Notes
on the National
Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA)
It was the lack of a government laboratory devoted to the
science of flight that prompted the creation of the National
Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA. It was founded
in 1915, just before the United States' entry into the War,
to bring competence to the backwardness of American aviation.
For 43 years the NACA excelled in carrying out its chartered
mandate ". . . to supervise and direct the scientific
study of the problems of flight, with a view of their practical
solution."
The Committee first surveyed the current stage of development
of aircraft and the research needs of aeronautics, then set
about building the scientific staff and unique research facilities
required.
Facilities
In June 1920, the first laboratory, the Langley Memorial Aeronautical
Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia, was dedicated; aerodynamics
became the major research effort and wind-tunnels the chief
tool. Within ten years the results were impressive and recognition
worldwide.
The up-to-date wind tunnels were hailed as far seeing; the
NACA cowling (1928) for air-cooled radial engines, a streamlined
shape that increased aircraft speed, led to the low-wing multi-engine
air transports and bombers of the 1930s; systematic studies
of aerodynamic drag reduction improved design practices, including
the advantages of retractable landing wheels over fixed, exposed
landing gear.
A second research center, the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory,
was constructed near San Francisco in 1939 with a wind tunnel
that dwarfed its predecessor at Langley. A third facility,
which was later named the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory
was built in Cleveland in 1940 to perform basic research,
develop and test aircraft engines, and study fuels. Research
on the jet engine began there in 1943.
The second World War focused aeronautical research on combat
aircraft and NACA work on aerodynamics and structural research
resulted in extremely effective fighter planes. Postwar research
at higher speeds led to high-altitude drop-test models to
gather flight data; then, to using rockets to launch models
to transonic (speeds from just below to just above the speed
of sound) and supersonic speeds. Langley acquired a surplus
naval station on Wallops Island, Virginia, and called it the
Pilotless Aircraft Research Division. Next, a High-Speed Flight
Research Station was established at Muroc (later Edwards),
California, for a series of special research aircraft.
Research
By the end of World War II, NACA's research had led to rocket
propulsion and air and space flight had met. The X-series
of rocket research aircraft began in 1944. The X-1 was built
specifically to investigate the transonic region and to break
the sound barrier.
On October 14. 1947, Air Force Capt. Charles E. Yeager piloted
the X-1 through the speed of sound for the first time. Beginning
with the X-1's historic flight, the Research Airplane Program
successfully provided a series of flight vehicles that explored
areas of performance and effects of designs in the transonic
and supersonic regions for more than 20 years.
At Langley a transonic wind tunnel was created in 1950, a
tool that researcher Richard T. Whitcomb used in discovering
the "area rule" (the cross-section areas of an aircraft
should not alter too rapidly from the front to back of a plane).
A genuine breakthrough in airplane design, its immediate application
allowed military aircraft to break the sound barrier in level
flight.
Most famous of the X research planes was the X-15. An idea
in 1952, it achieved its designed altitude and speed objectives
in 1968, thus spanning the transition from aeronautical research
to the new Space Age.
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