National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics

 

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA was established by Congress in 1915 as the government's aeronautical research agency.   The agency was given the task "to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight, with a view to their practical solution" as well as to "direct and conduct research and experiments in aeronautics." 

The agency began operations in 1917 and continued to do so until it was merged with the new NASA in 1958.

 

 

On 3 March, 1915, President Wilson signed a naval appropriations bill that included an amendment creating the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.  Congress appropriated a meager $5,000 to establish the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA).

The committee was to be made up of not more than twelve members appointed by the President including:

• Two members from the War Department

• Two from the Navy Department

• One from the Smithsonian Institution

• One from the Weather Bureau

• One from the Bureau of Standards

• Not more than 5 additional persons acquainted with the needs of aeronautical science

The members of the committee served without compensation.  The first member from industry was not admitted until 1939. Three positions were added in1929, and two more in 1948.

The duty of the committee, as laid out in the bill, 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....the committee may direct and conduct research and experiment in aeronautics..."

The name of the committee clearly identifies it as an advisory body to the President, and it reported directly to him and not through a cabinet department.  However, the committee gradually moved away from an advisory or political role to one of research.  

 

With World War I looming, the committee formed a research laboratory at Langley Field, but it was not established in time to contribute to the war effort. 

 

The British Royal Aircraft Factory and the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, both of which had been formed in 1909, served as the model for NACA.  But while NACA was begun later than similar European efforts, it eventually put the United States in the lead in aviation.

 

 

Although the United States could claim the first heavier-than-air flight by the Wright brothers in 1903, American aviation had been surpassed by European technology at the outbreak of World War I, and no American-designed aircraft had flown in combat during the war.  NACA was created to help regain the nation's position of aeronautical preeminence.

From its beginnings as a simple government entity, NACA grew into the world's premier aeronautical research organization, pushing back the frontiers of flight for more than four decades.  Aviation pioneers such as Wright, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh and Eddie Rickenbacker were among the early NACA members.

The 1915 legislation directed NACA to "supervise and direct the study of the problems of flight, with a view to their practical solution."  The committee also was to facilitate the exchange of information within the aeronautical community.

At that time, the United States had virtually no aeronautical engineers.  NACA focused American scientific, technological and industrial talent on the potential of aircraft, and in effect, created the academic discipline of aeronautical engineering and its related fields.

NACA built key facilities and devised organizational methods for advancing what is now called aerospace technology.

The practical-minded engineers and scientists of NACA incubated the ideas and hatched the technology that first allowed American aviation to take off and fly. The returns on the nation's investment in NACA remain clearly visible today in numerous ways.

By recognizing the needs of manufacturers and the military, NACA contributed extensively to every generation of commercial, civilian and military aircraft and developed the foundations for the modern aviation and space industries. The economic benefits of this long-term American competitiveness are a particularly clear part of the NACA legacy. In 1989, for instance, the U.S. aerospace industry saw a trade surplus of some $18 billion.

 

Facilities for Aeronautical Research
The inception and subsequent major periods of growth for the NACA were spurred by some of the century's major historical events. World War I demonstrated the military value of aircraft. Charles A. Lindbergh's 1927 solo Atlantic crossing caught the world's imagination. World War II required massive research and development in aviation, as did the events of the decades that followed.

The growth spurred by these events was evident in another visible aspect of the NACA legacy: research facilities.

By the early 1920s, aeronautical research had begun in earnest at NACA's Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, Hampton, Va., Hampton, Va., whose personnel formed the nucleus for two newer laboratories. On the eve of World War II, Ames Aeronautical Laboratory was begun in Mountain View, Calif., and the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory began operations in Cleveland. These three NACA laboratories are now known as NASA Langley, Ames, and Lewis Research Centers, respectively.

The challenge for NACA researchers in the 1920s was to improve virtually every characteristic of aircraft. The struts and wire braces of biplanes caused severe, speed-reducing drag. The planes had poor lift-to-drag ratios, bad propellers and underpowered, unreliable engines. Basic understanding of the principles of flight was limited.

The primary research tool for overcoming these problems was the wind tunnel. NACA's first wind tunnel was dedicated at Langley in 1920.

Since that time, aerospace researchers have used wind tunnels to test their ideas. By moving an air stream across an aircraft, component or model, they can gather test data reliably, inexpensively and safely.

NACA's first Full-Scale Tunnel was built after NACA had risen to international aviation research preeminence during the 1920s. By the end of that decade, NACA's work had pointed the way for aircraft to evolve toward the basic aerodynamic shapes still seen today.

The first Full-Scale Tunnel began as one of a trio of innovative tunnels. Later, it was the center of the World War II effort to speed up military planes by finding ways to reduce their aerodynamic drag -- an effort that contributed substantially to Allied air power.

In 1990, this same tunnel is about to enter its 7th decade of churning out valuable aerodynamic data. As one of scores of American tunnels conducting research into every kind of flight, including flight through and out of Earth's atmosphere, tunnels are used in studies of military, general aviation and commuter aircraft. In fact, this circa-1930 facility has a backlog of demand and is staffed for double shifts.

Another example of the NACA legacy in research tools -- and therefore also of continuing returns on original investments in the organization -- is the world's largest wind tunnel located at Ames Research Center. The tunnel's largest test section was 40 feet by 80 feet.

This facility was built during World War II and could test a complete fighter plane with its engine running. The tunnel was still the world's largest in 1987 when its size was increased to 80 by 120 feet and the power of its huge fans was nearly quadrupled. It now can accommodate even larger aircraft.

A supersonic tunnel at Lewis, built in the early 1950's , tackled the special problems of testing full-scale jet and rocket engines. The tunnel, which is still in use, has been used for a wide range of aircraft, air-breathing missiles and manned spacecraft tests.

Wind tunnels today still constitute a large part of the American investment in aeronautical research tools. In 1988, a special committee of the National Research Council valued the combined replacement cost of American tunnels in the billions of dollars and wrote that the health of these facilities is integrally linked with the health of the entire national aeronautical development effort. The research heritage of wind tunnels -- and many of the tunnels themselves -- come from the NACA era.

 

NACA Achievements
NACA/NASA innovations won six Collier trophies, America's most prestigious aviation award, for outstanding contributions to aeronautics technology. In innumerable other instances, NACA contributions paved the way for other immediate or longer-term improvements in aircraft. By the post-World War II era, the work of NACA even began paving the way toward the Space Age.

The first Collier Trophy was given in 1929 for the innovative NACA cowling, which was placed around the radial air-cooled engine of the day to reduce drag while allowing the needed cooling. In 1946, NACA won the Collier Trophy for developing a thermal ice-prevention system for aircraft.

After World War II, NACA began extensive work in jet engine research, and led advances in high-speed aerodynamics with programs like the X-1, in which Chuck Yeager surpassed the speed of sound in 1947, and the X-15, the first winged vehicle to fly into space. The 1947 X-1 flight led to NACA's third Collier Trophy in 1948.

NACA's fourth and fifth Collier trophies came in 1951 and 1955. One was for a wind-tunnel technology innovation called the slotted throat, which enabled tunnels to simulate the conditions of transonic flight or flight near and exceeding the speed of sound. The other was for the transonic "area rule," a principle of aerodynamic shaping that greatly enhanced the designs of supersonic aircraft.

Building on NACA's proud heritage, NASA was awarded a sixth Collier trophy in 1987 for developing the technology for and testing of advanced turboprop propulsion systems that offer dramatic reduction in fuel usage for future subsonic transport aircraft.

The NACA research tradition lent itself well to work on concepts for aerospace craft that would need to return to Earth from orbit or from spaceflight. Many NACA researchers worked years ahead of existing technology in the post-World War II era, much as NASA researchers often do today. They established the fundamental atmospheric re-entry during these pre-NASA years.

 

75 Years of Returns on Investment
As the world's premier organization for aeronautical research, NACA provided the foundation -- the people, the institutions, the research tools -- on which NASA and the American aerospace industry have been built. The extent of the NACA-era legacy to NASA and to the nation shines through in a recent celebration of engineering achievements by the National Academy of Engineering.

The academy cited NASA's Apollo moon landing as one of the greatest engineering achievements of all time and listed nine other achievements as the greatest of the past quarter-century. In addition to Apollo, three of these nine involve some large degree of NASA contribution: unmanned satellites, advanced composite materials and the jumbo jet. Four other cited achievements fall within the sphere of daily activity throughout NASA: micro-processors, computer-aided design, lasers and fiber-optic communication.

Even after 75 years, that first $5,000 appropriated by Congress in 1915 is still paying off throughout the American economy and in NASA -- a scientific and technological organization that spurs American competitiveness, spans the continent and reaches for the heavens.

 

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2003 Wings Publishing