during the War Compared to That of the NACA," and found themselves relatively blameless; but Hunsaker found the document "somewhat onesided" and recommended against publication. Hunsaker was willing to admit that "the Germans were in advance of this country in supersonic research, missile research, rocket research, and some phases of jet propulsion development," and to accept the consequences.

14

During this criticism of the NACA, Hunsaker took the initiative in developing a postwar aeronautical-research policy that would correct past mistakes, respond to the changed order of American aeronautics, and reconcile the traditional role of the Committee with newly emerging policies on science and national defense. Already familiar with sentiments in Washington, Hunsaker met with representatives of the aircraft industry in Cleveland and California to learn their views. He brought the question of postwar research policy before the NACA and sought to formulate a plan that would not only satisfy the perceived needs of the NACA and the government, but also allay industry fears. of government encroachment on its domain of aeronautical development. A special NACA committee on postwar aeronautical-research policy drafted a plan that Hunsaker presented to the Mead committee the following January. In essence this scheme formalized the division of labor worked out among the NACA, the military services, and the industry in the years between the world wars. 15

For more than a year, as the war ended and demobilization began, this policy remained an informal guide. Finally, in March 1946, the NACA formally adopted a slightly revised version of the policy as endorsed by the army, the navy, the Civil Aeronautics Administration, and the NACA Industry Consulting Committee (a newly created standing committee designed to give industry a permanent voice in NACA

NACA Chairman Jerome C. Hunsaker convenes a conference on research policy at the Ames laboratory on 8 June 1944, part of a personal campaign to arrive at a nationwide consensus on the future of the NACA. (ARC)

affairs). Minor changes in the wording of the policy in the intervening months attempted to clarify the roles of the NACA, the industry, and the services. All agreed that the NACA would do fundamental research. All agreed that the industry should do development. And all agreed that the military services should do evaluation. What they could not agree on, and what the policy did not define, was how to distinguish between these activities, and how one party could prevent the others from encroaching. And the policy did not say whether research could any longer be productively separated from development. 16

In contrast to the National Aeronautical Research Policy, other NACA responses to changed policies on science and national defense were readily understandable. The Committee handed over to the National Inventors Council created in 1940 by the secretary of commerce most of its duties as Aeronautical Patents and Design Board, even though it was never legally relieved of this responsibility. The Joint Army-Navy Board had lapsed into disuse in 1943 and was formally abolished in 1947, returning the NACA nominally to the independent status it had enjoyed before the war. And in 1948, the NACA organic legislation was amended to provide for 17 instead of 15 members on the Main Committee; this added a representative of the new military Research and Development Board along with one more private member, changing the ratio of government-to-private members to 10:7.17

Addition of a representative of the Research and Development Board assured that the military would remain the dominant bloc on the Main Committee, with 5 out of 17 votes. But the greatest shift in power on the NACA in the 1940s was toward industry, which won three seats where it had none before. This reflected, as Hunsaker told the Mead committee, that "industry as a result of the war [had] become large and

responsible and [had] come of age." And it showed every sign of remaining strong in the postwar world. Even with the cancellation of $26 billion in military contracts in 1945, the industry was able to hold together as it had not at the end of World War I; by the end of the decade, it was again growing and prosperous. 18

THE RISE OF INDUSTRY

The American aircraft industry genuinely appreciated the contributions made by the NACA over the years, and most firms were happy to supply the commendations the Committee felt obliged to parade before Congress and the Bureau of the Budget. These compliments did not, however, mean that the industry was free of criticisms of the NACA. Many felt, for example, that the NACA was too slow in publishing results of its research, that it concealed negative results, that it concentrated too much on aerodynamics, and that it was not always scrupulously correct in its handling of proprietary information. But these were venial sins, not mortal. Though one industry representative suggested to the NACA in 1944 that it was perhaps time for the Committee to pass out of existence-a sentiment echoed by Senator Mead-most others felt it still had an important role to fill. The industry wanted not to destroy the NACA with its criticism, but to gain a greater voice in Committee affairs and thus make the Committee more responsive to industry needs. 19

During the war, the aircraft industry had taken great strides toward achieving this stronger voice. The Industry Consulting Committee (ICC) formed in 1945, composed of heads of major aircraft manufacturing and operating firms, was not a consulting committee at all but an advisory committee. It did not wait to be consulted by the NACA, but instead met on its own initiative and advised the Committee how to improve NACA-industry relations. Though the NACA did not, of course, agree with all the complaints or adopt all the reforms, it took the industry position seriously and met frequently with the ICC in an attempt to work out compromises. 20

One of the first ICC suggestions, and one of the earliest to be adopted, was expansion of industry representation on the Main Committee. When the ICC was formed, the Main Committee had only one industry representative: airline executive William Littlewood, who had succeeded George Mead when the latter retired in 1944. Within months of its establishment, the ICC recommended that Littlewood be joined by a representative of an airframe manufacturer and a representative of an engine manufacturer. When the next vacancies appeared in April of the following year, A.E. Raymond, vice president of Douglas Aircraft, and R.M. Hazen, chief engineer of the Allison Division of

General Motors, joined the Main Committee just one month after industry endorsed the National Aeronautical Research Policy. Industry representation on the Main Committee became a tradition that endured the rest of the NACA's days and gave the industry a voice second only to the military's. 21

At the time these industry representatives joined the Main Committee there were only six members from private life, meaning that the industry controlled half the outside seats. Vannevar Bush found this deeply disturbing. Writing to Hunsaker late in 1946, he noted:

The basic idea back of NACA, and the concept on which a great deal of its success has been based, is that the governing board will be made up of ex officio members plus . . . individuals representing science and the public somewhat generally. I have no doubt in my mind whatever that a man in an industrial post can divorce himself in his thinking from his industrial connections to sit on a public board as a representative of his profession, and as a citizen, without his thinking and actions being in any way influenced by his industrial connections. But I do not believe that the public or the Congress would be convinced that this is the case except when experience had given the demonstration, and I believe, therefore, that the general point of view is very likely to be that these individuals will represent the interests of industry in the NACA, say to balance the interests of various parts of the government. . . . It is far better that the members of NACA outside of the ex officio members should represent science and the public, but should not be in their personal connections so involved that their interest also takes the form of interest from a specialized standpoint connected with the health and development of the industry as an element in our economic picture.22

Bush had considered expanding the membership of the Main Committee, an idea that seemed even better the following year when the National Military Establishment was created. But finally he decided "the only out-and-out solution [was] to reverse our steps and return to the policy that was prevalent between the two wars, with no representation of specific groups, except those in government." As things stood, he did not think the Committee had "enough completely independent individuals for the various activities of the NACA, such as the chairmanship, the vice chairmanship, and the headship of various important committees, to carry on the affairs of NACA along the original contemplated lines which were so successful." The extrapolation of Bush's concern was that the NACA might soon be reduced to interest-group politics, accompanied by factions, vote-swapping, and pluralism. When impartial academics had held the nongovernment seats on the Main Committee, the public weal seemed secure. When industry representa

tives took over those seats, there was chance of mischief, or at least the suspicion of mischief, the appearance of mischief.

Hunsaker, who himself sat on the boards of directors of four firms (three of them on the fringes of aviation), did not share Bush's concern, though he did "reluctantly agree" that the danger Bush cited might be perceived by Congress and the public. Hunsaker believed that

the public service is most inefficient when the principle of disinterest is carried to the limit of having nobody who really understands the problems. Popular distrust of the expert is part of our inheritance from the early Republic. Witness the War Production Board [of World War I] with a publisher in charge of aircraft production and an advertising man deciding on cargo planes! The original act establishing the NACA required "persons who shall be acquainted with the needs of aeronautical science . . ., or skilled in aeronautical engineering or its allied sciences." Littlewood, Raymond, and Hazen exactly comply with this language of the act and strengthen the committee by their intimate knowledge of what is needed. 23

Hunsaker went on in this letter to defend his own record and to explain his own connections with industry, apparently less alive than he might have been to the importance of the NACA's-like Caesar's wife's-not only being pure, but also seeming to be pure. He wanted to circulate his letter to all members of the NACA, but Lewis recommended that he first delete the paragraph quoted because it "could be used in an investigation," presumably of industry influence within the NACA. Hunsaker, Lewis, and Bush might agree about the merits of controlled industry representation on the Main Committee; but it was Lewis, the old Washington hand and veteran of the bureaucratic wars, who understood the real dangers of making the industry too visible in Committee affairs. 24 These dangers were to be realized in the coming

years.

In 1946, however, the immediate problem was the status of industry representatives on the technical committees and subcommittees. One motive for creating the Industry Consulting Committee in the first place had been to head off this issue of industry representation. It did not succeed; in fact, the ICC became a focus of the continuing attempt by industry to make members of the NACA subcommittees representatives of the firms for which they worked. The NACA opposed this idea relentlessly and succeeded in holding off the industry move, or at least maintaining what Hunsaker called "the fiction of no representation." 25

The NACA wanted as members of its technical committees and subcommittees the best informed and most hard-working individuals in their respective fields. This was the only way to get the best advice available on what research was being done, what problems were the