collection of aviation journals, most beginning in the 1940s; a few, such as the Society of Automotive Engineering, go back to the 1920s and 1930s. I also consulted Lewis records stored at the Federal Archives and Records Center, Chicago, Ill. The records consist of four boxes of NACA-Lewis Lectures, Speeches, Talks, and Broadcasts (January 1944 through December 1954). Similar records at the Federal Archives and Records Center in Dayton, Ohio, consist of 19 boxes of speeches, talks, and papers by Lewis authors, filed alphabetically by author's name. These cover the period 1951 to 1954 and 1955 through 1966. A collection of Centaur program records is stored in the vault of the Developmental Engineering Building at Lewis, for which Craig Waff and I prepared an inventory in September 1986.
Documents from the NASA History Office, Washington, D.C., also proved invaluable. Biographical files contain miscellaneous correspondence, transcripts of interviews, speeches, and photographs. An index to the Walter Bonney interviews was useful in locating these interviews. There are also interviews conducted by Eugene Emme of several key Lewis personnel.
To study the transition from the aircraft piston engine to jet propulsion, I began with The Origins of the Turbojet Revolution (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980) by Edward W. Constant H. Robert Schlaifer and S.D. Heron's The Development of Aircraft Engines; The Development of Aviation Fuels: Two Studies of the Relations Between Government and Business (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration, 1950) was an invaluable source for factual information about aircraft piston engines and the early development of jet propulsion. For a glimpse of the role of George Mead on the Power Plants Committee, see Cary Hoge Mead, Wings Over the World (Wauwatosa, Wisc.: The Swanset Press, 1971). Especially helpful is Frank Whittle's "The Early History of the Whittle jet Propulsion Gas Turbine," Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 152 (1945), p. 419-435, and Jet: The Story of a Pioneer [221] (Frederick Mueller, 1953). See also Leslie E. Neville and Nathaniel E Silsbee, Jet Propulsion Progress: The Development of Aircraft Gas Turbines (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1948) and "Historical Development of jet Propulsion," in jet Propulsion Engines, edited by O. E. Lancaster (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 3-53, which includes discussions of rocket propulsion. I was disappointed to find very little serious scholarly work on the transfer of German scientists and their technology to the United States after World War II. It was clear to me from studying the references in papers published by Lewis staff on various aspects of jet propulsion that German work on turbine cooling, inlets, and compressors was often the starting point for much creative work. Clarence G. Lasby's Project Paperclip. German Scientists and the Cold War (New York: Atheneum, 1971) is helpful but superficial. I also perused the ALSOS files in the National Archives, Record Group 165, Records of the War Department, General and Special Staffs, Box Intelligence Division, ALSOS Mission File, 1944-1945. At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, I looked through sanitized ALSOS files in the History Office of the Logistics Command.
I found my best sources in the National Archives and Records Service, Suitland, Md. I consulted "Preliminary Inventory of the Textual Records of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (Record Group 255)," compiled by Sarah Powell, June 1967, and "Special Study on the Records of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics," prepared by William H. Cunliffe and Herman G. Goldbeck, July 1973, to determine how to use this archive. An index of the "Correspondence Files (Decimal File)" and "Correspondence of NACA Committees and Subcommittees," prepared by Richard Wood, proved invaluable. Among other records, I consulted those of the Special Committee on jet Propulsion, which contained correspondence, but not all the minutes of the meetings. I found the missing minutes in the NASA History Office. I also found relevant documents among the H. H. Arnold Papers in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base I looked for documentation to illuminate the relationship between Lewis and Wright Field, but I was unable to locate the records of the Army (later Air Force) Liaison Office. I consulted records relating to jet propulsion in the History Offices of the Aeronautical Systems Division and the Logistics Command Division, and in the Aero Propulsion Laboratory. There are three catalogues of records: "Catalog of Histories and Source Materials in ASD Historical Division Files," AFSC Historical Publications Series 61-50-100, September 1961; "Guide to Research Studies Prepared by Office of History Headquarters Air Force Logistics Command," 1984; and "Archival Holdings," ASD-HO, 20 June 1986, See also James St. Peter, "History of the Gas Turbine Engine in the United States: Bibliography," WRDC-TR-2062.
The importance of British theoretical contributions to fluid dynamics and compressor design is discussed in Brian Nichelson's excellent Ph.D. Dissertation, "Early jet Engines and the Transition from Centrifugal to Axial Compressors: A Case Study in Technological Change" (University of Minnesota, 1988). 1 was not able to find any solid historical studies specifically devoted to American postwar engineering education and the importance of German and British science and technology in reshaping engineering curricula in the 1950s. In my discussion of Lewis Laboratory's relationship with Case Institute of Technology, I relied on documents from the well-managed archives of Case Western Reserve University. Records consulted there were located under the headings Associations and Organizations: Government Groups, NASA, 19 DC and Case Institute of Technology Engineering Department Records, 19 FL. C. H. Cramer's Case Western Reserve: A History of the University, 1926-1976 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1976) provided valuable background. In this chapter I incorporated parts of my article "From Braunschweig to [222] Ohio: Ernst Eckert and Government Heat Transfer Research," published in History of Heat Transfer, edited by Edwin T. Layton, Jr., and John H. Lienhard (New York: American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1988), p. 125-137. I am indebted to Edwin Layton, Ernst Eckert, and Simon Ostrach for their contributions to this chapter, including an unpublished paper by Simon Ostrach, "Memoir on Buoyancy-Driven Convection.
Serious history of the commercial development of post-World War II jet engines is limited. History of the American Aircraft Industry: An Anthology, edited by G. R. Simonson (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968) is a collection of superficial essays that barely mentions the relation of the NACA to industry. Charles D. Bright's The jet Makers: The Aerospace Industry from 1945 to 1972 (Lawrence, Kan.: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978), and The jet Age: Forty Years of Jet Aviation, edited by Walter J. Boyne and Donald S. Lopez (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979) are helpful, as is Keith Hayward, Government and British Civil Aerospace (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983). Quite amusing biographies include Sir Stanley Hooker, Not Much of an Engineer. An Autobiography (Shrewsbury, England: Airlife, 1984) and Gerhard Neumann, Herman the German (New York: William Morrow, 19841. Company histories include Seven Decades of Progress: A Heritage of Aircraft Turbine Technology (Fallbrook, Calif.: Aero Publishers for General Electric Company, 1979); Michael Donne, Leader of the Skies, Rolls-Royce: The First Seventy-five Years (London: Frederick Muller Limited, 1981); and The Pratt & Whitney Story (Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Division of United Aircraft Corporation, 1950). Several articles published by the Howmet Turbine Components Corporation in the series "Classic Turbine Engines" edited by Robert B. Meyer, Jr., are useful. See, for example, Harvey H. Lippencott, "Pratt & Whitney Enters the jet Age," Casting About, 1985, and Part II, Casting About, 1986. 1 obtained materials relating to the history of Pratt & Whitney and the Carrier Corporation from the United Technologies Archives, West Hartford, Conn.
NACA-NASA efforts in nuclear propulsion deserve a more detailed treatment than I was able to provide. Atomic Shield, 1947/1952, Vol. 2 of A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1969) by Richard G. Hewlett and Francis Duncan is a valuable source. Unfortunately, I was unable to see a portion of the NACA collection in the National Archives (Record Group 255) that is yet to be declassified, despite a formal request. The best source for NASA's program in nuclear propulsion is James Arthur Dewar's )'Project Rover: A Study of the Nuclear Rocket Development Program, 1953-1963" (Ph.D. Dissertation, Kansas State University, 1974). This is to be published in the near future by the Smithsonian Institution Press,
On the transition from the NACA to NASA, Robert L. Rosholt's An Administrative History of NASA, 1958-1963 (NASA SP-4101, 1966) was dull but packed with information. I also gleaned important insights about the debates prior to the formation of NASA from Enid Curtis Bok Schoettle's chapter, "The Establishment of NASA," in Knowledge and Power, edited by Sanford A. Lakoff (New York: The Free Press, 1966). James R. Killian, Jr., Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower: A Memoir of the First Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977) also provides interesting background. Nancy Jane Petrovic, "Design for Decline: Executive Management and the Eclipse of NASA," Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Maryland, 1982, has a provocative thesis useful for perspective in understanding Lewis's eclipse. T. Keith! Glennan, "The First Years of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration," 1964, unpublished diary, Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kan., provided me with important insights into his thinking about NASA's relationships with industry.
[223] For the Apollo era, Arnold S. Levine touches on the problem of the autonomy of the research centers versus centralized management in Managing NASA in the Apollo Era (NASA SP-4102, 1982). Homer E. Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science (NASA SP-4211, 1980) provided me with a readable history of the early space program from the point of view of someone without a NACA background. If NASA reflected the triumph of technocracy as Walter A. McDougall argues in ... the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (New York: Basic Books, 1985), I found little evidence of the impact of this thinking on Lewis's management philosophy during the Apollo years. John Logsdon, The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970) and Roger Bilstein, Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles (NASA SP-4206, 19801 helped me to understand the strategy of leap-frogging the Russians in the development of launch vehicles. Courtney G. Brooks, James M. Grimwood, and Lloyd S. Swenson, Jr., Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft (NASA SP-4205, 1975) contains a useful discussion of the rendezvous decision, as does the recently published Apollo: The Race to the Moon by Charles Murray and Catherine Cox (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989).
Interviews with present and former Lewis staff were often essential in helping me to understand complex technology. However, it was not always easy to weave events in individual careers into the larger story. These interviews can stand on their own as historical documents. They convey the enthusiasm of Lewis engineers for their work, and hopefully will provide insights for other historians. Most of my interviews were conducted at Lewis and taped. Those I transcribed are indicated by an asterisk.