practical solution, and to determine the prob- 

 lems which should be experimentally attacked, 

 and to discuss their solution and their applica- 

 tion to practical questions. In the event of a 

 laboratory or laboratories, either in whole or in 

 part, being placed under the direction of the 

 committee, the committee may direct and con- 

 duct research and experiment in aeronautics in 

 such laboratory or laboratories. -71 



The Army purchased land near Hampton, Va., 

 for a joint Army/Navy/NACA laboratory, but due 

 to the onset of war, the Army decided not to 

 move its activities from Dayton, Ohio, and the 

 Navy built a facility at Norfolk, Va. NACA then 

 established its laboratories at Langley Field, 

 which it shared with the Army, but the first wind 

 tunnel at Langley was not ready until 1920.-7- 

 NACA imported its theoretical base for the scien- 

 tific study of aeronautics from Europe and fo- 

 cused particularly on aerodynamics. NASA his- 

 torians give most of the credit for this hard focus 

 to Joseph Ames of Johns Hopkins University and 

 to Jerome Hunsaker of the U.S. Navy (later of 

 MIT). The NACA installation at Langley Field 

 was productive, and in 1929 British professionals 

 described the staff there as "the only people so 

 far who have been able to get at something like 

 accurate results from wind tunnel experiments." 

 The British also explained the reasons for 

 NACA's success: "The present-day American 

 position in all branches of aeronautical knowledge 

 can, without doubt, be attributed mainly to this 

 farseeing policy and expenditure on up-to-date 

 laboratory equipment. "273 The best known pro- 

 duct of NACA during this period was the NACA 

 cowl (1928), which streamlined radial engines. Of 

 greater long-range importance, however, was its 

 careful measurement of drag penalties, which 

 forced aeronautical engineers to find ways in 

 which to avoid as many as possible. 



NACA prospered during the depression because 

 of low construction costs, pump-priming money 

 from the Public Works Administration, and access 

 to talented personnel who found Government sal- 

 aries attractive. Its great achievement of this per- 

 iod was the codifying and systematic development 

 of airfoil sections. Consequently, NACA wing 

 shapes were adopted all over the world. 



World War II 



Additional facilities became available when 

 World War II appeared imminent. In 1939, the 

 Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, adjacent to the 

 Navy's Moffet Field in California, was authorized 

 and ground was broken. In 1940 an engine labora- 

 tory for developing improved piston engines was 

 belatedly authorized and construction began near 

 the Cleveland, Ohio, municipal airport. The lack 

 of adequate engines was one of our serious defi- 

 ciencies early in World War II, so it became nec- 

 essary for U.S. industry to manufacture engines 

 of British design. -74 



When Vannevar Bush led the way in the forma- 

 tion of the National Defense Research Committee 

 (NDRC), he was already both chairman and admir- 

 er of NACA. He indicated that NACA should not 

 become subordinate to the NDRC, and a memo- 

 randum of understanding was signed which gave 

 each the necessary freedom but prevented overlap. 

 When the Office of Scientific Research and Devel- 

 opment (OSRD) was established the following 

 year, its advisory council provided a coordinating 

 mechanism. -7'' NACA performed a great deal of 

 useful work during the war, but the curing of buf- 

 feting and stalls and some materials improvements 

 were probably the only successfully completed 

 projects which utilized new basic research. 

 NACA's contributions to the 1 15 different airplane 

 types worked on from 1941 through 1944 were es- 

 sentially the results of research done before the 

 war and the application of the expertise acquired 

 from having done this research. One spectacular 

 product of NACA research was the P-51 Mustang 

 fighter, called the best single-engine aircraft of the 

 war; it was designed to British specifications very 

 rapidly by North American Aircraft with much 

 NACA assi stance. -7f> 



Post- World War II 



After World War II, the three main advances in 

 aeronautics were the development of rocket pro- 

 pulsion and jet propulsion and crossing the sound 

 barrier. Although rockets weren't taken seriously 

 before the war, during the war they became well- 

 known weapons; the German rocket we called the 

 V-2 was large and formidable. The Germans also 

 had developed a rocket-propelled interceptor late 

 in the war. NACA became interested in rockets 

 for research on the sound barrier. They obtained 



^■'ipublic Law 271, 63rd Cong.. 3rd Sess.. March 3, 1915. 



^■'SAnderson. F. W., Jr., Orders of Magnitude. NASA Histo- 

 ry Series, NASA^Sp-4403 (GPO: Washington, D.C.. 1976), pp. 

 2-3. Hereinafter referred to as Anderson. 



-■'Hbid., p. 3; most of the material in this chapter on the 

 work of NACA is taken from Anderson. 



-■'■'RADIVl A. B. Metsger. USN (Ret.), private communica- 

 tion to NSB staff, June 1977. 



"'Dupree, p. 370; Stewart, pp. l.'>-16. 



-'''•Anderson, pp. 7-8; Hirsch, pp. 6-7; NASA communication 

 to NSB staff, IX'cember 1977. 



354 COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS AND HISTORICAL TRENDS 



