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NASA LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER - THE FIRST CENTER - THE EARLY YEARS by Amy Waters Yarsinske
While humankind dreamt of soaring through the air like
birds for more than two thousand years, it has only
been since the Wright brothers – Orville and Wilbur – made
the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered heavierthan-air
aircraft on December 17, 1903, four miles south
of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, that it became reality. Just
fourteen years later, in 1917, the United States established
the first civilian laboratory dedicated to the study of flight and
located it on the banks of the Back River, an estuarine inlet
of the Chesapeake Bay in Hampton, Virginia, and bordering
what was known just then as Langley Field. Founded as
the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics [NACA],
today’s Langley Research Center [LaRC] is the oldest
National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA] field
center.
In an oft repeated story, Edwin Carroll Kilgore, employed
by NASA from 1944 to 1982 and who served as head of
Langley’s engineering department, the state of the nation’s
aviation enterprise was well behind that in Europe. “Just
prior to the first world war, Jerome Clarke Hunsaker Ph.D.
(1886 – 1984) was sent by President [Woodrow] Wilson to
look at aeronautics in Europe. We had about thirty airplanes
at that time. Russia, England, Germany had over one thousand,”
he recalled. “Hunsaker came back telling this sad
story [one that pointed America’s woeful shortage of aircraft].
On that basis Wilson signed an order that we should form an
aeronautical laboratory within an overnight boat or train ride
from Washington, D.C. Langley Field fit that criteria [it is one
hundred and fifty miles south of nation’s capital].”2 Historical
record informs that at the beginning of the First World War
in 1914 – before America’s involvement – the United States
had a mere twenty-three military aircraft, Great Britain four
hundred, Germany one thousand, and France one thousand
four hundred. This dismal situation led prominent scientists
to aggressively push Congress for a remedy. A rider to the
1915 Naval Appropriations Act created the aeronautical
advisory committee to organize research and development,
including an aeronautical research laboratory to which
Kilgore referred. At the first meeting, the group named
itself the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics –
commonly, just NACA. The following year, in 1916, NACA
established the need for a joint airfield and proving ground
for army, navy and NACA aircraft. NACA determined that
the site must be near water for over-water flying, be flat and
relatively clear for expansion and the landing and takeoff of
aircraft, and also near an army post. That same year, the
Army Appropriation Act authorized the purchase of land
for an aviation research and experimentation facility and
appointed a board of officers who searched for the location.
The officers sometimes posed as hunters and fishermen
to avoid potential land speculation that might arise if the
government’s interest in purchasing the land was revealed.
Of the fifteen tracts the board considered for this purpose,
the site now occupied by Langley Air Force Base and NASA
Langley Research Center was chosen. A citizens’ committee
purchased ninety-day options on property situated in the
Moorefield, Bloomfield, Poole, Lamington and Sherwood
plantations. By the end of that year, the federal government
had acquired 1,659.4 acres from the citizens’ committee,
of which a small parcel was designated just then for use by
NACA. The tract stretched along the Back River for some
two-and-a-half miles and was one-and-a-quarter miles wide.
The NACA established a yet unnamed aeronautical research
facility in 1917 and collocated it with Langley Field,
the Aviation Section of the United States Army Signal Corps
operation in Elizabeth City County – now Hampton – also
named for flight pioneer Samuel Pierpont Langley. Langley
Field and the NACA began parallel growth as army and
navy aircraft proved the utility of air power during the First
World War although it is important to note that the war was
over before NACA’s nascent field station commenced useful
operations. NACA was created to supervise and direct the
scientific study of the problems of flight and provide a way
forward with practical solutions while Langley Field, authorized
in June 1917, was built as a joint experimental airfield
and proving ground for aircraft; it would be from Langley
Field that army brigadier general William Lendrum “Billy”
Mitchell, who would be regarded later as the father of the
United States Air Force, took off for the historic test bombing
of obsolete warships off the Virginia Capes after the First
World War. But it was not until June 11, 1920, when the
NACA’s first wind tunnel was dedicated, that the nation’s
first aeronautical research center had its true beginning as a
permanent site staffed by its own employees, in its own facilities,
and with its own program of aeronautical research.
During the 1920s and 1930s, many significant NACA research
projects added to man’s knowledge of flight and the
agency’s work became internationally known and respected.
But it was not until the start of the Second World War that
Langley began to grow. By 1942, NACA needed additional
room for expansion and started acquiring land to the west of
the Langley Field military reservation. Private land purchased
at this time included the Cloverdale Plantation. The
remaining three hundred and five acres of Chesterville were
condemned and purchased by NACA eight years later. But a
new global conflict did something else, something far more
important. For most of first half century of its existence, the
Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory [LMAL] and later
just the LAL would concentrate on aerodynamic research
involving airframe and propulsion engine design and
performance, the results of which were made available to
government, industry and others. Suddenly faced with war in
Europe and the threat of expansion of aeronautical research
facilities by other nations, the NACA realized that further intensification
of research was desperately needed if America
was to continue its leadership in the technical development
of aircraft. During the war, in early 1943, Langley expanded
its mission to include rocket research, leading to the establishment
of a flight station at Wallops Island, Virginia. The resulting
rapid expansion of research facilities at Langley and
Wallops Island brought forth startling developments such
that by the end of the war, new turbojet and rocket engines
made possible unmanned flight in the upper atmosphere at
supersonic speeds. The power available in these newly developed
turbojet and rocket engines opened vast new areas
of research concerned with the many problems encountered
in supersonic, and later, hypersonic flight. A further expansion
of the rocket research program effectively permitted
Langley to orbit payloads. Successful research launched
the United States into the Space Age and contributed greatly
to the growth of Langley.
“No place has played a larger role in the history of American
flight technology or flight technology in general than
Langley Research Center,” observed Tom D. Crouch Ph.D.,
D.H.L., an aeronautics historian and senior curator with the
Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum.
“It’s hard to think of an airliner in the air today that doesn’t
have Langley’s signature on it. It’s hard to think of a military
airplane flying today that Langley wasn’t involved with in
one way or another.” Langley research established many of
the basic building blocks of aeronautics, changed the shape
of aircraft and paved the way for jet aircraft that could fly at
supersonic speed. Whether it is testing airbags for space
capsule landings, developing technologies to allow aircraft
to fly at supersonic and hypersonic speeds, or studying
Earth’s atmosphere, NASA Langley remains on the leading
edge as it has since 1917.
The first of two NASA Langley Research Center first century
books, THE EARLY YEARS is on sale November 19.
The second volume covering the post-World War II to space
program will be released in March 2019. You can order the
first 192-page volume online or visit your favorite bookstore.
https://www.amazon.com/NASA-Langley-Research-Cen-
ter-Century/dp/1634990749/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UT-
F8&qid=1541076649&sr=1-1&keywords=Yarsinske+NASA
“No place has played a larger role in the history of American flight technology or flight
technology in general than Langley Research Center,” observed Tom D. Crouch Ph.D.,
D.H.L., an aeronautics historian and senior curator with the Smithsonian Institution’s
National Air and Space Museum. “It’s hard to think of an airliner in the air today that
doesn’t have Langley’s signature on it. It’s hard to think of a military airplane flying
today that Langley wasn’t involved with in one way or another.”
Langley research established many of the basic building blocks of aeronautics, changed
the shape of aircraft and paved the way for jet aircraft that could fly at supersonic speed.
Whether it is testing airbags for space capsule landings, developing technologies to
allow aircraft to fly at supersonic and hypersonic speeds, or studying Earth’s atmosphere,
NASA Langley remains on the leading edge as it has since 1917.
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NASA LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER
THE EARLY YEARS AMY WATERS YARSINSKE
AMY WATERS YARSINSKE
NASA LANGLEY
RESEARCH CENTER
THE FIRST CENTURY
THE EARLY YEARS