patent question was the most important thing that could be accomplished to help the industry, are now the ones most strongly inclined toward inaction instead of action ....

I would ... recommend that the matter of getting the thing done be withdrawn from the Aircraft Manufacturers Association and undertaken by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. [57 A 415 (67), 51-7, June 1917] 38. The most thorough discussion of the cross-licensing agreement appears in the minutes of the meeting of the Subcommittee on Patents on 10 July 1917. Minor revisions were made the following day, after the plan was presented to a meeting of the Aircraft Manufacturers Association, and on the 12th, when it was presented to the NACA Executive Committee. A good summary of how the agreement was finally reached appears in "Patent Solution," Aviation, 1 Aug. 1917, p. 43.

39. Durand to secretary of the navy, 27 July 1917; Josephus Daniels to Durand, 2 Aug. 1917; minutes of the Executive Committee meeting, 7 Aug. 1917. Of course the NACA had not really saved that $1,000,000 for the government; the $2,000,000 in royalties that would go to Wright-Martin and Curtiss-Burgess would come from higher selling prices for all aircraft. Since the government was to be the principal customer, it would bear the lion's share of this increased cost.

40. Frederick W. Barker to the president, 14 Aug. 1917; Rudolph Forster, executive clerk, the White House, to Newton D. Baker, 17 Aug. 1917; F.D. Keppel, secretary's office, War Department, to Gen. Squier, 17 Aug. 1917; S.S. Hanks, Capt., Signal Corps, Ofc. of the Chief Signal Officer, to NACA, 22 Aug. 1917; Durand to Barker, 17 Aug. 1917; Barker to Durand, 20 Aug. and 22 Aug. 1917; Durand to Barker, 25 Aug. 1917; Barker to Durand, 29 Aug. 1917. 41. Durand to Barker, 30 Aug. 1917; and Thomas A. Hill to Durand, 31 Aug. 1917. Hill advised Durand that the Aeronautical Society of America did not want to examine the NACA's records on the cross-licensing negotiations unless it could “secure a transcript and submit it to the advice of proper counsel.” Durand to John H. Towers, 1 Sept. 1917, in 57 A 415 (67), 51-7, 9/17; Durand to Walcott, 4 Sept. 1917, 59 A 2112 (10), 17–3 Durand, JulyDecember 1917; minutes of Executive Committee meeting, 13 Sept. 1917; “A Brief Historical Review Outlining the Origin and Operations of the Manufacturers Aircraft Association," p. 3, citing 31 Opinions Attorney General 166. The term "hymn of hate" is Howard Mingos's description of the criticism in “Birth of an Industry," p. 34.

42. “A Brief Historical Review Outlining the Origin and Operations of the Manufacturers Aircraft Association"; Mingos, "Birth of an Industry."

43. Years later George W. Lewis, the NACA's director of aeronautical research, revealed how sensitive this issue still was within the Committee when he advised the new chairman, Vannevar Bush: "the Committee tries to keep away from the 'patent problem' as much as possible." Lewis to Bush, 9 Jan. 1939, 57 A 415 (67), 51-7, 1935-. This last file is the major collection of NACA material on the cross-licensing agreement.

44. "Functions of National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and Its Co-operation with the War Department," undated typescript under cover letter, R.P. Day to chief clerk, Ofc. of Chief Signal Officer, War Dept., 27 Oct. 1917; L.C. Stearns, report "On Inventions Handled by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics,” 13 Apr. 1918; AR 1918, pp. 29–30. The NACA, which had begun as an aeronautical-inventions board for the War Dept., was soon performing the same service for other government agencies.

45. Minutes of special meeting of the Executive Committee 4 Apr. 1917. The minutes of the Executive Committee meeting of 11 Feb. 1927 state that the recommendation of an Aircraft Production Board flowed directly from a survey of the U.S. aeronautical industry initiated by Walcott, but the minutes of the 10 Apr. 1917 meeting contain no mention of such a survey. Perhaps this recommendation was confused with those generated by the tour of aircraft manufacturing facilities initiated by Walcott in Nov. 1917. (See note 47.) See also "Functions of National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and its Cooperation with the War Department" and the annual reports for 1917 and 1918 for further examples of the NACA's wartime advisory work.

46. On Durand's trip, see "American Airplanes in World War I: Recollections of W.F. Durand," signed typescript, 19 Sept. 1941.

47. Quoted in The Outlook, 16 Jan. 1918, p. 87. In declaring Ames to be "unquestionably expert" in aeronautical matters, The Outlook editors repeated the credentials cited in the Atlantic

48.

Monthly, that Ames had led a scientific delegation to Europe the previous summer. On Ames's European trip, see Joseph S. Ames, "The American Scientific Mission to France and England," The Johns Hopkins Alumni Magazine 6 (Nov. 1917-June 1918): 1–10. The trips to Dayton, Detroit, and Buffalo that prompted these remarks by Ames were initiated by Walcott and took place in Nov. 1917. AR 1917, p. 23.

The Outlook, 16 Jan. 1918, p. 87.

49. Minutes of Executive Committee meetings, 1 Jan. and 24 Jan. 1918; Ames to Durand, 31 Jan. 1918, 57 A 415 (9), 2-11, 1918.

50. Alice M. Quinlan, "World War I Aeronautical Research: A Comparison of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and the National Research Council,” NASA History Office HHN-135, 1974.

51. On American organization for aeronautical research in World War I, see ibid.; also Robert G. Hilldale, "History of Development of Aircraft Production during the War of 1917,❞ part V, "Organization," chap. 4, "Advisory and Co-operative Agencies," Air Services Historical Monograph, 1919, in National Archives, Record Group 18, Records of the Army Air Forces, entry 107, box 1; I.B. Holley, Jr., Ideas and Weapons: Exploitation of the Aerial Weapon by the United States during World War I; A Study in the Relationship of Technological Advance, Military Doctrine, and the Development of Weapons (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953; Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1971), esp. chap. 6; and A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities to 1940 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957), chap. 16. On the movement to create a cabinet-level department of aeronautics, see minutes of the Executive Committee meeting, 26 May 1917, and Victory to Walcott, 5 Aug. 1918. Prophetic of what was to follow the World War, Victory advised Walcott that, though the present movement seemed bound to fail, “Dr. Ames and Dr. Stratton think that either a department of aeronautics or an air ministry, to accomplish the same result, is reasonably sure to come in time."

52. The following comparison of the National Research Council and the NACA is based almost entirely on Quinlan, "World War I Aeronautical Research."

55. AR 1917, p. 12; AR 1918, p. 10. The 1917 amendment had other provisions as well; see app. A for the full text.

56. Minutes of Executive Committee meetings 10 Jan. 1918, 23 Feb. 1918, and 8 Aug. 1918; AR

1918, pp. 24-25. The main source of information at this time was the Research Information Committee of the National Research Council. The chairman of that committee was also a member of the NACA, as was the head of the Department of Technical Information of the Bureau of Aircraft Production. The overlapping of memberships in the wartime aeronautical agencies was positively incestuous.

57. Among those hired during the war were John H. DeKlyn, technical assistant, and Leigh H. Griffith, staff engineer. The Committee also employed George de Bothezat for a while before relinquishing him to the army. Minutes of Executive Committee meetings 11 Jan. 1917, 24 Jan., 25 May, 8 June, and 27 June 1918. For more on de Bothezat, see chap. 4. 58. Minutes of Executive Committee meetings, 27 June 1918 and 23 Feb. 1918.

59. Holley, Ideas and Weapons, p. 111.

60. Robert A. Millikan to George Ellery Hale, 31 July 1918, and E.B. Wilson to Hale, 25 Apr. 1917, both quoted in Quinlan, "World War I Aeronautical Research," pp. 27, 10.

61. Ames to Durand, 10 Aug. 1918.

62. Victory to Durand, 31 Aug. 1918.

63. Griffith to Executive Committee, National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 4 Sept. 1918. This letter was marked SECRET.

CHAPTER 3

1. On the condition of the American aircraft industry after World War I, see Howard Mingos, "Birth of an Industry," in The History of the American Aircraft Industry: An Anthology, ed. by G.R. Simonson (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1968), esp. pp. 45-65; and Irving Brinton Holley, Jr.,

Buying Aircraft: Matériel Procurement for the Army Air Forces, United States Army in World War II, Special Studies (Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1964), chap. 2. Statistics in this and the following paragraph are from John B. Rae, Climb to Greatness: The American Aircraft Industry, 1920-1960 (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press 1968), chap. 1.

2. Letter from S.S. Bradley, 14 Oct. 1918, cited in Executive Committee meeting minutes, 30 Oct. 1918. The quotation is from A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities to 1940 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 337. Walcott reported the congressional sentiment in the minutes of the Executive Committee meeting on 14 Dec. 1918, and again in a letter to John D. Ryan, 1 Feb. 1919, in 57 A 415 (10), 11-9, 1919-1927. Military opinion of course found expression in the Committee itself and in the “Memorandum Report of the Committee on Invention and Research to the Chairman of the Board on Organization, Division of Military Aeronautics, War Department," dated 30 Nov. 1918. This report by Captains Adelbert Ames and Robert McNath and Prof. W.C. Sabine (who resigned from the NACA on the same date) recommended "that the Air Service look to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics for the solution of problems relating to scientific and technical research other than military, also for the commercial development of aeronautics, the continual output by universities and technical schools of scientifically and technically trained specialists, and the reference to research laboratories connected with industrial institutions of special aeronautical problems."

3. AR 1918, p. 27. The joint body formed in 1918, called the Special Interdepartmental Conference on Aerial Navigation, chose Walcott as chairman and appointed a subcommittee on aerial legislation. The activities of the conference were terminated by the transfer of some of its military members before the subcommittee got much beyond recommending establishment of a joint board to consist of representatives of all the government agencies involved in aviation. This notion of a joint board was to be the seed of later NACA ideas.

This chapter, whose specific focus is the place of NACA in the federal management of aviation, devotes little attention to parallel developments in state and international regulation of civil aviation. These developments, important in their own right, had considerable influence on the final form of national aviation legislation. See Donald R. Whitnah, Safer Skyways: Federal Control of Aviation, 1926–1960 (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1966), esp. pp. 24-25; and Oliver James Lessitzyn, International Air Transport and National Policy, Studies in American Foreign Relations, ed. by Percy W. Bidwell, no. 3 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1942), esp. chap. 15.

The struggle for passage of civil aviation legislation deserves its own monograph. The best secondary accounts are Nick A. Komons, Bonfires to Beacons: Federal Civil Aviation Policy under the Air Commerce Act, 1926-1938 (Washington: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, 1978); Laurence F. Schmeckebier, The Aeronautics Branch, Department of Commerce: Its History, Activities, and Organization, Institute for Government Research of the Brookings Institution, Service Monographs of the United States Government, No. 61 (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1930); and John F. Victory and Ruth Walrad, "Shaping a National Aviation Policy," typescript, 62 pp., chap. 7 of Victory's projected history of the NACA.

4. Minutes of Executive Committee meeting, 21 Feb. 1919; Walcott to the president, 21 Feb. 1919; U.S. Congress, House, Regulation of Civil Aerial Navigation . . ., H. Doc. 1828, 65/3, 26 Feb. 1919.

5. Minutes of Executive Committee meeting, 7 Mar., 24 Apr., and 25 Nov. 1919; and 57 A 415 (65), 50-7, Jan.-June 1920.

6. Ames to Walcott, 11 Dec. 1919, enclosing "Extracts from Report of Captain H.C. Mustin, U.S.N., to the Secretary of the Navy, on the Subject of Aviation Organization in Great Britain, France, and Italy.” On Ames's search for information, see, for example, Ames to William Knight, 2 Dec. 1919, in 57 A 415 (66), 51-6G, 1919-1920. Ames may well have been particularly impressed by Mustin's evaluation because of its emphasis on the question of aeronautical research. It should be noted that the Crowell commission of which Mustin was a member generally endorsed the British model.

7. Special Committee on Organization of Governmental Activities in Aeronautics, "Memorandum," undated [ca. 11 Feb. 1920]. This memorandum was requested by the Executive Committee at its meeting on 29 Jan. 1920. Minutes.

8. The NACA files contain three copies of this draft bill, two marked received on 12 Feb. and one on 15 Feb. One of the 12 Feb. drafts is further identified as the "preliminary report of Special Committee on Reorganization of Governmental Activities in Aeronautics, Submitted Feb. 12, 1920," and it provided for a "Bureau of Air Service." The other 12 Feb. draft provides for creation of a "Bureau of Aviation." The two 12 Feb. drafts differed, in that the one creating a Bureau of Air Service dealt with the entire structure of government organization for aviation, and the one creating a Bureau of Aviation dealt more narrowly with organization of the new bureau within the Department of Commerce. The former draft was the basis of the 15 Feb. draft.

9. The Hicks bill was H.R. 14137, 66/2; the Kahn bill, H.R. 14061. At the time, Victory wrote to Ames: “Dr. Walcott says this is the last revised bill of the number that have been drawn up. He says the principles are the same as those enunciated by the Committee as worked over by Admiral Taylor and Captain Craven, and Dr. Walcott with Mr. Hicks. The latest Kahn bill has apparently been embodied as a whole for the regulation of air navigation." Victory to Ames, n.d., received for filing 21 May 1920. The Kahn bill parallels the draft creating a "Bureau of Air Service."

10. AR 1920, p. 11.

11. AR 1920, pp. 14-15.

12. Compare sections 3 through 6 of H.R. 14137 with the sections quoted above. The quote is from AR 1920, p. 54. See also minutes of Exec. Com. meetings, 11 June, 28 June, and 28 July 1921. Ames later said "it is thought that the proposed revision of the Hicks Bill giving certain additional functions to the Committee is a better method of handling the situation than the establishment of a second committee as contemplated in the original Hicks Bill." Ames to Thurman H. Bane, 12 July 1920.

13. Bane to Ames, 8 July 1920; Hayford to Ames, 4 Nov. 1920.

14. AR 1920, pp. 54-56, reprinted in full in appendix H. At the annual meeting of the NACA on 7 Oct. 1920, it was reported that "the Hicks Bill as modified was broader in scope than the Kahn Bill, and would in all probability encounter sufficient opposition to prevent its passage at the next session of Congress; and that for this reason the Executive Committee had decided to urge the enactment of the modified Kahn Bill." No mention was made of the distinction later drawn for President Harding by Walcott: "the difference between the Kahn Bill and the Hicks Bill is that the Hicks Bill, in addition to providing for the regulation of air navigation as contemplated in the Kahn Bill, also provides that the coordination of plans, estimates, and programs in aeronautical matters shall be considered by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics." Walcott to the president, 23 Mar. 1921. 15. Walcott wrote to Hicks 16 Apr. 1921:

Both the Kahn bill and your bill were thoroughly studied and considered by the Advisory Committee last summer during my absence in the west. I understand that the sections of your bill that I have mentioned were not included in the Kahn bill on account of the objections of the military members of the Committee, but they were left in your bill and incorporated in the Annual Report of the Advisory Committee in order that the Committee could express its approval of your bill, the first choice being given to the Kahn bill on account of its being more favorably considered by the military members of the Committee.

16. Walcott and Victory were surely advocates of the expanded role for the NACA. In his 16 Apr. 1921 letter to Congressman Hicks, Walcott said of the controversial sections of the bill: "From my personal point of view these... sections. . . will give just what is needed to thoroughly coordinate all Government activities in aviation." Victory was even more explicit, in the draft of a statement he apparently prepared for Captain Moffett for the information of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt:

The committee is a well organized and efficient agency of the Government, which has functioned well in the past under the limitations of its organic act. It is the logical agency for the consideration of any special question regarding aeronautics, and affecting the general interests or the activities of more than one department of the Government. If the recommendations contained in its national aviation policy are carried into effect, there will be no need for the establishment of a new board of aeronautic control.

In other words, the NACA could handle all coordination of all aeronautical activities throughout all the government.

17. Minutes of special meeting of the Executive Committee, 4 Apr. 1921.

18. Minutes of meetings of the Subcommittee on Federal Regulation of Air Navigation, 5, 6, and 7 Apr. 1921. Members of the subcommittee were Charles D. Walcott (chairman); Charles T. Menoher and Walter G. Kilner of the War Department; David W. Taylor and Kenneth Whiting of the Navy Department; E.C. Zoll and C.I. Stanton of the Post Office Department; Samuel W. Stratton and E.T. Chamberlain of the Department of Commerce; F.H. Russel, Glenn L. Martin, and Sidney D. Waldon from private life; and John F. Victory (secretary). Waldon missed the first two meetings, Zoll the second. Ames attended the second meeting, Lewis the last three.

19. Minutes of the third meeting of Subcommittee on Federal Regulation of Air Navigation, 7 Apr. 1921, pp. 7, 8.

20. Minutes of fourth meeting of Subcommittee on Regulation of Air Navigation, 8 Apr. 1921. At the close of this meeting, George Lewis was appointed chairman of a sub-subcommittee to draft appendixes to the report.

21. Walcott's version of these events appears in the minutes of the Executive Committee meeting, 14 Apr. 1921. See also 57 A 415 (65), 50-7, Jan.-June 1921. The full text of the majority report is in AR 1921, pp. 13-21. The report was published with the president's accompanying recommendation in U.S. Congress, House, H. Doc. 17, 67/1, 19 Apr. 1921.

22. For example, when the Subcommittee on Federal Regulation of Air Navigation was discussing inclusion of a statement on a separate air service, one of the government members asked for a definition of United Air Service. Gen. Menoher replied that "United Air Service is a term applied to a proposed Department of the Air, coordinate with other departments of the Government, under a Secretary of Air, independent of the Army and Navy." Minutes of fourth meeting, 8 Apr. 1921, p. 5. Actually this definition describes a mixture of a department of air and an independent air force.

23. Minutes of semiannual meeting, National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 21 Apr. 1921.

24. On the public controversy, see the documents presented by Ames in the minutes of the Executive Committee meeting, 12 May 1921, and the correspondence quoted in Aviation, 2 and 9 May 1921, pp. 552-58, 588-90.

25. Lester Gardner revealed this industry suspicion when he said in an editorial in the 9 May 1921 issue of Aviation that "it is only natural that officials in existing departments will not as a rule recommend the unification of government aviation."

26. H.R. 201, introduced by Kahn on 11 Apr. 1921 and H.R. 271 introduced by Hicks on the same day, were substantially the same: both were modified Kahn bills of the second session of the 66th Congress of 1920, which the NACA had endorsed in its annual report of 1920. The Committee now chose to rally behind the new Hicks bill. This legislation was described as "stop-gap" in a memo from Gen. Menoher, chief of the Army Air Service, to the adjutant general of the army, 16 May 1921. Ames's comments on H.R. 271 are in the minutes of the Executive Committee meeting, 9 June 1921.

27. An editorial in the Army and Navy Journal for 25 June 1921 said that in both services, Borah's bill (S.J.R. 77) "was generally credited to the advocates of the united air service plan with the idea of keeping it alive in the face of the general opposition to uniting the air services manifested in Congress, and particularly in the Senate." There is no satisfactory secondary treatment of the British experience. The reasoning behind the change in the pre-World War I system is presented in Great Britain, Air Ministry, Committee on Education and Research in Aeronautics, Report, presented to Parliament 12 Dec. 1919 (London, 1920). The results can be traced in Aeronautics: Report of the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics for the Year 1919-20 (London, 1921), and Aeronautics: Report of the Aeronautical Research Committee for the Year 192021 (London, 1921).

C.R. Finch Noyes's pessimistic letter of 4 May 1921 to L.Y. Spears reported that "400,000 pounds of last year's money was transferred from the Research Vote of the Air Ministry to the Maintenance Vote so that, where they might have obtained 400,000 pounds worth of sound research, the same money was spent in maintaining a number of useless, idle, overpaid, very often hard-drinking young men." Such a picture no doubt had a chilling effect on the NACA. Writing in a similar vein to William D. Tipton on 30 Apr. 1921, C.G. Grey, concluded: “Personally I have never been able to discover a solitary argument in favor of having a separate Air Force."

28. Paper prepared for William A. Moffett by John F. Victory, 21 June 1921.