National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics

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“NACA” redirects here. For other uses, see NACA (disambiguation).

The official seal of NACA, depicting the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a U.S. federal agency founded on March 3, 1915 to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958 the agency was dissolved, and its assets and personnel transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NACA was pronounced as individual letters, rather than as an acronym.

The name remains familiar in the automotive world for the NACA duct, a type of air intake, or to those in the aircraft industry, as several series of NACA airfoils are still being used in new design.

1 Origins
2 Research at NACA
3 Special Committee on Space Technology
4 Transformation into NASA
5 List of NACA wind tunnels
6 List of NACA Chairmen
7 Footnotes and references
8 External links
9 Further reading

[edit] Origins

The inscription on the wall is NACA's mission statement: ...It shall be the duty of the advisory committee for aeronautics to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their practical solution... By an Act of Congress Approved March 3, 1915

NACA began as an emergency measure during World War I to promote industry/academic/government coordination on war-related projects. It was modeled on similar national agencies found in Europe. Such agencies were the French “L’Etablissement Central de l’Aérostation Militaire” in meudon (now Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aerospatiales), the German “Aerodynamical laboratory of the university of Göttingen” and the Russian “Aerodynamic institute of Koutchino”. However, the most influential agency upon which the NACA was based was the British “Advisory committee for aeronautics”.

In December of 1912, President William Howard Taft had appointed a National Aerodynamical Laboratory Commission chaired by Robert S. Woodward, president of the Carnegie Institute of Washington. Legislation was introduced in both houses of Congress early in January 1913 to approve the commission, but when it came to a vote, the legislation was defeated.

Charles D. Walcott -- secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1907 to 1927 -- took up the effort, and in January of 1915, Senator Benjamin R. Tillman, and House Representative Ernest W. Roberts, introduced identical resolutions recommending the creation of an advisory committee as outlined by Walcott. The purpose of the committee was "to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their practical solution, and to determine the problems which should be experimentally attacked and to discuss their solution and their application to practical questions." Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote that he "heartily [endorsed] the principle" on which the legislation was based. Walcott then suggested the tactic of adding the resolution to the Naval Appropriations Bill.^[1]

According to one source, "The enabling legislation for the NACA slipped through almost unnoticed as a rider attached to the Naval Appropriation Bill, on 3 March 1915."^[2] The committee of 12 people, all unpaid, were allocated a budget of $5,000 per year.

President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law the same day, thus formally creating the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, as it was called in the legislation, on the last day of the 63rd Congress.

The act of Congress creating NACA, approved March 3, 1915, reads, "...It shall be the duty of the advisory committee for aeronautics to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their practical solution...."^[3]

[edit] Research at NACA

The NACA Test Force at the High-Speed Flight Station in Edwards, California. The white aircraft in the foreground is a Douglas Skyrocket.

By the early 1920s, it had adopted a new and more ambitious mission: to promote military and civilian aviation through applied research that looked beyond current needs. NACA researchers pursued this mission through the agency's impressive collection of in-house wind tunnels, engine test stands, and flight test facilities. Commercial and military clients were also permitted to use NACA facilities on a contract basis.

NACA official insignia

In 1922, NACA had 100 employees. By 1938, it had 426. In addition to formal assignments, staff were encouraged to pursue unauthorized "bootleg" research, provided that it was not too exotic. The result was a long string of fundamental breakthroughs, including "NACA engine cowl" (1930s), the "NACA airfoil" series (1940s), and the "area rule" for supersonic aircraft (1950s). NACA claims credit for having the first aircraft to break the sound barrier (although the aircraft, the Bell X-1, was controlled by the Air Force and flew with an Air Force pilot when it broke the sound barrier). They also claim credit for the first aircraft (X-15) that eventually flew to the "edge of space". NACA airfoils are still used on modern aircraft, up to the state of the art F-22 Raptor jet fighter.

On Sept. 30, 1946, five NACA engineers, headed by Walter C. Williams, arrived at Muroc Army Airfield (now Edwards AFB) from Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, VA, to prepare for X-1 supersonic research flights in joint NACA-Army Air Forces program.^[4]

In 1951 Richard Whitcomb determined the transonic area rule that explained the physical rationale for transonic flow over an aircraft. This concept is now used in designing all transonic and supersonic aircraft.

The NACA experience provided a powerful model for World War II research, the postwar government laboratories, and NACA's successor: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

[edit] Special Committee on Space Technology

On 21 November 1957, Hugh Dryden, NACA’s director, established the Special Committee on Space Technology.^[5] The committee, also called the Stever Committee after its chairman, Guyford Stever was a special steering committee that was formed with the mandate to coordinate various branches of the Federal government, private companies as well as universities within the United States with NACA's objectives and also harness their expertise in order to develop a space program.^[6]

NACA's Special Committee on Space Technology in their May 26 1958 meeting. At the head of the table: Wernher von Braun. Hendrik Wade Bode is fourth from the left.

Remarkably, Hendrik Wade Bode, the man who helped develop the robot weapons that brought down the Nazi V-1 flying bombs over London during WWII, was actually serving in the same committee and sitting at the same table as the chief engineer of the V-1, the weapon that terrorised London: Wernher von Braun.^[7]^[8]

As of their meeting on May 26 1958, committee members, starting clockwise from the left of the adjacent picture, included:^[6]

Committee member	Title
Edward R. Sharp	Director of the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory
Colonel Norman C Appold	Assistant to the Deputy Commander for Weapons Systems, Air Research and Development Command: US Air Force
Abraham Hyatt	Research and Analysis Officer Bureau of Aeronautics, Department of the Navy
Hendrik Wade Bode	Director of Research Physical Sciences, Bell Telephone Laboratories
W Randolph Lovelace II	Lovelace Foundation for Medication Education and Research
S. K Hoffman	General Manager, Rocketdyne Division, North American Aviation
Milton U Clauser	Director, Aeronautical Research Laboratory, The Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation
H. Julian Allen	Chief, High Speed Flight Research, NACA Ames
Robert R. Gilruth	Assistant Director, NACA Langley
J. R. Dempsey	Manager. Convair-Astronautics (Division of General Dynamics)
Carl B. Palmer	Secretary to Committee, NACA Headquarters
H. Guyford Stever	Chairman, Associate Dean of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hugh L. Dryden	(ex officio), Director, NACA
Dale R. Corson	Department of Physics, Cornell University
Abe Silverstein	Associate Director, NACA Lewis
Wernher von Braun	Director, Development Operations Division, Army Ballistic Missile Agency

[edit] Transformation into NASA

On 14 January 1958, Dryden published "A National Research Program for Space Technology," which stated:

It is of great urgency and importance to our country both from consideration of our prestige as a nation as well as military necessity that this challenge [Sputnik] be met by an energetic program of research and development for the conquest of space. . . . It is accordingly proposed that the scientific research be the responsibility of a national civilian agency working in close cooperation with the applied research and development groups required for weapon systems development by the military. The pattern to be followed is that already developed by the NACA and the military services. . . . The NACA is capable, by rapid extension and expansion of its effort, of providing leadership in space technology.^[5]

On March 5, James Killian, who chaired the President's Science Advisory Committee, wrote a memorandum to the President Eisenhower. Titled, "Organization for Civil Space Programs," it encouraged the President to sanction the creation of NASA. He wrote that a civil space program should be based on a "strengthened and redesignated" NACA, indicating that NACA was a "going Federal research agency" with 7,500 employees and $300 million worth of facilities, which could expand its research program "with a minimum of delay."^[5]

[edit] List of NACA wind tunnels

NACA's first Wind tunnel was formally dedicated at Langley on June 11, 1920. It was the first of many now-famous NACA and NASA wind tunnels. Although this specific wind tunnel was not unique or advanced, it enabled NACA engineers and scientists to develop and test new and advanced concepts in aerodynamics and to improve future wind tunnel design.