262 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1955 



assist Dr. Lewis. Further intensification of research effort obviously 

 was needed in the face of war in Europe, and a second Special Com- 

 mittee, headed by Charles A. Lindbergh, was apx^ointed. This group 

 recommended, October 19, 1939, that a powerplant research center be 

 established at once. 



"There is a serious lack of engine research facilities in the United 

 States," Lindbergh's committee stated. "The reason for foreign lead- 

 ership in certain important types of military aircraft is due in part to 

 the superiority of foreign liquid-cooled engines. At the present time, 

 American facilities for research on aircraft powerplants are inade- 

 quate and cannot be compared with the facilities for research in other 

 fields of aviation." It was June 26, 1940 — after Belgium and Holland 

 had been overrun — that Congressional authorization for the new flight- 

 propulsion laboratory was forthcoming. 



A site was made available by the city of Cleveland adjacent to its 

 municipal airport. Immediate steps were taken by Dr. Lewis to plan 

 and construct a complex of laboratories equipped with facilities for the 

 investigation of airplane engines, their parts and materials, fuels and 

 lubricants, ignition and combustion, heat transfer and cooling, intake 

 and exhaust aerodynamics, as well as for the fundamental physics, 

 chemistry, and metallurgy of power generation. In addition, facilities 

 were provided for flight testing in laboratory-instrumented airplanes — 

 practical flying laboratories for propulsion research. 



There is no doubt that this flight-propulsion center was a large step 

 in advance of any comparable facility in the world. It has cost up to 

 date about $110,000,000 and now employs about 2,800 people. 



After the death of Dr. Lewis in 1948, the Committee decided on the 

 name "Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory," as a memorial of that 

 great engineer's crowning achievement. 



Here it may be proper to explain why the research effort on power- 

 plants and on structures had been so much less than that devoted to 

 aerodynamics. In the first place, it must be remembered that between 

 World Wars I and II, the United States was an intensely peace-minded 

 nation. In addition, the thousands of miles of ocean to our east and 

 west gave a feeling of safety from attack, a complacent sense of detach- 

 ment. The Congress was unwilling to expend really large smns for 

 national defense or on research to improve it. 



Until the eve of Pearl Harbor, the annual expenditure by the United 

 States to support aeronautical research was indeed modest. Even as 

 late as the summer of 1939, the NACA's total complement was 523, 

 including only 278 technical people. 



The major effort by the NACA over the years had been deliberately 

 concentrated on aerodynamic problems. Here, for a given expendi- 

 ture, the possible gains to be achieved were very large, particularly in 

 view of the relatively few engineers who could be assigned to the work. 



