1939

From The Space Library

P-41 with R-1830 engine was provided by NACA's Pinkel, Turner, and Voss with separate stacks for each cylinder, thus providing 14 jet exhausts which increased speed of aircraft from 13 to 18 mph between 10,000 and 20,000 feet. Applied to A-20 later, an increase of 45 mph was attained.

Curtiss P-40 fighter powered with Allison V-1710-33, with top speed of 357 mph, first ordered in quantity.

Basic concepts for NACA's combined loads testing machine were proposed by E. E. Lundquist and J. N. Kotanchik of Langley Laboratory. After refinements by others, construction was started in 1940 and much testing performed before completion and operation of the fixed-component machine in 1949. The combined loads testing machine was the first capable of applying positive and negative forces along each of three axes, and positive and negative moments about these axes, in any combination of forces and moments, each applied independently. Still in use in 1960, this machine was used extensively on combined loads and moments on shell-type structures for all types of flight vehicles.

During 1939-40: Original design of North American B-25 Mitchell bomber required 200,000 engineering man-hours ; later wartime modification of this airplane (9,800 completed by end of 1945) accounted for a total of more than 4,830,000 engineering man-hours.

During Summer: Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, and Eugene Wigner interested President Roosevelt, through Alexander Sachs, in the potential military importance of uranium. The President appointed an Advisory Committee on Uranium under the chairmanship of Dr. Lyman Briggs, Director of the National Bureau of Standards.

Total complement of NACA was 523 persons, of which only 278 were classified as technical personnel.