From aviation's earliest beginnings, to Orville and Wilber Wright's historic flight in 1903, through the beginning of World War I, the U.S. was always competing to be the best in flight. Concerned with increasing hostilities in Europe and that the U.S. might have fallen behind some European nations in several aviation areas, the U.S. government eventually became more active in basic aviation research.
NACA. Congress established an Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (ACA) in 1915, twelve years after the Wright brothers flew the world's first plane in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. According to a NASA history of the committee:
The enabling legislation for the [committee] slipped through almost unnoticed as a rider attached to the Naval Appropriation Bill, on 3 March 1915. It was a traditional example of American political compromise.
During one of its early meetings, the organization changed its name to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Originally, the committee budget outlay was only $5,000. It consisted of 12 unpaid people, including two individuals from the War Department, two from the Navy Department, one each from the Smithsonian Institution, the Weather Bureau, and the Bureau of Standards, and five more members acquainted with aeronautics. NACA essentially pulled together the nation's top aeronautical experts from the military, academia, and the sciences that eventually included such early pioneers as the Wright brothers, Charles Lindbergh, Jimmy Doolittle, and Eddie Rickenbacker. NACA's main function was to serve as an advisory board to the private sector and other government agencies working on aviation issues.
World War I and World War II resulted in the incremental development of government scientific research facilities throughout the U.S. to help design advanced planes to support America's war efforts. These planes included several World War II air platforms, such as the Lockheed P-38 Lightening, the Bell P-39 Aircobra, the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, the Consolidated B-24 Liberator and the U.S. Navy's PBY Catalina. NACA would eventually establish the precedent of government/business partnerships in space technology.
Operation Paperclip. After World War II, both the Soviet Union and the United States acquired substantial aeronautical expertise from German scientists. In the U.S., "Operation Paperclip" would focus on acquiring as many German rocket scientists as possible to help the U.S. military. But NACA also benefited from some of their early rocketry ideas. One of NACA's major contributions to advanced aeronautical design was the development of the X-1 test plane. U.S. Air Force Captain Charles "Chuck" Yeager, a former World War II fighter ace turned test pilot, used the X-1 to break the sound barrier on October 14, 1947.
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