liance; his utterances supplied ample evidence that he was simultaneously an aerodynamical wizard and an unstable charlatan. No one, it seems, was neutral about Munk, and he was forever at the center of controversies characterized by extremely strong opinions on all sides. 57

The NACA tolerated him for a while because so few had his experience or his credentials. But, as the Committee staff grew and matured, Munk's position became more precarious. Engineers were taking over the Committee staff, in part because of their sheer numbers, in part because of the positions they held. In 1924 George Lewis was made director of aeronautical research. The Committee thus abandoned its effort to find a scientist for the post and settled instead on the engineer who had used his position as executive officer to take over technical direction of the NAČA. The head position at Langley was now designated engineer-in-charge. In 1923 there were only two positions for scientists at Langley; one of these was vacant, one was filled by an engineer.58 In these circles, Max Munk was increasingly out of place. Late in 1923, Leigh Griffith revealed the extent of the friction when he wrote to Lewis about staff comments on a technical report:

With reference to Dr. Munk's criticisms in the present case, it is rather unfortunate that he is not more familiar with current standard American nomenclature and is therefore inclined to criticize terminology not in agreement with his own peculiar ideas. . . . As a general rule, it would seem highly desirable that criticisms of research reports dealing with actual research laboratory results should not be undertaken by theoreticians since the viewpoint of the theoretician is usually so radically different from that of the laboratory research man. 59

The snobbery underlying that argument is the same one that fuels most role disputes between scientists and engineers. The scientist sees things purely, and speaks with the condescension of the purist; the engineer labors in the field and deals every day with the practical exceptions to the scientist's theories. Seldom does either have the sympathy and experience needed to appreciate fully the strengths of the other's work. The scientist disdains the engineer as a pedestrian tinkerer, with dirty fingernails and blinkered eyes. The engineer resents the scientist as an impractical dreamer designing castles in the air and proving that bumblebees can't fly. 60

Such men can work together, but it takes a competent referee. Neither George Lewis nor H.J.E. Reid was equal to the task. When Reid took over as engineer-in-charge at Langley, he promptly locked horns with Munk over the latter's habit of communicating directly with headquarters.61 Reid viewed Munk as just another staff member of the laboratory; Munk saw himself as an eminence of sorts, with special

A handful of men were capable of both science and engineering. One such was Theodore von Kármán (the dramatic figure in the center), shown at Langley laboratory during a visit to the United States in 1926. Like Max Munk (front row, third from left), von Kármán was a protege of Ludwig Prandtl, who immigrated to the United States and influenced the course of the NACA's history. (LaRC)

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privileges. Still, things might have been smoothed over had Munk not run afoul of George Lewis. The NACA records do not reveal exactly what the dispute was about, but they do show that it was intense, personal, and bitter. Munk later called Lewis a "liar and a slanderer,' accusations that appear entirely at odds with Lewis's reputation. 62 Lewis for his part could barely bring himself to deal with Munk even years after the dispute. Whatever it was that brought the two men to such a pass ended Munk's career with the NACA forever, and it ended as well the role of the brilliant, eccentric, independent scientist on the Committee staff. There would be other scientists in the NACA, even brilliant ones who would make substantial theoretical contributions to the field of aeronautics, but never again would there be a prima donna working independently of the engineering team. Lewis's fight with Munk was personal, but it climaxed a running dispute that was essentially professional and philosophical. The engineers won.

The departure of Munk was a watershed in the history of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Lewis now reigned at the top of a hierarchy that would direct the course of NACA research for the next twenty years. Munk and Bothezat had given the young committee theoretical guidance in its formative years, but now Lewis meant to replace their volatile genius with a research process, a well-oiled machine that would make aeronautical progress routine. As the Annual Report declared in 1926, the year of Munk's departure:

Reviewers of the progress in aerodynamics in the past have usually found that the theory had advanced at a greater rate than its practical application. This is a natural phase in the development of a new science. However, it is apparent that the time has now arrived when the main theoretical foundation has been laid and we may expect in the future to find extensions of and additions to existing theory rather than new fundamental conceptions. We are therefore entering into a phase of refined and applied theory, as shown by the developments during the past year. This phase demands that theory be developed in detail to fit peculiar requirements or to explain unusual phenomena.

The annual report of the previous year had set the tone: "There is nothing in sight at this time to indicate the probability of the discovery of a revolutionary principle contributing any great or sudden improvement in aircraft," it said, 63 blind to the fact that discoveries are by definition out of sight. Gone with Munk and Bothezat were the vision and conceptualization with which they hoped to guide and inform NACA research. They were always looking for revolutionary principles; with helicopters, jet propulsion, swept wings, and countless other discoveries yet to be made, their belief in creative imagination would seem to have as much merit as the conservatism of the NACA.

Not to George Lewis, however. To him, the "scientific study of the problems of flight" was a means, not an end. The end was “their practical solution," and upon that goal he focused. He set himself and his staff on the road to refining flight as it then existed. The process he established by 1926 was based on the belief that a smoothly running research organization holds the greatest promise of technological progress. In 1926 he sent to H.J.E. Reid a long quotation that captured his notion of how the NACA should work:

A research organization is a body of scientists that are combined through system and regulation into a coordinated whole. Every successful research-laboratory director is an organizationist, a believer in the smoothly operating machine of management. All of his research men work together for a common end.

The value of direct cooperation, or concerted teamwork, among the members of a research laboratory cannot be overemphasized. There should be no tendency toward purely individualistic work; an appreciation of the importance of mass action in achieving results should be firmly established from the start..

No research man is a complete unit of himself. He requires the contact, the stimulus, and the driving power that are generated by his association with other research men, in his own organization, as well as at meetings of professional societies.64

No room there for a Max Munk. For better or for worse, the NACA by 1926 was committed to a research philosophy that valued process over prescience, the team over the individual, experiment over theory, engineering over science, incremental refinement of the existing paradigm over revolutionary creation of new paradigms. On this commitment the NACA built its success and prepared its downfall. 65

5

Working With Industry, 1926-1930

The years 1926 and 1927 witnessed dramatic changes in both American aviation and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. The Air Commerce Act established for the first time official government control and support of civilian aviation. The navy and army aircraft-building programs ensured strong aviation arms in both services and produced "the only time during [the first half century of American aviation] when the United States had a consistent, planned policy in peacetime for maintaining a healthy level of aircraft production." The American aircraft industry emerged from its postwar slump and enjoyed a period of sustained growth and prosperity.1

By far the most dramatic catalyst to the advancement of American aviation in the second half of the 1920s was Charles A. Lindbergh. His solo flight from New York to Paris in the summer of 1927 caught the imagination and the hearts of the American people as had no other event in the twentieth century. Overnight, he became a hero and aviation gained a popularity and respectability that the Wright brothers, Eddie Rickenbacker, and Billy Mitchell had been unable to bestow upon it. "More than any other single factor," historian John B. Rae has observed, "his flight sold the American people on commercial aviation." Even the NACA felt the immediate popular impact. Lewis wrote to John J. Ide in September of 1927 that "since the Lindbergh flight the business of our Intelligence Office has increased practically 100 per cent." There was a fever in the land to know about aviation, perhaps even to give it a try.

THE NACA STYLE

As these events were changing American aviation, the NACA was also changing. At the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, Max Munk was out and Henry J.E. Reid was in. The triumph of engineering over science did not entirely please the Committee, but there seemed