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was put through the tow tank testing at Langley, from fighters to bombers … very detailed tests of how to go about ditching those airplanes, the attitude, the landing gear up and down. People had a lot of different ideas about how to put an airplane in the water. Such things as, ‘Well, what you need to do is enter the water by having one of the tips hit first to make the airplane spin around.’ That turned out to have been one of the most violent approaches that could have been selected based on these tests. Throughout the war, being able to document and specify the optimum way to ditch these airplanes was an important output. After the war, this carried on into commercial aircraft in the test of the 707 that was put into a data base, and although Sully [Capt. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger, pilot of U.S. Airways Flight 1549, the flight that ditched successfully in the Hudson River in 2009] probably never picked up an NACA report, it was certainly the foundation of how the ditching approaches were going to be used.” By 1944, the professional world took note of NACA’s essential role. In a January editorial, the journal Aviation stated, “How much is it worth to this country to make sure we won’t find the Luftwaffe our superiors when we start that ‘Second Front’? We spend in one night over Berlin more than $20 million. The NACA requires – now – $17,546,700 for this year’s work. These raids are prime factors in winning the War. How can we do more towards Victory than by spending the price of one air raid in research which will keep our Air Forces in the position which the NACA has made possible?”
M The 1946 Collier Trophy was awarded to Lewis A. Rodert of Ames Aeronautical Laboratory for the development of an efficient wing deicing system. This Consolidated B-24 Liberator was modified by the NACA for studies on the effects of in-flight icing on all aerosurfaces, such as the wings, tail, engine cowlings, nose, props, and antennae.
Such is the legacy of a group that Launius said before the war “was a hobby shop.” The requirements of World War II fundamentally changed the NACA. They forced it to become bigger, to tackle new research challenges, and to address applied as well as basic research. The demands of the war also prepared NACA to assume a larger role in our national life when it would take on more complex aeronautical issues and the initial stages of the looming age of rocketry and spaceflight. l
1. Throughout the war, the NACA battled with the Selective Service System to keep the military from inducting its best personnel. A late war compromise allowed NACA engineers to be drafted and perform their service duties at NACA facilities. 2. Prior to the fall of France in 1940, Ide escaped to London and spent the remainder of the war conducting intelligence work for the Allies. 3. NACA reporting at the time showed aerodynamics research papers outnumbered propulsion research papers by a 4:1 ratio. 4. Roland, Alex, Model Research: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics 1915-1958, Volume 1, Washington, D.C., NASA, Science and Technical Information Branch, 1985, p. 167 5. Chambers, Joseph R., Cave of the Winds: The Remarkable History of the Langley Full-Scale Wind Tunnel, 2014, NASA.
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