undertake critical new research in structures, in stability and control of high-speed aircraft and missiles, and in other "selected technical fields." 36

To their surprise, Eisenhower not only agreed, he went them one better. He suggested that they request a supplemental for 1955 to get started on these projects before fiscal 1956 began the following July. Seemingly rusty on military customs, Hunsaker and Dryden came away from this meeting not realizing that a "suggestion" from the commander-in-chief was a polite order. As they contemplated taking the idea before their next meeting with the Bureau of the Budget, the White House called to find out why it had not yet been submitted. Within days, NACA representatives and a White House aide were before the BoB director with a supplemental estimate.

The timing of the NACA approach to Eisenhower could not have been better. Hunsaker reported that "the President's interest in the program was based on his knowledge of recent intelligence as to progress in aeronautics being made by the Russians." A knowledgeable insider has testified to the "high quality of the national intelligence estimates in 1954," and these had reinforced for Eisenhower the concern expressed by his Science Advisory Committee when he met with it in March of that year. A month before seeing Hunsaker and Dryden, Eisenhower had appointed a technological capabilities panel under the direction of James R. Killian, Jr., president of MIT. Even before the TCP report was presented to the National Security Council in February 1955, Eisenhower was taking steps to implement the recommendations sure to be forthcoming: "get our military R and D program moving again with carefully established priorities better related to the existing threats to our security." One such step was to provide increased funding for the NACA. 37

With the Eisenhower administration's skepticism about R&D waning, there was no longer sufficient strength in Congress to hold down NACA budgets. The NACA got its supplemental in 1955, its increased budget in 1956, and annual increases thereafter for the remainder of its years.38 The TCP report of 1955 set the pace and direction of American strategic policy for years to come: it led to the crash program to build an intercontinental ballistic missile, develop the U-2 spy plane, institute work on reconnaissance satellites, and generally augment military R&D across the board. The NACA was carried along on this tide.

In other ways as well, 1955 was a good year for the NACA. The Committee was still basking in the reflected glory of the Collier trophy awarded in 1954 to Richard Whitcomb of the Langley laboratory for discovery and verification of the area rule of aerodynamic flow, which established the relationship between the girth of a fuselage in transonic

This is the kind of expensive, highly technical research for which Chairman Hunsaker and Director Dryden requested funds from President Eisenhower: a wedge rake is being used to calibrate the Lewis laboratory's 2- by 2-foot supersonic tunnel at mach 3.5. (LeRC)

flight, and the appendages (e.g., wings) that, without application of the area rule, tended to upset the flow of air over the body. The principle had been known theoretically before Whitcomb "discovered" it, but he provided the engineering data that turned it into useful applications; specifically, he calculated the adjustments needed to get the air force's F-102, first operational supersonic aircraft, through the sound barrier. Here was fundamental NACA research making an important and much publicized contribution to national defense. 39

Also in 1955, yet another Hoover Commission report on government organization appeared, and for the first time in more than thirty years of consistent opposition to the NACA form of organization, the former president brought himself to sign a report that praised the NACA and recommended its continuance intact. To hear this old critic of the NACA speak in glowing terms about the "splendid record" of the Committee and its "admirable" organization was enough to make one think that the NACA had converted its enemies at last and was secure as never before. 40

The budget was rising, the Committee was receiving awards for its achievement, and even old enemies were succumbing to the NACA's charms. The question was, could the turnaround change the drift of events of the previous decade?

12

The End, 1956-1958

The fire that was to consume the NACA was laid throughout the 1950s, waiting for the match. It was fueled primarily by the Committee's peculiar organizational arrangement, one increasingly at odds with the Committee's responsibilities and with contemporary organizational theory. Warmed by misgivings about the Committee's conservatism, its ties to industry and the military services, and the apparent duplication of its work in other labs, and set in the budget-cutting and efficiencyseeking atmosphere of Washington in the Eisenhower years, the tinder grew more volatile. Sputnik provided the spark that set it off, and though it only smoldered for a while, soon the old agency was consumed in flames it was powerless to quench. From the ashes arose a new institution, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, a bird of a different feather.

THE BALANCE OF POWER

At the annual meeting of the NACA in October 1956, Jerome Hunsaker announced that he was stepping down as chairman of the Committee. After a career of 43 years in aeronautics, he felt the new world was too much with him, that he was aging and set in his ways when the times called for young and imaginative leadership, that he was ill-equipped by temperament and training to cope with the new technologies of missiles, rockets, nuclear propulsion, even spaceflight. He agreed to remain on the Committee, but not in the chair which he had then held for 15 years.1

In his place, and with his approval, the NACA chose James H. Doolittle. To the post Jimmy Doolittle brought unparalleled credentials acquired in one of the most remarkable careers in modern American history. Among his credits were an earned doctor of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; a medley of aviation records, including the first one-day cross-country flight in 1922, the first blind landing by instruments, and the world's speed record for

airplanes; virtually every major aviation trophy and award that a pilot and engineer could win; a military career spanning two world wars and most ranks from aviation cadet to lieutenant general; a chestful of decorations topped by the Medal of Honor for leading the famous 1942 air raid on Tokyo; and latterly, a distinguished business career as a vice president and director of Shell Oil Company. In his spare time he was special assistant to the chief of staff of the air force, chairman of the President's Airport Commission, chairman of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, president of the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences, and president of the Air Force Association. Any one of his careers would have occupied and fulfilled most men, but Doolittle managed them all and continued in 1956 to bring to them a vitality and energy that belied his 60 years.2

John F. Victory swears in James H. Doolittle as the eighth and last chairman of the NACA, as outgoing chairman Jerome C. Hunsaker looks on with apparent delight. (ARC)

All Doolittle's credentials, however, could not change the fact that he stood the tradition of the NACA chairmanship on its head. Save only the first incumbent (General George P. Scriven, whose appointment reflected the military influence on the creation of the NACA), all the chairmen had been scientists, and all but one had been academics: Durand from Stanford, Walcott from the Smithsonian, Ames from Johns Hopkins, Bush from MIT and the Carnegie Institution, and Hunsaker from MIT. True, Hunsaker had careers in the military and industry that paralleled Doolittle's in breadth if not in depth, but as chairman of the NACA he was primarily an academic and an engineer. If Doolittle was anything, he was an academic last; first or second he was a businessman, second or first a military officer. He was the