COMMERCE TAKES OVER

Winslow's draft of civil-aviation legislation seemed to rely heavily on recommendations of the Department of Commerce. This did not mean, however, that the NACA was without a voice. The Commerce recommendations were, after all, based on the NACA's original proposals for legislation, and the NACA had its chance to comment on the Winslow draft. Although the new bill was not entirely to the Committee's liking, it appeared on the whole to "possess much merit." The NACA would act in an advisory capacity to the secretary of commerce without actually coming under his jurisdiction; in turn, the new commissioner of aeronautics would not intrude upon the NACA's research responsibilities. Here were the makings of a compromise. 34

When the Winslow bill was finally introduced in January 1923 it contained a "joker” that had not been present in the draft that the NACA had approved the previous month. The bill now called for a civil aeronautics consulting board, a reincarnation of the industry consulting committee recommended by the Detroit manufacturers the previous year. Officially and publicly, the NACA maintained that such a committee would create an unacceptable conflict of interest. As Ames put it in the Committee's formal reply to Winslow,

the development of the bureau's activities and general policy ought not to be controlled or even influenced by any group of men, whether serving without compensation or not, who are representatives of those who are financially interested. The appointment of such a board would also serve to prevent the development of a national aircraft industry by concentrating power or influence in a few socalled "representatives," to the exclusion of all others. 35

This merely restated the NACA's own reasons for excluding industry representatives from its membership and was thoroughly in keeping with past Committee policy. But, in private correspondence, John Victory revealed that there was far more to this issue. A paper he drafted concluded:

Leaders among the aircraft manufacturers today are working quietly for a united air force, believing that it will mean larger appropriations for aircraft. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics has incurred the enmity of certain aircraft manufacturers by recommending to the President and to Congress the principle of an Army Air Service under the Secretary of War, and naval aeronautics under the Secretary of the Navy. These manufacturers, ignoring the importance of the Committee's research work, desire it abolished in order to remove the first obstruction to the amalgamation of Army and Navy aeronautics (under General Mitchell). 36

Victory had written to Samuel Stratton at about the same time that "the undermining and dissolution of the Advisory Committee are essential to certain interests that have never been able to control the Committee's policies." Although the Winslow bill did not explicitly require abolition or absorption of the NACA, many believed with a correspondent who wrote to Lewis in January that "if this bill passes in any form within a year, [the NACA] will be under the Department of Commerce." 37

The NACA therefore took the lead in defeating the legislation or at least so modifying it as to bring about its failure. Meeting with representatives of the military services, the National Aeronautics Association, and the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce, Victory achieved a compromise on the Winslow bill, but too late for passage in the 67th Congress. Thus civil-aviation legislation was delayed for yet another year, as the 68th Congress did not convene until December 1923. In that month Winslow submitted a new bill, described by John Victory as "a mere rearrangement of the former bill with with no important changes." 38 Again the NACA led a campaign to modify the bill.

Here began a round of mudslinging that was to poison negotiations over the legislation and permanently embitter many of the principals. John Victory discovered that members of Congressman Winslow's subcommittee had been subjected to "secret propaganda" that the NACA was "useless" and had "never done anything for aviation." Victory reacted in kind by calling the proposal for a Civil Aeronautics Consulting Board "obviously vicious" and in need of crushing. Howard Coffin, now aligned against the industry coalition working with the Department of Commerce, was even more abusive. He telegraphed George Lewis about "the motives and methods of a small group of agents responsible for cunning and vicious propaganda clearly intended to hamper American aviation development and wreck the industry," about "the running sore that is ceaselessly spreading in Congress and in the public mind poison and suspicion of any and all things relating to aviation," and about "the unscrupulous and infinite cunning with which advantage had been and is being taken of every opportunity to sow lying misinformation to discredit [and] endeavor to prevent vitally needed legislation and to wreck constructive accomplish

What had exasperated Coffin and Victory was a new coalition formed against the NACA and its government allies. Roughly, the coalition consisted of the apostles of a separate air service, becoming ever more vocal under the leadership of Billy Mitchell; diehard believers in an “aircraft trust" who were still smarting over the cross-licensing agreement; and a growing number of aircraft operators who feared they would be hampered by restrictions on flying in the proposed

legislation. Surely an alliance of necessity, it was no less strong for that. One of the staunchest members, an old foe of the NACA from World War I days, was using his influence to promote congressional investigation of the aircraft industry. As one NACA official reported it, the man "called at the office, shook his finger in my face, . . . and stated that one of the ambitions of his life was to put the Committee out of business. One of the pleasures that he anticipates is drawing Dr. Ames and others before the investigating committee and have them explain the cross-licensing agreement." 40

Slowly but inevitably, the dispute was progressing toward an airing of the controversy by public investigation. The administration was already racked by scandals involving corruption and special interests. Billy Mitchell's crusade was about to culminate in a public courtmartial. And the issue of government organization for aviation, which was indirectly related to both of these crises, was bound to be investigated in its turn. When Winslow's bill failed again in 1924, the die was

cast.

SAVED BY THE BILL

The committee investigations that dominated 1924 and 1925 were in part a result of the continuing stalemate over aviation legislation; in part they were merely a reflection of their times. Throughout their course, the NACA clung to the basic tenets of the policy it had enunciated at the outset: a bureau of civil aviation in the Department of Commerce, no separate air service, no abolition or absorption of the NACA. The NACA did, however, make some significant changes in its approach. It now kept a lower profile, leaving the initiative for shaping legislation to the Department of Commerce and the lawyers and industry representatives working through that agency. And the NACA claimed for itself a considerably reduced role, a concession that helped win final approval for the Air Commerce Act of 1926.

The first committee investigation to bear on the NACA's place in the scheme of govenment organization was a fortuitous one as far as civil-aviation legislation was concerned. The Congressional Joint Committee on Reorganization of the Executive Departments reported in October 1924 that the NACA should be transferred to the Department of Commerce, echoing the recommendation of the Lamb faction at the Department of Commerce the previous year. This is not to say there is a connection between the two recommendations, only that many who examined the structure of the federal government during the NACA years concluded that the Committee should not be an independent agency. In this case, as always hereafter, the NACA's response was pragmatic and persuasive. Writing to the president late in November,

Chairman Walcott said that the success of the Committee could be attributed to the caliber of the members and the freedom they enjoyed in determining their research program.

The distinguished members of the Committee would not serve, he felt, for mere salary, nor if they were reporting to anyone but the president, and they would not be free to choose the best course of action if they were answerable to an official like a secretary of commerce who had concerns other than aeronautical progress. Walcott also suggested that Coolidge's letter of transmittal for the Committee's annual report should contain an encomium of the Committee members that would conclude by observing that "the status of the committee as an independent Government establishment has largely made possible its success." Coolidge complied, and no more was needed to blunt the recommendation of the Joint Committee.41

Potentially more threatening to the NACA was the investigation by the House Select Committee of Inquiry into Operations of the United States Air Service, popularly known as the Lampert committee after its chairman, Florian Lampert. Some of the pressure for these hearings came from advocates of a separate air service who saw in the NACA an obstacle to their designs. The investigation looked back to World War I and the cross-licensing agreement to determine the causes of, and a reasonable solution to, the continuing debate over aviation organization. Unlike the Joint Committee on Reorganization, however, the Lampert committee gave the NACA a fair hearing, even going so far as to visit the Langley laboratory. In the Lampert committee's report the NACA fared better than its enemies would have wished, but not well enough to be satisfied with the results. During the hearings, which dominated the aviation scene in the second half of 1924 and the first half of 1925, there was what John Victory called "rampant sensationalism and distortion of truth," much of it from the mouth of Billy Mitchell, whose crusade for an independent air force was becoming increasingly public and intemperate.42

Though the Lampert committee was still deliberating when the second session of the 68th Congress convened in December 1924, a bevy of new and contradictory measures was introduced: the Winslow bill again, a bill for a department of aeronautics, a bill for a direct government subsidy to the aircraft industry, and others. None received enough support to be passed, but that did not prevent their reintroduction during a March special session of the 69th Congress. As Victory put it the day after adjournment, "the last session of Congress had the aeronautical organizations of the Government going around in circles."43 While the NACA persisted in demanding a bureau of civil aviation in the Department of Commerce and in opposing a department of aeronautics, it turned its attention more and more to its own

research work. The debate over government organization for aviation seemed endless; in the midst of it the NACA took to concentrating ever more exclusively on the one mission that was clear and uncontestedaeronautical research.

Unexpectedly, September 1925 became a watershed in aviation history. On 1 September, contact was lost with the Navy seaplane PN-9 which was attempting to fly from San Francisco to Hawaii. Until the plane and crew were found afloat and well on the 10th, a disaster was widely assumed. On the 3rd, the airship Shenandoah crashed in Ohio killing 14 of 43 men aboard. Billy Mitchell seized the opportunity to accuse the army of "criminal negligence" and to launch what Victory called a "publicity stampede." Mitchell's criticisms precipitated his court-martial, which opened dramatically in October and ended with his conviction before the year was out. Following Mitchell's lead, both press and public called for reform of the situation that had led to the Shenandoah and PN-9 disasters. President Coolidge responded on 12 September by appointing a President's Aircraft Board under Coolidge's old friend and confidant, Dwight Morrow.44

The convening of the Morrow board signaled a turn of events in favor of the NAČA. The Coolidge administration approved of the army's move to "get" Billy Mitchell, and it approved of the NACA's position on civil-aviation legislation. William F. Durand was appointed to the Morrow board and Victory was made secretary. The NACA was cautiously optimistic. As Victory wrote to Walcott in September: "The aeronautical atmosphere is heavily charged this year, and as far as questions of policy are concerned, I think the Committee should stick to its beaten path and say as little as necessary, or else ignore the political situation entirely and endeavor to focus its attention on the real problems of aviation development and the need for the continuous prosecution of scientific research."45 The NACA had not really been beating that path for very long in the fall of 1925, but the Committee was to stay on it for the rest of its life. Threatened and buffeted during its years at the center of a political fight over civil-aviation legislation, the NACA had lowered its profile-sitting on the Morrow board, for example, but not sponsoring it-and had publicly restricted itself to what it now called its exclusive mission, aeronautical research. Never again would it try to claim for itself the broad advisory, administrative, and coordinating responsibilities staked out in the revised Hicks bill of 1921.46

This new political caution or circumspection appears clearly in the testimony of Joseph Ames before the Morrow board. Asked by Senator Bingham if he would care to express an opinion on the advisability of organizing a separate department of aeronautics, or a united air force, Ames replied, "That question has never come up before our commit