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ReseaRch a n d developmenT In T h e aIR fo R c e 79
R&D command, separate from the Air Materiel Command. Endorsed by Putt,
Arnold, Fairchild, and Vandenberg, the Ridenour Report served as the founding
document for the new Air Research and Development Command, established
in January 1950. Putt became director of R&D under Maj. Gen. Gordon
Saville, whom Vandenberg appointed to serve as the first deputy chief of staff,
development. Ridenour, meanwhile, agreed to serve as chief science advisor. 30
Although organizationally independent of the Air Materiel Command, the
new Air Research and Development Command was not as autonomous as it may
have appeared to outside observers. Initially, AMC controlled ARDC’s budget,
and it also managed research and development contracts with private-sector
institutions. 31 Moreover, the founding of ARDC underscored the long-standing
difficulties of trying to set clear boundaries between research and development and
the institutional environments in which they were expected to flourish. Shortly
after ARDC was established, the Air Staff began the process of separating the
R&D functions previously assigned to the Air Materiel Command. Brig. Gen.
Donald Keirn, ARDC’s deputy chief of staff for research, suggested that all inhouse
research in the new command be combined into one centralized laboratory.
Ridenour rejected Keirn’s proposal outright on ideological and practical grounds.
Expecting to cover all of the technical fields of interest to the Air Force in a single
laboratory was simply unrealistic. Far better to accumulate a broad knowledge
base in science and engineering from private-sector R&D institutions through
contracting agencies such as the Office of Air Research. Ridenour also argued
that in-house research should be limited to work that the Air Force was uniquely
qualified to handle—testing and evaluation of aircraft and other weapon
systems. Moreover, he believed that “a good government laboratory is usually
inferior to its civilian equivalent,” a view that was not uncommon among other
scientists whose professional standards often reflected the academic elitism
of the university. 32 To be sure, all of these views and opinions were gradually
incorporated into ARDC’s internal laboratory structure, that is to say Ridenour’s
support for contracting through the growth and diversification of OAR and its
organizational descendent—the Office of Scientific Research—and Keirn’s
predilection for in-house R&D facilities as evidenced by the expansion of several
Air Force laboratories dedicated to electronics and materials research.
To some extent, however, historians have incorporated the differing views
of Keirn, Ridenour, and other participants into their own interpretations
and analyses of events, culminating in the formation of the Air Research and
30 “Deputy Chief of Staff, Development” was the new name assigned to the position previously titled
“Deputy Chief of Staff for Research and Development” given in the Ridenour Report. Johnson, The United
States Air Force and the Culture of Innovation, 38, 43; Gorn, Vulcan’s Forge, 5–9, 12–17.
31 “R&D Command: New AF Group at Dayton Indicates Greater Stress on Basic Research,” Aviation
Week 53 (6 November 1950): 15; Johnson, The United States Air Force and the Culture of Innovation, 192;
Gorn, Vulcan’s Forge, 63–66.
32 Ridenour quoted in Sigethy, “The Air Force Organization for Basic Research,” 44; Komons, Science
and the Air Force, 22–23. On academic perceptions of government science during this period, see, for
example, Thomas C. Lassman, “Government Science in Postwar America: Henry A. Wallace, Edward U.
Condon, and the Transformation of the National Bureau of Standards, 1945–1951,” Isis 96 (March 2005):
25–51.