8

What Price Victory, 1941–1945

For the NACA, World War II began in 1937 with the discovery of the aeronautical research being conducted in Germany. The Committee then realized that it had fallen behind in aeronautical development and that the danger for the United States was increasing as war approached. By the time Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the NACA was on a self-imposed war footing. The attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into the war merely formalized what the NACA had been doing for several years.

BEFORE PEARL HARBOR

The NACA's most important preparation for the impending war was its construction of two new research laboratories. These projects consumed vast amounts of time and material, distracted and in some cases completely occupied key members of the staffs at both headquarters and the Langley laboratory, and led to a radical change in the way the NACA operated. Recruitment of new staff became more difficult as young men who might otherwise have been attracted to the NACA were considering, or being considered for, military service. Introduction of industry representatives into NACA committees and subcommittees—precipitated by the enlistment of George Mead and others needed to plan the new engine-research facilities-altered the very composition of the agency. It was hard to tell if the changed order of things was due more to the scale of operations the NACA was undertaking, the infusion of new blood, or the sense of urgency that accompanied the approaching war.

Establishment of the new Ames Aeronautical Laboratory (AAL) at Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, California, went as smoothly as could be expected, thanks largely to the cool competence of Smith J. DeFrance, the first and only director the laboratory was to have while it belonged to the NACA. After interrupting his college career to fly in World War I, first for Canada and then for the United States, DeFrance completed

his training in aeronautical engineering at the University of Michigan in 1922 and joined the Langley staff the same year. During the 1930s, he worked on the design and construction of research tunnels and test equipment at Langley and directed research in four of the large tunnels there, thus becoming a natural choice to head the team that would build a new and better LMAL on the west coast. Even before the California laboratory was formally approved by Congress, DeFrance and his team were at work on the preferred site at Sunnyvale, making preparations to construct the laboratory they had designed at Langley.1

As soon as Congress approved the laboratory (in August 1939) the reality began to take shape. Construction of the flight-research building began the following February, the first of the service buildings two months later. In May, work began on a 16-foot high-speed tunnel, fastest of its size in the NACA, and on the first of two 7- by 10-foot workhorse tunnels. When DeFrance took over officially as engineer-incharge in July 1940, construction was under way on a second 7- by 10foot tunnel, and the first test piles were driven for a 40- by 80-foot fullscale tunnel, larger by a third than its predecessor at Langley. In October 1940 the first research began at Ames; by the time of Pearl

Harbor, the new laboratory had published its first technical report and begun wind-tunnel research.2

In contrast to this rapid progress at Sunnyvale, the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory (AERL) at Cleveland experienced delays and setbacks that upset the early construction schedule and interfered with the successful completion of the first researches. There were several reasons for this weaker start at Cleveland. Congressional approval for this laboratory came later than that for Ames and brought the project into greater competition with other war-related activities for increasingly scarce resources of men and materials. The NACA lacked the expertise to plan and execute such a facility and had to rely on outside experts unaccustomed to its methods. The logical man from the Langley engine-research staff to head the new laboratory proved unacceptable to George Mead and others and was bypassed in favor of Edward Ray Sharp, who was recalled from Ames in 1941. A self-made man without benefit of a college degree, Sharp had joined the Langley laboratory in 1922 as an airplane rigger. Three years later he was administrative officer of the laboratory, a post he held until 1940 when he was sent to administer the building program at Sunnyvale. He was chosen for the Cleveland job because of his common sense and administrative ability, but he lacked the technical expertise that Smith DeFrance could call upon in establishing the Ames laboratory.3

When Sharp took over the Langley team working on the Cleveland laboratory in August 1941, more than a year after Congress approved funds for the project, not a single building had been completed. Caught up in the outbreak of war, the project soon fell even further behind. Drastic measures were required to get it back on schedule. The Langley team drafting plans for the laboratory was transferred to temporary quarters in Cleveland. Experts from the aircraft engine industry were brought in as consultants. Permission was sought and received to let new contracts for the laboratory on a cost-plus-fixed-fee basis rather than the lump-sum basis previously used. Pressure was put on contractors to meet their deadlines, and the Committee threatened them and their bonding companies with penalties if they failed to comply. The Army-Navy Munitions Board assigned the highest possible priority rating to the project, as did the Aircraft Division of the War Production Board, facilitating the purchase of critical supplies. And Congress granted additional funds to meet the escalating expenses incurred by these actions and by upward revision of the original estimates of what the laboratory should comprise and how much that would cost.4

Because of these actions, the laboratory was able to begin research in June 1942 and formally opened in April 1943, nine months ahead of the originally predicted completion date. But the cost was more than twice the original estimate, and the results were not as sterling as many

had hoped. In September 1943 an informed army source reported that "the Army is very much discouraged by the lack of results at AERL," contrasting this with the "excellent results put out by AAL.”5 In general he felt that AERL was not providing timely information, not providing the right information, and apparently not working quickly enough. No doubt many shortcomings could be attributed to the circumstances of the laboratory's planning and construction, but for whatever reason, the laboratory had gotten off on the wrong foot with the NACA's most important customer.

The beleaguered staff at Cleveland might have been comforted to know it was not alone: the Washington office was caught up in its own prewar scuffle for facilities and in many ways fared worse. In 1940 Victory asked for more space in the Navy Building, where the NACA had been housed since 1920, because, he said, "It is of vital importance that our activity remain . . . in immediate proximity to the air organizations of the Army and Navy." In reply, the navy shunted the Committee's offices to the eighth-wing penthouse, letting it be known that "if Mr. Victory does much kicking about this space assignment he may find himself kicked out of the Navy Building." Apparently Victory did kick-as was his wont-and the following year the navy pressured