To download as a PDF click here - US Army Center Of Military History

ReseaRch a n d developmenT In T h e aIR fo R c e 81
funds for aeronautical R&D, the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics. 36 This massive
technical effort was managed and coordinated through the directorate of
research and development in the Air Materiel Command, located at the newly
named Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. 37 When the Air
Research and Development Command was established in 1950, however,
AMC’s R&D functions shifted to more narrow pursuits—trouble-shooting
problems and making appropriate modifications to new aircraft, a process AMC
managers called “support engineering.” This type of work had a long history
at AMC—“That is what AMC’s research and development people have been
doing for some time,” Aviation Week observed in 1950. 38 As the new hub of
research and development for the Air Force, ARDC’s institutional growth and
diversification proceeded along two separate but related trajectories. Internal
expansion of the laboratories and testing facilities previously operated by the
Air Materiel Command was matched by a major increase in R&D outsourcing
to industry and academia. In 1953, for example, nearly 90 percent of ARDC’s
research and development budget was distributed through external contracts
to 1,520 industrial firms and 160 colleges, universities, and other nonprofit
R&D organizations. 39
The Air Materiel Command’s largest in-house R&D facility, comprising
more than a dozen separate laboratories in three divisions (engineering, flight
testing, and all-weather flying), was located at Wright-Patterson Air Force
Base (renamed Wright Air Development Center [WADC] after the transfer
of operations to ARDC). The Air Force consolidated electronics research,
36 Leggin, “Army Air Forces Research and Development,” 2914. Next in line after the Navy Bureau of
Aeronautics ($75 million) were the following agencies and departments: National Advisory Committee
for Aeronautics ($43.5 million), Navy Bureau of Ordnance ($21.5 million), Army Ordnance Department
($11 million), Office of Naval Research ($5 million), Civil Aeronautics Administration ($1.6 million),
and the Weather Bureau ($630,000). Total federal expenditures for R&D in aeronautics and related fields
that year exceeded $300 million. R. McLarren, “Largest Aero Research Program,” Aviation Week 48 (23
February 1948): 45.
37 The mission requirements of the directorate of research and development were met by the
laboratories and testing facilities managed by the engineering division at Wright-Patterson and the allweather
flying division, located at the Clinton County Air Force Base in Wilmington, Ohio. In addition to
research and development, AMC managed two other directorates: procurement and industrial mobilization
planning; and supply and maintenance. B. W. Chidlaw, “New Weapons for Air Supremacy,” Aero Digest 57
(September 1948): 51.
38 “R&D Command: New AF Group at Dayton Indicates Greater Stress on Basic Research,” Aviation
Week 53 (6 November 1950): 15.
39 T. S. Power, “The Air Research and Development Team,” Aeronautical Engineering Review 14 (April
1955): 40. The annual budget of the Office of Scientific Research doubled in 1956 to fund expanded
programs in hypersonics, propulsion methods and fuels, high-temperature studies, and solid-state physics.
See R. Hotz, “USAF Expands Basic Research Program,” Aviation Week 63 (18 July 1955): 12–13. The
rapid growth of the defense establishment in the 1950s prompted many industrial firms to diversify into
lucrative military markets, whereas others merely expanded the output of in-house production units
originally established during World War II to manufacture weapons and other critical materials for the
armed services. Strategic considerations also played a role in this transformation. Businesses turned to
defense production as a hedge against cyclical downturns in civilian markets. “Munitions: A Permanent
U.S. Industry,” Business Week (27 September 1952): 27–28; “The Pentagon’s Top Hands,” Business Week
(20 September 1958): 39. See also A. M. Smythe, “The 25 Biggest Defense Suppliers: Part One,” Magazine
of Wall Street 99 (29 September 1956): 12–14, 51–52; and Smythe, “The 25 Biggest Defense Suppliers:
Part Two,” Magazine of Wall Street 99 (13 October 1956): 65–67, 100.