expansion. Dealing with Congress on those terms required an entirely different approach. Nothing daunted, John Victory set about a new brand of politicking. On the day Woodrum's committee turned down the Sunnyvale request, Victory wired to Smith J. DeFrance, a Langley staffer doing advance work in California: “Entire project disapproved. . You proceed quietly and alone and learn what you can for we still have hope." 31

The NACA strategy for surmounting this new obstacle included collecting endorsements, appointing a new committee under a prestigious chairman, and generally skirting the issue. The day after the Appropriations Committee vote, General Arnold and Admiral Cook signed a joint statement declaring that "the Sunnyvale research project is emergency in character and of vital importance to the success of our whole program for strengthening the air defense of the United States." Ames sent this to the president and tried unsuccessfully to have the Senate reintroduce the Sunnyvale proposal.32

Failing that, the Executive Committee met in June and appointed a Special Survey Committee on Aeronautical Research Facilities, chaired by Charles Lindbergh and composed of General Arnold, Admiral John Towers, and Robert H. Hinckley, chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Authority. During the subsequent congressional rehearing of the Sunnyvale proposal, a neat compromise was achieved, facilitated by the prestige of Lindbergh and the power of the other members of the Special Committee. The NACA proposal for another laboratory was approved, but the provision establishing it at Sunnyvale was deleted. Instead, the NACA was to choose a site within 30 days after the bill passed. The bill passed on 3 August. Lindbergh's committee then evaluated all the site proposals made since the original Sunnyvale plan was unveiled and settled (not surprisingly) on Sunnyvale. The Committee got the laboratory it wanted at the site it wanted, but not without some fancy footwork.33

THE ENGINE RESEARCH LABORATORY

True to its title, Lindbergh's Special Committee on Aeronautical Research Facilities went beyond mere endorsement of the Sunnyvale site; it also addressed the question of engine-research facilities. On 19 October 1939, after the Sunnyvale scheme was approved, the Special Committee "urgently recommend[ed] that an engine research laboratory be constructed at the earliest possible date, in a location easily accessible to the aircraft-engine industry." This recommendation, already current in NACA circles, received immediate endorsement by the Executive Committee. As was its wont, the NACA appointed a Special

Langley's power-plants engine laboratory in 1938, just as the Main Committee was about to decide that its program and facilities in engine research were inadequate. From that decision flowed the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory in Cleveland. (LaRC)

Committee on New Engine Research Facilities within a week of Lindbergh's recommendation. 34

Lindbergh's report said that "the reason for foreign leadership in certain important types of military aircraft is due in part to the superiority of foreign liquid-cooled engines," and that this in turn was partially attributable to the "serious lack of engine research facilities in the United States" which could not "be compared with the facilities for research in other major fields of aviation." Two historical currents had led the United States to this dangerous situation. First, the choice between liquid and air-cooled engines remained difficult throughout the late 1920s and 1930s. Each type of engine had strengths and weaknesses that suited it for some applications and disqualified it for others. The Europeans, especially the British and the Germans, had divided their research more or less equally between the two types. The United States, however, had concentrated on the air-cooled engine because during much of this period it provided more efficient propulsion at low altitudes, where the navy and commercial airliners did most of their flying. Some research on liquid-cooled engines had been done in the United States, sponsored largely by the Army and the manufacturers themselves, but by 1939 the Europeans were far ahead. 35

The second major reason for the dearth of aviation-engine research facilities in the United States dated from the aviation-engine manufacturers' conference sponsored by the NACA in 1916. The participants then agreed that the automobile industry and the new engine manufacturers had sufficient expertise and resources to conduct their own research and development, given some funding and research assistance from the military services. Over the next two decades the NACA and the National Bureau of Standards did some engine research, but never did this branch of aeronautics receive in the United States the kind of interest and support given to aerodynamics. During most of this time the NACA Power Plants Committee had been chaired by the director of the National Bureau of Standards, and most of the NACA funds earmarked for engine research went as transfers to the Bureau, where aeronautical-engine research was conducted in connection with other engine research. Beyond that the NACA had seen little need for fundamental research in aircraft engines. 36

As late as 1937, Joseph Ames could write to an administrative assistant at the Bureau of the Budget:

The technical personnel best qualified to plan and to supervise [engine] development are in the Army Air Corps and in the Bureau of Aeronautics, of the War and Navy Departments, respectively. The problem is primarily and almost solely one of development, which can best be attacked by the aircraft engine industry under experimental contracts with the War and Navy Departments. For the immediate practical development of higher powered engines it is believed that no additional expenditures for scientific research by this Committee are required.

The thinking behind that formulation differs little from the consensus reached at the 1916 conference. When a member of the House Appropriations Committee asked George Lewis in 1933 why the United States was spending its money on air-cooled engines while the British were producing the more powerful liquid-cooled Rolls-Royce engine, Lewis lamented to Ames that here was one more misguided soul with "the big engine complex." 37

In 1939, Lewis and Ames were deriding this complex no more. At the urging of Hunsaker, Lindbergh, and others, the NACA had come late to the conclusion that engines were retarding the development of faster military aircraft. Speed was the key to military success in the air, and improvements in power were likely to produce greater advances in speed than were the refinements of aerodynamic design. 38

Resolved to make up for lost time by devoting a substantial effort to engine research, the NACA faced the harvest of its own neglect. It had neither the staff nor the experience to plan, design, and run an

engine-research laboratory. Research in this field had been left largely to the industry since 1916, and it was to industry that the NACA turned in 1939. Eight days before the Lindbergh committee recommended an engine-research laboratory for the NACA, George J. Mead, recently retired as vice president for engineering of United Aircraft Corporation, was appointed a member of the Main Committee. Six days later he took the oath of office. Two days after that he was appointed vice-chairman of the NACA. One week later he became chairman of the new Special Committee on New Engine Research Facilities. Before the year was out he succeeded Vannevar Bush as chairman of the Power Plants Committee. Never before had anyone moved into such powerful positions within the NACA in so short a time. Part of the explanation lies in the urgency of the international situation in 1939. Most of it, however, reflects how completely the NACA was dependent on industry expertise to launch its engine-research program.39

Mead was as close as the NACA had yet come to placing an industry representative on the Main Committee or in the chair of one of the main technical committees. Jerome Hunsaker had been a member of the Main Committee even while serving as a consultant to firms directly involved in American aviation (including Mead's United Aircraft Corporation); but always his major tie had been to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he headed the Department of Aeronautical Engineering from 1936 through 1951. Edward P. Warner had been a member of the Main Committee while he was editor of Aviation, and had even retained his membership after becoming a fulltime consultant to United Airlines. Presumably his work at Aviation was considered nonpartisan as far as competition among aircraft firms was concerned, whereas his work at United was in the operation of aircraft, with which the NACA was not directly concerned. Clearly, the NACA had dallied with the idea of industry representation on the Main Committee, but it was not yet ready to make that plunge in 1939. Retired Brigadier General Walter G. Kilner was appointed to the Main Committee from private life on 19 December 1939. When he notified Chairman Bush the following February that he had accepted a post as consultant with Curtiss-Wright, his resignation was duly accepted. The distinction between his affiliations and those of Hunsaker and Warner was a fine one; but presumably a private citizen whose principal employer was an aircraft manufacturer represented too close a link with industry. 40

George Mead was immune to such charges because he had retired from United Aircraft the previous June. Still, his background and ties were almost entirely with the aircraft manufacturing industry, and his appointment led to major changes in the composition of the NACA.

Counting Mead, half the members of the Special Committee on New Engine Research Facilities came from industry, including Mead's successor at United Aircraft. The Committee on Power Plants, of which Mead was also chairman, was soon reorganized "to include members from outside the governmental agencies for the purpose of strengthening the Committee and to make it national rather than federal in character." Again, counting Mead, half the members of the committee were now drawn from outside the government. Mead had been a critic of the NACA for some years, and his staff at United Aircraft did not cooperate as closely with the Langley laboratory as did those of some other manufacturers. Judging by his actions after coming to power in the Committee, he shared the familiar objection that the NACA was less responsive to the needs of industry than it should be and in fact was dominated by government interests in Washington.41

Had Mead restructured only the engine-research component of the NACA, his influence would have been great enough. But the change did not stop there. Taking his cue from Mead, Edward P. Warner, chairman of the powerful and prestigious Aerodynamics Committee and himself a sometime critic (though friendly and supportive), asked if the standards of industry and university representation being adopted for the Power Plants Committee would apply to Aerodynamics as well. The sense of the Main Committee was that they would. At the next meeting of the Executive Committee, the same question arose regarding membership on the Committee on Aircraft Structures. Bush stated that the NACA had not adopted a general policy applicable to all committees, but expected to hear separate proposals from each committee. With the barriers crumbling, however, there was little doubt about the course of events. From that time on, industry representation on NACA committees increased dramatically, from 9 percent of the total memberships in 1938 (before the change in policy) to 40 percent in 1948 and 44 percent in 1958. Adding to these the other members drawn from private life raises the representation from outside the government to more than half the committee memberships from World War II on. Nothing less than a revolution had occurred, almost overnight, in the composition of the technical committees of the NACA. Only the Main Committee remained free of industry members, and even there the barrier was soon to collapse.42

The broadened membership of the NACA technical committees raised many ethical and legal questions, but in the fervor of preparation for war, most of these were trusted to patriotism and good will. In 1940 the possibility that a particular industry or company would exploit its privileged position on NACA committees seemed less important than getting the best people from every field and enlisting their sup