NACA annual meeting of 19 October 1939, the first at which all members were present. Joseph Ames's resignation was announced at this meeting; his successor as chairman, Vannevar Bush, is at the head of the table. (National Archives)

station at Sunnyvale the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory in 1940, just three years before its former chairman's death.

The term of Ames's immediate successor was short. In 1941 President Roosevelt called on Vannevar Bush to head the new National Defense Research Committee, soon to be absorbed in the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Replacing him as chairman of both the Executive Committee and the Main Committee was Jerome C. Hunsaker. Like Bush and other scientists and engineers taking up posts in Washington, Hunsaker brought with him new perspectives, new blood, and not a little criticism of the way things had run in Washington between the wars. In appointing Hunsaker chairman of the committee to establish an office of coordinator of research, Bush had said to Lewis: "Jerry, as you know, has been critical, and the best way to handle this is to give him a chance to get at things." Now Hunsaker would have his chance to get at everything.

Lewis probably greeted this appointment with some misgivings, not only because of his 1939 encounter with Hunsaker on the issue of a coordinator of research but also because outsiders like Mead and Hunsaker who were coming to power within the Committee appeared to be bent on reforms not entirely to Lewis's liking. He mistrusted the increased representation of industry and academia on the technical committees. He doubted that the expanded NACA facilities could be managed as efficiently as the Langley laboratory had been. He resented intrusions on the power base he had established at the very heart of the NACA. But he was a good trouper and the written record suggests that he kept his misgivings to himself. The war effort, after all, was now

This group outside the Langley 19-foot pressure tunnel in 1943 includes two NACA chairmen and the Committee's only two directors of aeronautical research. Chairman Vannevar Bush is fourth from the left in row two, three places to the left of his successor, Jerome C. Hunsaker; Director George Lewis is at the far right of the first row, opposite his successor, Hugh L. Dryden, farthest left of the second row. (LaRC)

the greatest concern, and in that cause he would sacrifice and subordinate his own judgment with the best of men.

Preparations for war in the late 1930s had brought three major changes to the Committee. In the event of war the NACA was committed on paper to applied research, foregoing if need be its basic mission of fundamental research. Second, it had set afoot an expansion of facilities that would soon triple the Committee's physical plant and staff, changing irrevocably the style and procedures of Committee operations. Finally, the old order was passing, and a new generation of leadership was coming into positions of power. Lewis and Victory still held the center, as they had for twenty years. But the Committee charter clearly gave power to the committees; if these had failed to exercise that power in the preceding two decades, or rather had delegated much of it to Lewis and Victory, there was no guarantee that the new leaders were so disposed. On the contrary, they plainly meant to institute reforms that had been on their minds for years past. War would be the crucible in which to begin those changes.

8

What Price Victory, 1941-1945

For the NACA, World War II began in 1937 with the discovery of the aeronautical research being conducted in Germany. The Committee then realized that it had fallen behind in aeronautical development and that the danger for the United States was increasing as war approached. By the time Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the NACA was on a self-imposed war footing. The attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into the war merely formalized what the NACA had been doing for several years.

BEFORE PEARL HARBOR

The NACA's most important preparation for the impending war was its construction of two new research laboratories. These projects consumed vast amounts of time and material, distracted and in some cases completely occupied key members of the staffs at both headquarters and the Langley laboratory, and led to a radical change in the way the NACA operated. Recruitment of new staff became more difficult as young men who might otherwise have been attracted to the NACA were considering, or being considered for, military service. Introduction of industry representatives into NACA committees and subcommittees-precipitated by the enlistment of George Mead and others needed to plan the new engine-research facilities-altered the very composition of the agency. It was hard to tell if the changed order of things was due more to the scale of operations the NACA was undertaking, the infusion of new blood, or the sense of urgency that accompanied the approaching war.

Establishment of the new Ames Aeronautical Laboratory (AAL) at Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, California, went as smoothly as could be expected, thanks largely to the cool competence of Smith J. DeFrance, the first and only director the laboratory was to have while it belonged to the NACA. After interrupting his college career to fly in World War I, first for Canada and then for the United States, DeFrance completed

his training in aeronautical engineering at the University of Michigan in 1922 and joined the Langley staff the same year. During the 1930s, he worked on the design and construction of research tunnels and test equipment at Langley and directed research in four of the large tunnels there, thus becoming a natural choice to head the team that would build a new and better LMAL on the west coast. Even before the California laboratory was formally approved by Congress, DeFrance and his team were at work on the preferred site at Sunnyvale, making preparations to construct the laboratory they had designed at Langley.'

As soon as Congress approved the laboratory (in August 1939) the reality began to take shape. Construction of the flight-research building began the following February, the first of the service buildings two months later. In May, work began on a 16-foot high-speed tunnel, fastest of its size in the NACA, and on the first of two 7- by 10-foot workhorse tunnels. When DeFrance took over officially as engineer-incharge in July 1940, construction was under way on a second 7- by 10foot tunnel, and the first test piles were driven for a 40- by 80-foot fullscale tunnel, larger by a third than its predecessor at Langley. In October 1940 the first research began at Ames; by the time of Pearl