port for the NACA program. Surely that was the case with Mead's Committee on Power Plants, which started the avalanche. 43

A year had passed since the proposal for a new laboratory at Sunnyvale had gone to Congress, a year that saw the invasion of Poland and the increased likelihood that the United States would be drawn into the war. The proposal for an engine-research laboratory met much less resistance than had the Sunnyvale proposal. The plan was more thoroughly thought out when it went to the White House, and the president quickly approved it. Though the Bureau of the Budget trimmed the funding somewhat, the basic NACA plan went to Congress in May of 1940 with the firm backing of the administration. One suggestion arose on the floor of the House that instead of funding a new laboratory for the NACA the Congress ought simply to allocate funds to the manufacturers for them to conduct their own research. This proposal was quickly defeated and the engine-research laboratory approved. The NACA was then in a position to win almost any request it made of the Congress, partly because of the war situation, partly because of the Committee's reputation for efficiency and economy.44

Getting approval to build the laboratory proved to be less troublesome than selecting a site. As Victory wrote to William F. Durand shortly after the appropriation was passed:

I thought the competition for the location of our second research station which went to Moffett Field was severe, but it seems only to have whetted the appetites and interest of every one who lost out then and many others in trying to get the proposed aircraft engineresearch laboratory. We even have a request from one of the largest state delegations in the Congress for a hearing before the N.A.Č.A. Congressmen are calling daily with the Chamber of Commerce presidents and others, and the volume of correspondence has reached the flood stage.45

More than a whiff of politics had hung over the selection of the Sunnyvale site. Now the whole process was about to begin again, this time with far more players. Before the selection was made, proposals had been received from 62 cities covering 72 different sites. The Committee realized at the outset that its selection procedure would have to be objective, fair, and above reproach, for it had 61 congressmen to disappoint and only one to please.46

A Special Committee on Site was appointed under the chairmanship of Vannevar Bush. The Special Committee in turn appointed a Special Subcommittee on Site Inspection, chaired by Victory. The Special Subcommittee drew up a set of requirements for the proposed site and established a rating system. Both were circulated to the interested. parties in advance of any inspections to ensure that all agreed at the

outset that the rules of the game were fair and objective. All concurred that the system might be subject to error, but it had no built-in bias.47

Between 12 August and 4 October 1940, Victory and his committee visited 37 cities, spoke with local officials, inspected proposed sites for the laboratory and completed evaluation sheets on each site. Three times the Victory subcommittee presented its findings to the Bush Special Committee and three times the ratings were juggled. The day before the first reshuffling, Victory had written to Bush that throughout his investigations he had kept records that could "be disclosed with credit to the Committee, should the procedure ever be investigated." Eight days after the last reshuffling, Victory sealed the rating summaries in an envelope labeled "Confidential. Do not open without authority of J. F. Victory." 48

As with the selection of the Sunnyvale site, the juggling surrounding the engine-research site seems to have been done for political reasons. As with Sunnyvale, the NACA ended up with the site that it had chosen in the first place, Cleveland. Between the time when Cleveland was first selected on 10 September and finally selected on 16 October, Victory's committee visited some other sites and made adjustments to the ratings it had awarded certain cities. The effect of the first two adjustments was to elevate Glenview, Ohio, to first place, reducing Cleveland to second. In the final shuffle Glenview came in second, with Dayton (for which Orville Wright had argued) a close third. The records do not make clear why the shuffling was done, nor do they suggest any dark motive or unethical conduct on the part of the committee members. Any of the top five sites would apparently have been about as acceptable, and Cleveland seems to have been merely the first among equals. In only two criteria out of the nine used to rate the various sites did Cleveland rank decisively above all the rest; the more important of those two was accessibility to engine manufacturers. If anything made Cleveland the most desirable site for the engineresearch laboratory, it was the same factor that made Sunnyvale the most desirable site for the new aerodynamics laboratory: industry.49

The Committee's decision was accepted gracefully by most of the cities not selected. For, whatever juggling might have been done behind closed doors, the public impression was that the NACA had chosen well and impartially. As soon as the evaluation of the Victory subcommittee was substantiated and the legal arrangements made, work began on the NACA's third laboratory, 50

THE NACA'S ROLE IN WAR

While the NACA was fighting for the new facilities it needed to answer the growing aeronautical superiority of Germany, it was prepar

ing in more somber ways for the apparently inevitable conflict ahead. Most important, it reached an agreement with the armed services on its role in the event of war. The Westover Committee on Relation of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics to National Defense in Time of War (whose comments on the bottleneck at Langley Field had precipitated the NACA campaign for additional research facilities) had submitted in August 1938 its report on the status of the NACA in a national emergency. It recommended that the NACA become an adjunct of the Aeronautical Board, a joint army-navy board for coordination of all military aeronautics. Although this arrangement would deprive the NACA of the independence it enjoyed in peacetime, this was felt necessary "in the interests of National Defense." The Aeronautical Board in turn drew up a plan embodying these recommendations. It was approved by President Roosevelt on 29 June 1939.51

The Westover report also addressed the increasingly critical question of the role of NACA personnel in war. The boom in aircraft manufacture in the late 1930s had already drained the NACA of key personnel, unable to resist the higher salaries offered by the now flush industry. Were this drain to be compounded by enlistment or drafting of NACA personnel in a national emergency, the Committee's ability to perform its mission would be seriously impaired. Since the Westover report had declared that mission "essential," it could not escape the conclusion that NACA personnel would have to be exempted from military service in the event of war. Although it did not call for “blanket deferment" of NACA personnel, the report declared the Committee an "Essential Industry" whose personnel would be exempted on a case-by-case basis. The Aeronautical Board accepted this recommendation also, and embodied it in the plan approved by Roosevelt. 52

Everyone realized that the wartime role envisioned for the NACA entailed far less fundamental research than the Committee was wont to conduct. The NACA would be drawn instead into testing, cleanup, and refinement of military prototypes of immediate use in the war. Longrange research leading to improved aircraft in the future would have to be abandoned for the duration. Of course, the fund of basic knowledge and data could be exhausted if it were not constantly replenished, but there seemed no real alternative. With some concern (and a faint hope that some of its work might still address fundamental questions, even in the crush of war), the NACA resigned itself to an inevitable lowering of its sights.53

The increased pace of aircraft manufacture in the late 1930s and the planning for a national emergency also altered the relationship of universities to the national program of aeronautical research. The Caltech campaign for government funding of a wind tunnel in which to conduct research for the aircraft industry of southern California had

demonstrated that industry was being driven to new sources of aeronautical research as its production increased and the tunnels of the NACA and the military services became glutted with projects of their own. The NACA was able to coordinate the research projects of the government but, because it largely excluded industry from Committee membership (at least until late 1939) and because universities were only randomly represented in NACA councils, it had no way to ensure that their programs were not duplicating those of the government. The NACA had always looked to the universities for theoretical aeronautics, and after 1920 had assigned itself the vague task of coordinating university research in aeronautics. Since 1930, when the Guggenheim endowment had expired, the NACA had been taking an increased interest in university work and had been trying with mixed success to increase its own funding of that research as one mechanism for encouraging and controlling it. By 1939, however, these informal methods appeared inadequate to the existing and projected scope of aeronautical research in universities. What was needed, the NACA concluded, was a coordinator of research, one staff man within the NACA who would make it his business to stay apprised of the research capabilities, programs, and needs of industry and academia and to advise the NACA on how best to coordinate these with the activities of the federal government.54

The NACA appointed the usual special committee to select a coordinator of research and work out a program for his office. Hunsaker was chairman, Lewis a member. Between them they hammered out a program representing a compromise between their very different views on how such a coordinator should operate. Hunsaker, critical of the NACA, wanted a powerful coordinator who would give the industry and the universities the attention that they had long warranted. Lewis, in contrast, did not want to weaken his own position at the heart of the research-authorization process by introducing a new locus of power, especially one that could deal directly and influentially with the powerful (and manipulatable) Main Committee. Bush openly admitted that he placed Hunsaker and Lewis in juxtaposition on this issue in hopes that out of their conflicting views "something worthwhile would evolve." 55

What evolved was worked out between Hunsaker and Lewis by correspondence during August 1939. They agreed that the coordinator of research should be "primarily our field man." He would inform himself of activities in industry and the universities and coordinate these with the appropriate technical subcommittees of the NACA, ensuring that the programs complemented each other and avoided duplication. Their great point of difference was the relationship between the director of research and the new coordinator. Hunsaker saw Lewis as

the executive officer of the Main Committee, whose function was to "arrange or negotiate or otherwise get the projects carried out." He should not, felt Hunsaker, "stand between" the coordinator and the subcommittees, and he "ought not to take over part of the staff function of filtering advice." In line with this implied criticism, Hunsaker stated that the committees themselves needed to have greater industry representation and to become more active in the formulation of the research program, instead of passively accepting what Lewis fed them. "The subcommittees need to do some work," he said, “not just sit back and be informed." 56

In September Hunsaker's special committee agreed upon the "Duties and Responsibilities of Coordinator of Research" without really resolving the issues in dispute between Hunsaker and Lewis. Only in practice, it seemed, could the varying interpretations of the role of Lewis and the coordinator be worked out. In the ensuing months, the NACA sought a candidate for coordinator who would be both diplomatic and competent to deal with the technical side of aeronautics, a sort of John J. Ide for the homefront. When their first choice (a retired naval officer) declined, Lewis suggested S. Paul Johnston, Ed Warner's successor as editor of Aviation. Johnston accepted the appointment on 6 January 1940 and reported for duty three days later, perhaps unaware that the post he assumed was the center of a continuing controversy between Hunsaker and Lewis. The United States would be at war before that controversy was settled.57

Meanwhile, still other personnel changes were taking place, changes that were to have a far greater effect on the course of NACA history. On 7 October 1939, Joseph Ames resigned as chairman of the Main Committee, to be succeeded by Vannevar Bush, who had already taken over his duties as chairman of the Executive Committee. Virtually incapacitated for most committee business since his stroke in 1936, Ames had nonetheless been retained as chairman against his will, partly because the NACA profited by his stature and partly because the Committee was truly grateful for his years of service. Since his appointment as a charter member of the NACA almost a quarter-century earlier, Ames had influenced the course of NACA history as have few other men. Much of his influence was masked by Lewis and Victory, through whom he worked. Very often he dealt with them orally, leaving no written record now to show how much of their activity was a reflection of his wishes. Still, the esteem they felt for him and the frequency and deference of their consultations with him leave little doubt that his was the power behind the scenes. The quiet, conservative, methodical style of the Committee can be attributed in large measure to this gentle man. The NACA named the new research