From NACA to NASA: Blessed from Birth

The people behind the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics

By Walter J. Boyne - July 29, 2015

The first meeting of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in the Office of the Secretary of War on April 23, 1915. Seated from left to right: William F. Durand, Stanford University; Samuel W. Stratton, director, National Bureau of Standards; Brig. Gen. George P. Scriven, chief signal officer, War Department; Charles F. Marvin, chief, U.S. Weather Bureau; Michael I. Pupin, Columbia University. Standing: Holden C. Richardson, naval instructor; John F. Hayford, Northwestern University; Capt. Mark L. Bristol, director of naval aeronautics; Lt. Col. Samuel Reber, Army Signal Corps, in charge of Aviation Section. Also present at the first meeting were Joseph S. Ames, Johns Hopkins University; Charles D. Walcott, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; and the Honorable Byron R. Newton, assistant secretary of the Treasury. NASA image

Reasons Why It Worked

The NACA was blessed by timing. The industry was booming and manufacturers were grateful for research data. NACA leaders from the start intuitively built test equipment that addressed the most obvious problems of the day, as well as reaching out to the unknown. The young agency also attracted and recruited the best personnel in the business to its ranks, much of the credit for this falling to Lewis.

They worked with NACA engineers, such as John W. “Gus” Crowley and Henry J.E. Reid, who flew with them and then entered the eternal round of discussions that characterized the informal but enthusiastic atmosphere of the organization.

The first NACA test pilot was Thomas Carroll, who later became NACA’s guru on autogiros. He was soon joined by Edmund Turney “Eddie” Allen, an MIT-educated engineer with experience at the Army’s McCook Field and as an airmail pilot. He subsequently became famous as a freelance “first test flight” pilot, and, sadly, was killed in the first crash of a Boeing B-29 in 1943.

In the early years the flight research team was usually made up of a test pilot, as was the case here with test pilot Thomas Carroll in the front cockpit and an engineer, in this case John W. “Gus” Crowley, Jr. in the rear cockpit. NASA image

The two men used the two Jenny aircraft in serious instrumented tests of control and stability. They worked with NACA engineers, such as John W. “Gus” Crowley and Henry J.E. Reid, who flew with them and then entered the eternal round of discussions that characterized the informal but enthusiastic atmosphere of the organization. Perhaps more importantly, NACA engineers developed the tools necessary to measure and record the forces acting on aircraft, such as speed and load factors, and the information provided by the flight tests. Carroll and Allen were soon provided with examples of the Thomas Morse MB-3, Vought VE-7, Fokker D. VII, SPAD XIII, and RAF S.E. 5a to expand their capability. These were followed by virtually every new type proposed for service. Other work included the short-lived U.S. Air Service enthusiasm for lighter-than-air aircraft and the famed Brig. Gen. William “Billy” Mitchell bombing tests over the Atlantic.

The NACA inherited several foreign aircraft at the end of World War I. The Fokker D.VII was one of the best fighter aircraft of the war. The Central Powers surrendered 142 at the close of the war, and the Fokker company sold even more to the U.S. Air Service. Several were flown at Langley Field, but this one was the sole example operated by the NACA. NASA image

Wind tunnels were not new, but the small NACA organization immediately focused on them as the best way to accumulate data. Over the years, six wind tunnels were built, the first being the 1918 5-foot Atmospheric Wind Tunnel, followed in 1922 by a ground-breaking pressurized Variable Density Tunnel, the first of its kind in the world. Recognizing, as the Wrights had done, that the propeller was an important “wing” on aircraft, a Propeller Research Tunnel was built. But the most famous of the series was the “full sized” wind tunnel of 1931, a magnet for press coverage as full-size aircraft were photographed in the mouth of the giant tunnel. Thus, for both scientific and personal relations reasons, NACA was seen to be the most advanced aeronautical research center in the world, a remarkable leap from its low-key start in 1915.

A steady stream of talented personnel began to issue from the school, and the NACA was able to take advantage of that talent when it built the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory at Moffett Field in California. Von Karman himself would later become one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Unheralded to all but the aeronautical research world was NACA’s accelerated work on airfoil cross-sections, so that by its 1933 annual report it included 78 separately numbered airfoils, detailing the shape, camber lines, thickness, nose features (usually the first element sought by engineers), and other information. It was a best-seller with designers, foreign and domestic.

A Vought VE-7 mounted in the Propeller Research Tunnel. NASA image

One unexpected but beneficial result was NACA’s becoming a stimulant for aeronautical research across the country, as new research centers began and universities branched out to include aeronautical engineering as major options.