On March 3rd 1915, a two-paragraph rider to
the Naval Appropriations Act created a new federal agency with a staff of twelve
and a budget five thousand dollars. And then a June 1917 edition of the New York
Sun wrote “So far as the average American was concerned, it was promptly forgotten.” I would
imagine not one in a thousand Americans has ever heard of the National Advisory Committee on
Aeronautics more or less as familiar with their body of work, but that's too bad. Because they
had an outsized effect on American history, played a critical role in the allied victory
in the Second World War and shepherded America into the jet age. The history of
the NACA deserves to be remembered. In less than a decade the United States went from
first in flight with the Wright Brothers flights in 1903 to lacking behind our European peers.
The idea of a National Center for Aeronautical Research was proposed at least as early as
1911 by the American Aeronautical Society. In 1912 President Taft appointed a commission
to study the creation of a National Aerodynamic Laboratory, the commission was headed by
Robert Woodard, a well-regarded civil engineer, physicist and mathematician, and president of
the Carnegie Institute of Washington. But the effort failed to get an enabling act to create
the laboratory, through Congress. One argument to explain the lagging behind in the development
of aircraft that has been frequently made is that it was the Wright Brothers defending their 1906
patent that had the result of both distracting the industry and disincentivizing production.
There were certainly patent disputes but that is hardly the only reason. A rather more compelling
explanation can be found in a congressional study whose results were reported in a hearing before
the House Committee on Military Affairs in 1913. Between 1908 and 1913, Germany led the
world in government expenditures on aviation at 28 million dollars. Equivalent,
in the same year, the US had spent 435,000 for all federal support of flight-related
activity, putting our spending 13th in the world behind that of Chile and Greece. The US
was simply not yet sold on the concept in an era when aeronautical adventures made the
news for accidents as much as for accomplishments. While the US Secretary of War had requested a
500,000 appropriation for the Army Aeronautical Division in 1908, Congress had approved none.
In fact no money was appropriated between 1908 and 1911. What was there was funded by small
surpluses from other War Department accounts. While 125 thousand dollars was appropriated
for 1912 and another hundred thousand for 1913, by 1913 the entire US Army Aeronautical Division
included just 10 aviators and 15 aircraft. And while the military was having difficulty
convincing Congress of the problem, one person who did recognize it was Charles Doolittle Walcott,
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1913, Walcott funded a fact-finding tour overseas
sending a physicist and an aeronautical engineer. There they establish contacts with European
counterparts which would be important later. They came back in 1914 with a damning report on the
disparity of investment in aeronautics between the United States and European nations. The outbreak
of war in 1914 demonstrated the imperative but offered a new challenge. As President Wilson and
national sentiment was to stay out of the war, thus making any military expenditure suspect, and
perceived as a potential threat to US neutrality. Walcott, with the credibility
of the Smithsonian behind him, was able to convince congressional leaders
to include funds for an Aeronautical Research Organization in the 1915 Naval Appropriations Act.
The legislation was just two short paragraphs, the budget was just five thousand
dollars. But the organization thus created, the National Advisory Committee on
Aeronautics, or NACA, would eventually play a vital role in US aircraft development,
particularly during the Second World War. In an odd twist, Walcott himself was neither
a physicist nor an aeronautical engineer. The man who would play such a critical role
in the creation of the organization that so advanced american aviation…was a paleontologist. The purpose of the committee was, according to
the legislation, “To supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a
view to their practical solutions.” The committee represented a panel of 12 people, all unpaid. Two
would come from the War Department, two from the Navy Department and one each from the Smithsonian,
officially a trust instrumentality of the United States. The Weather Bureau and the Bureau of
Standards, plus five more members acquainted with aeronautics. The committee would meet
semi-annually, but an executive committee of seven members would generally keep track of aeronautical
problems for the committee to address. First Chairman of the committee was Brigadier General
George P Scriven, Chief Signal Officer of the Army. Walcott represented the Smithsonian
Institute and was the Chairman of the Executive Committee. The original five members acquainted
with aeronautics were all university professors, among them a professor of physics at Johns
Hopkins University named Joseph Sweetman Ames. While the enabling legislation was a political
compromise slipped into a naval bill, the public expectations of the committee
were high. A headline in the April 23rd 1915 edition of the Washington DC Evening Star
reported on the first meeting of the committee. It read, “Problems in flying soon to be
tackled.” Seems a big order as the budget for the NACA for the first five years
was just five thousand dollars annually. While Walcott's original idea was to create a
national laboratory to study aeronautical science that would have to wait. The committee was
not expected to do any actual research, they were expected to coordinate and prioritize
research that would presumably be done at universities and military facilities. But the scope of the problems in flying proved far
greater than anticipated, especially as Europe had already moved into war. The New York Sun wrote
in April 1917, “Provision for the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics was made in the
Naval Appropriations Bill passed March 3rd 1915. At the time there was no adequate conception
of the work which would ultimately have to be done by this committee, just as there was
no adequate conception of the tremendous part which aeronautics was to play in the European war
less than a year old, and all subsequent warfare.” As the US entered the war that it had sought to
avoid, The Sun notes how the role the committee had grown. “Now however it is launched on a
campaign of work which is not only of vital importance for war, but which will be far-reaching
in its influence long after the present struggle is over.” The task before the small, virtually
unfunded committee was enormous. Despite the huge manufacturing capacity of the nation at
the outbreak of war only one large factory, the Curtiss factory in Buffalo New York was
producing aircraft. Most aircraft produced in the United States were built slowly, in small
numbers, in small shops. The US military had few aeronautics training schools and even fewer
trained pilots. And you might see the committee as having failed in the campaign that the Sun had
touted during the Great War, with the exception of some Curtiss-Wright seaplanes used for submarine
patrol, US flyers flew planes designed and built in Europe. And despite robust enlistment,
only a handful of American trained flyers arrived in Europe in time to join the fight.
But the US participation in the war was brief, less than 20 months from the declaration of
war to the end of the war the extent of the US mobilization was actually impressive, astounding
even. Our mobilization certainly occurred more quickly than the Central Powers had planned,
but there are limits to how far you can develop military aviation, essentially from scratch, in 20
months. Still, the committee did important work, coordinated research on wireless communication
for aircraft, coordinated tests of airplane propellers, tested and established standards for
aircraft engines and parts. They advocated for the creation of more military training facilities
and coordinated the return of American officers who are serving in foreign militaries to train
new pilots. Although possibly the most significant contribution during the Great War was mediating
patent disputes between the Glenn Curtiss and the Wright Martin companies, negotiating a
cross-licensing agreement that consolidated patents. The compromise not only sped aircraft
production but did so without the requirement that the government condemn any patents which
would have negatively impacted innovation. They might not have been able to train a lot
of pilots in time to fight in the war, but they did train a lot of pilots, and that would have a
large impact on aviation in America after the war. The efforts of the committee meant not only that
the United States was much better prepared for the next war, but also on a much more robust
path for the development of civil aviation. While the board was involved in a dizzying array
of projects, they had not lost sight of the original goal of creating a National Aeronautics
Research Center including an experimental field and laboratory, something the board called for
in its first report in 1915. Congress finally agreed to the appropriation and the NACA chose a
site near Washington DC in Elizabeth City county. Ground was broken on the new facility in 1917. At
the urging of Walcott the new facility was named after Samuel Pierpoint Langley, an aviation
pioneer who had preceded Walcott as director of the Smithsonian Institution. The then titled
Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, now the Langley Research Center, was dedicated in June
1920 and had a staff of 11. The new laboratory included the first of what would become a hallmark
of NACA research, a wind tunnel. The first was small and outdated but by 1931 the facility was
operating multiple tunnels, including the largest wind tunnel in the world capable of testing
full-sized aircraft and eventually spacecraft. Work largely done at Langley in the post-war
era established the NACA as one of the premier aeronautical research organizations in the world,
and the facility at Langley attracted engineers from all over the country. One of their most
significant contributions of the interwar era was the NACA cowling. Radial engines were generally
seen as the most efficient for propeller driven aircraft, but they were air-cooled. Conventional
wisdom was that they had to be left essentially open in order to get the air flow needed to
cool them but that created significant drag. The question brought to the NACA was, “Could a
radial engine be made more aerodynamic while still getting sufficient airflow for cooling?” Developed
by NACA engineer Frank Weick, the cowling reduced the drag of air-cooled radial engines. The design
redirects and accelerates differential airflow in much the same way that a wing produces lift, but
directs the airflow so that it produces thrust, reducing drag by around 60 percent. By
redirecting the air over the cylinder heads, the cowling actually improved engine cooling
while increasing the top speed of aircraft tested by an astonishing 16 percent. In 1929,
flier Frank Hawks broke the Los Angeles to New York non-stop speed record with a time of 18 hours
and 13 minutes in a Lockheed Air Express equipped with the NACA cowling. Officials at Lockheed
insisted that the record would not have been possible without the cowling. The design was a
breakthrough, the NACA estimated that the possible fuel savings alone from industry adoption of the
cowling would have saved millions of dollars more than the entire appropriations that had ever
been made for the NACA since its inception. The attention gained by the discovery was a
victory for the NACA and perhaps more importantly, Auburn University history Professor James
Hanson noted in a 1998 NASA publication, From Engineering Science to Big Science,
“For the methodology of engineering research, the NACA cowling changed aviation. After its
invention a version was used on virtually every radial engine aircraft, including those that
powered the great bomber fleets of the Second World War. But it really changed the Edison
version of invention as a matter of inspiration to one of rigorous testing and experiment.” In
brief, while the nature of the accomplishment might have been somewhat misunderstood
and in some ways deliberately oversold, at the time it sold stakeholders, particularly
Congress, on the NACA and its laboratory model. Meanwhile the committee was instrumental in
coordinating assistance among governmental agencies to ensure the success of air mail by the
post office, coordinated with the weather bureau to establish stations for measuring atmospheric
phenomenon, and developing plans to prepare for the military a reserve aerial program which would
make them better prepared in case of another war. Langley ran full-scale flight tests, and
in doing so established guidelines and procedures for such tests, and pioneer
processes for training test pilots. Experiments using the NACA wind tunnels improved
propeller design and aircraft aerodynamics, and improved the value of retractable landing
gear. The NACA demonstrated that the placement for multi-engine aircraft was more efficient when
incorporated into the wing structure, an important part of the design of the large multi-engine
commercial aircraft of the interwar era as well as the multi-engine bombers of the Second
World War. They developed a numerical system that allowed a standardized understanding of
airfoils and developed the Laminar Flow Airfoil which reduced drag. The system is still used in
the design of airfoil wings of modern aircraft. As the 1930s progressed it became clear to NACA
people watching Europe that European nations, particularly Germany and Italy were making
increased commitments to aeronautical research, and that much of that effort was focused on
military aircraft development. It became obvious that the NACA would have to expand its facilities.
The Navy advocated for a facility on the West Coast near the growing aircraft industry in
California. A new laboratory was authorized at an airfield near Sunnyvale California called Moffett
Field. Originally built as a naval air station as the home of the base for the rigid airship USS
Macon that was then under the jurisdiction of the army, they named the new facility after
Joseph Ames who had replaced Charles Walcott as director of the NACA in 1927. The Ames
Research Center opened in 1939. An additional aircraft engine research facility was opened
near Cleveland, the center of manufacturing. So how important was the NACA to the war? Well
for example, the Laminar Wing was a key design element that allowed for the notable agility
of the North American P-51 Mustang, considered one of the best fighter aircraft of the war.
According to history Professor Roger E Bilsten writing in the third edition of the NASA history
series, Orders of Magnitude, A History of the NACA and NASA, when the Boeing Model 299, the prototype
for the B-17 performance exceeded expectations, Boeing sent a letter of appreciation to the
NACA for its contributions to the plane's flaps, airfoil and engine cowlings. The letter wrote, “It
appears your organization can claim a considerable share in the success of this particular design.”
In particular, manufacturers faced difficulty with engine performance at high altitudes, the
NACA developed standards and testing methods that allowed the development of superchargers.
Nearly every US military aviation power plant of the war utilized the results of this research
in forced induction systems that gave US planes a performance advantage over 15,000 feet
that their Axis adversaries never matched. The NACA wind tunnels proved exceptionally useful
for funding design elements that disrupted airflow allowing manufacturers to clean up designs in ways
that improved efficiency and performance. That service was performed on the prototypes of the
Grumman F4 Wildcat, the Republic P47 Thunderbolt and the Chance Vought F4U Corsair. When the
Lockheed P-38 Lightning demonstrated problems with loss of control during high-speed dives, NACA wind
tunnel experiments identified the reason and led to the development of dive flaps that were then
incorporated into numerous aircraft designs saving pilots lives. This research would prove critical
later in understanding forces at transonic speeds. Wind tunnel testing of larger planes was done
with models, the NACA wind tunnels were used in the design of the Boeing B-29. NACA testing
determined the most survivable ways for airplanes to ditch in the ocean, again saving lives and
developing procedures still relevant today. A January 1944 editorial in the General Aviation
stated, “How much is it worth to this country to make sure that we don't find the Luftwaffe,
our superiors, when we start the Second Front. We spend in one night over Berlin more
than 20,000,000, the NACA requires now 17,546,700 for this year's work. These
raids are prime factors in winning the war, how can we do more towards victory than by
spending the price of one air raid in research that will keep our air forces in the
position, which the NACA has made possible.” How powerful was the effect of the NACA on the
war? It would be impractical to try to list all the projects, not to mention the efforts to
coordinate aeronautical research design and development in which the NACA was involved
over the war years. But in a simple sense, NACA efforts gave the Allies advantages
in military aeronautics that the Axis was never able to match. Certainly some of the
most significant military aircraft designs fielded by the United States during the war were
significantly improved due to the efforts of the NACA. Even the Trinity Project owes its debt to
the NACA as the planes to which the NACA made such a significant contribution were the only means
at the time to deliver the product of their work. The role played in the war was represented in
the growth of the agency. In 1938, the Langley staff was 429, in 1945 it was more than three
thousand. After the war, the NACA was the agency in charge of testing and development of the Bell
X-1 and helped to develop the X-15. NACA research on the aerodynamic forces encountered during
transonic flight and supersonic flight provided the fundamental design roles that were applied
to the early US military jet aircraft such as the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger and the Grumman F11
Tiger and the B-58 Hustler. These design roles, the Whitcomb Area Rule named after NACA engineer
Richard Whitcomb and the Supersonic Area Rule developed by NACA engineer Robert T Jones,
both of which regard drag and efficiency, are critical elements used in the design of
virtually all high-performance aircraft today. In 1958 after the Soviet launch of Sputnik,
the United States decided that they needed to consolidate all their aeronautical research and
rocketry programs into a single civilian agency. When NASA was created in 1958 they absorbed all
the facilities and the 8,000 employees of the NACA. It is fair to say that the National Advisory
Committee on Aeronautics was the foundation upon which the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration was founded. And NASA continues the mission of the NACA today still a major
contributor to the development of aeronautical science and aviation technology because after
all the a in NASA stands for aeronautics. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the
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