hoping perhaps that the division of research information would obviate the need for such a list. Dryden took up the resistance where Lewis had left off, telling industry representatives that the NACA had hundreds of research projects under way at any one time, none of which could be neatly summarized in a form that would be both informative and of reasonable length. Such a list would overburden the staff and cost more in time and money than it was worth.39

The NACA conducted so many different research projects at the same time that it was reluctant to provide industry with a complete inventory. The research pictured here-a 1949 study using balsa dust to reveal the airflow generated by a 15-scale model coaxial helicopter rotor-was not yet ready for release to industry. (LaRC)

But industry was not to be denied, and the NACA finally compromised. It agreed to publish an annual listing of its research projects, with no description beyond the project titles. The Committee published these lists for the remainder of its history and, though the staff remained disgruntled, the industry received the report with enthusiasm and real interest.40

One suspects there was more here than merely staying abreast of NACA work. A minor source of controversy for years was the issue of negative results. If the NACA ran a series of tests on a new idea or device and found it wanting, should it publish the results? This was largely a question of institutional self-confidence and security. If one is sure of his position and his worth, he won't hesitate to admit his mistakes, especially if he thinks those mistakes were reasonable guesses in a complex and confusing field, and if he thinks his errant pursuits might prevent others from walking the same dead-end path.

Lewis's record on this touchy issue is mixed. In 1934 he said that "in many respects it is desirable to include negative information which prevents others from investigating methods that have been found unsatisfactory," but in 1946 his newly created Office of Research Analysis

withheld "the most recent findings" from the gust tunnel because “the factual data are not too favorable for America's would-be high speed transports." Politics surely helped determine what the NACA did or did not publish, and surely the NACA was more sensitive than most agencies about advertising its shortcomings to Congress. Even the cool and scientific Jerome Hunsaker became uncharacteristically testy on this point when he was prodded by the Mead committee in 1946. "You wouldn't expect us to publish a discussion of a dead cat," he stated rhetorically. As a matter of fact, many in the industry would probably have wanted to know what the cat died of.41

The publication of negative results remained a problem for the Committee. In 1950, for example, headquarters advised the Ames laboratory that "the brief reporting of unsuccessful attempts is considered of some value in itself in informing and warning the readers," but went on to suggest that the treatment of an unsuccessful research strategy in a proposed technical note was "overly detailed and detracted from the presentation of the more successful method."42 No industry action could keep this sort of thing from going on within the NACA, but the annual list of projects would at least tell the industry whether the NACA had buried a whole research project.

The list of projects also helped to substitute for the loss of the old industry conferences. Industry representatives knew it was no longer possible to be briefed on all the NACA projects in a single day at Langley, or even in a single visit to all the laboratories, and they welcomed the specific conferences on isolated topics that provided the detailed exchange of information they used to get at Langley. The list of projects filled the gap between the specialized meetings and the new "inspections" and showed where the specific topics fit into the overall NAČA research program.

Another change in policy brought about by the passing of George Lewis was the slackening of restrictions on publication of NACA research methods. From the time of the variable-density wind tunnel, the development of innovative research techniques and equipment had been one of the NACA's greatest achievements, but Lewis seldom allowed this information to be published lest the NACA's competitors learn how to duplicate its results. Though this barrier began to fall as soon as John Crowley became acting director of aeronautical research, the habit of secrecy about research techniques and equipment was so deeply ingrained that it was years before such publications began issuing from the laboratories.43

The postwar years also brought some lesser responses to industry suggestions or demands. The NACA engaged in more contracting with universities, in part to blunt past criticism that it was "standoffish" to academics and in part because such contracts really benefited everyone

concerned. They lessened the research load on NACA tunnels, lent support to independent laboratories, kept the NACA in touch with some of the best theoretical minds in aeronautics and with the latest research, and helped to train the new engineers needed in growing numbers by both the NACA and industry. And the NACA established a new policy on proprietary information, granting greater safeguards to industry.44

WHITHER NACA?

The fourth major problem confronting Hugh Dryden when he took over the NACA in 1947 was choosing new fields of research for the Committee. Many new projects emerged in these years, from aircraftfire prevention to the aerodynamics of internal flow (the airflow within the ducts and turbines needed to support jet propulsion). But three areas overshadowed the others in urgency, importance, and glamor: high-speed flight, missiles and rockets, and nuclear power for aircraft propulsion. Through his technical-committee memberships during the war, Dryden had been instrumental in launching all three. After joining the NACA, he guided them through the politics that came to surround them, with fateful consequences for both himself and the NACA.

High-speed flight was the new area in which the NACA had the clearest mandate. In fact, in its original plans for a national supersonic research center, the NACA had hoped to have an exclusive role in this research. Though that was not to be, the NACA did not know it in 1945. What it did know was that until supersonic tunnels became available, other means would have to be found to conduct high-speed research. In his role as vice chairman of the Aerodynamics Committee and chairman of the High Speed Aerodynamics Committee, Dryden was deeply involved in the solution of this problem.45

The most obvious solution was the research aircraft program, a joint venture between the NACA, the military services, and industry to develop and fly supersonic aircraft. The story of this unprecedented cooperative program and the NACA role within it has been told in Richard Hallion's Supersonic Flight 46 and need not be repeated here. Three features of the program, however, deserve mention for their influence on NACA history.

First, the cooperation between the NACA, the services, and the industry exemplified the seamless web of coordination that had evolved during World War II into an indispensable ingredient of radical aircraft development. Military sponsorship was needed for money and raison d'être; the NACA was needed for fundamental concepts of design and instrumentation; and industry was needed for design, development, and production facilities. Additionally, each of the three partners had

Fire prevention leads to the ultimate in destructive testing: an experimental fire-source inerting system prevents a fire, as this plane is crash-tested and the jet engine torn from the left wing is sent tumbling through the fuel spray behind the aircraft. No fire resulted. (LeRC)

talent and expertise in areas for which it was not formally responsible. Industry could speak to wing-flutter theory just as readily as the military could address fabrication techniques, and the NACA had at least one resident expert on everything. So successful was this industrymilitary-NACA collaboration that it succeeded in "breaking the sound barrier" within 2.5 years of letting the first contract for a supersonic aircraft.

Second, the NACA won in this program a plum that it would lose in the struggle over a unitary wind-tunnel plan. Its proposal for a national supersonic research center had included an airfield for highspeed flight testing. When it lost the NSRC, it lost the field. But meanwhile the Committee had sent a small detachment of Langley engineers to Muroc Air Base in the desert of southern California, where the research aircraft were to be test-flown. Originally no more than a liaison detachment existing at the indulgence of the air force, this group expanded over the years to become the NACA Muroc Flight Test Unit in 1947, the NACA High-Speed Flight Research Station in 1949 (still a satellite of LMAL), and finally the High Speed Flight Station (HSFS) in 1954, an autonomous NACA research organization ranking just below the three great NACA laboratories. Richard Hallion has told this story also in his On the Frontier: Flight Research at Dryden, 1946-1981.47

The third observation warranted by the research-aircraft story is that reality looked very different at the NACA laboratories and at headquarters. Relying largely on the recollections of the Langley staff, Hallion has described them as forcing the research aircraft program upon a conservative headquarters in something of a revolt of the engineers. At headquarters, it looked as if the Langley staff had to be restrained from pursuing reckless experiments that could destroy not only an expensive aircraft, but the entire NACA as well. In the event, the Langley crowd was right, but that does not automatically discredit the headquarters perspective. Stack and his colleagues had only to keep a small airplane aloft; Lewis and the headquarters staff had to sustain the entire NACA. The laboratory staffs were largely insulated from the Washington politics that made Lewis choose as he did, even while they were immersed in aeronautical data that made them choose as they did. All organizations with field units controlled by a headquarters know of the tensions between the branches: the field personnel, on the cutting edge of the agency's mission, resent direction from a headquarters less informed than they of the problems on the frontier and mired instead in a morass of seemingly senseless red tape, whereas the headquarters personnel think the field staffs cannot see the forest for the trees. These problems of empathy and communication are compounded in a research agency like the NACA, where the field work is esoteric and