The Making of an Engineer

Richard Travis Whitcomb was born on February 21, 1921, in Evanston, IL, and grew up in Worcester, MA. He was the eldest of four children in a family led by mathematician-engineer Kenneth F. Whitcomb.[136] Whitcomb was one of the many air-minded American children building and testing aircraft models throughout the 1920s and 1930s.[137] At the age of 12, he created an aeronautical laboratory in his family’s basement. Whitcomb spent the majority of his time there building, flying, and innovating rub – berband-powered model airplanes, with the exception of reluctantly eating, sleeping, and going to school. He never had a desire to fly him­self, but, in his words, he pursued aeronautics for the "fascination of making a model that would fly.” One innovation Whitcomb developed was a propeller that folded back when it stopped spinning to reduce aerodynamic drag. He won several model airplane contests and was a prizewinner in the Fisher Body Company automobile model competi­tion; both were formative events for young American men who would become the aeronautical engineers of the 1940s. Even as a young man, Whitcomb exhibited an enthusiastic drive that could not be diverted until the challenge was overcome.[138]

A major influence on Whitcomb during his early years was his pater­nal grandfather, who had left farming in Illinois to become a manufac­turer of mechanical vending machines. Independent and driven, the grandfather was also an acquaintance of Thomas A. Edison. Whitcomb listened attentively to his grandfather’s stories about Edison and soon came to idolize the inventor for his ideas as well as for his freethinking individuality.[139] The admiration for his grandfather and for Edison shaped Whitcomb’s approach to aeronautical engineering.

Whitcomb received a scholarship to nearby Worcester Polytechnic Institute and entered the prestigious school’s engineering program in 1939. He lived at home to save money and spent the majority of his time in the institute’s wind tunnel. Interested in helping with the war effort, Whitcomb’s senior project was the design of a guided bomb. He graduated with distinction with a bachelor’s of science degree in mechanical engineering. A 1943 Fortune magazine article on the NACA convinced Whitcomb to join the Government-civilian research facility at Hampton, VA.[140]

Airplanes ventured into a new aerodynamic regime, the so-called "transonic barrier,” as Whitcomb entered into his second year at Worcester. At speeds approaching Mach 1, aircraft experienced sudden changes in stability and control, extreme buffeting, and, most impor­tantly, a dramatic increase in drag, which exposed three challenges to the aeronautical community, involving propulsion, research facili­ties, and aerodynamics. The first challenge involved the propeller and piston-engine propulsion system. The highly developed and reliable sys­tem was at a plateau and incapable of powering the airplane in the tran­sonic regime. The turbojet revolution brought forth by the introduction of jet engines in Great Britain and Germany in the early 1940s provided the power needed for transonic flight. The latter two challenges directly involved the NACA and, to an extent, Dick Whitcomb, during the course of the 1940s. Bridging the gap between subsonic and supersonic speeds was a major aerodynamic challenge.[141]

Little was known about the transonic regime, which falls between Mach 0.8 and 1.2. Aeronautical engineers faced a daunting challenge rooted in developing new tools and concepts. The aerodynamicist’s pri­mary tool, the wind tunnel, was unable to operate and generate data at transonic speeds. Four approaches were used in lieu of an available wind tunnel in the 1940s for transonic research. One way to generate data for speeds beyond 350 mph was through aircraft diving at terminal velocity, which was dangerous for test pilots and of limited value for aeronauti­cal engineers. Moreover, a representative drag-weight ratio for a 1940- era airplane ensured that it was unable to exceed Mach 0.8. Another way was the use of a falling body, an instrumented missile dropped from the bomb bay of a Boeing B-29 Superfortress. A third method was the wing-flow model. NACA personnel mounted a small, instrumented air­foil on top of the wing of a North American P-51 Mustang fighter. The Mustang traveled at high subsonic speeds and provided a recoverable method in real-time conditions. Finally, the NACA launched small mod­els mounted atop rockets from the Wallops Island facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.[142] The disadvantages for these three methods were that they only generated data for short periods of time and that there were many variables regarding conditions that could affect the tests.

Even if a wind tunnel existed that was capable of evaluating aircraft at transonic speeds, there was no concept that guaranteed a successful transonic aircraft design. A growing base of knowledge in supersonic aircraft design emerged in Europe beginning in the 1930s. Jakob Ackeret operated the first wind tunnel capable of generating Mach 2 in Zurich, Switzerland, and designed tunnels for other countries. The international high-speed aerodynamics community met at the Volta Conference held in Rome in 1935. A paper presented by German aerodynamicist Adolf Busemann argued that if aircraft designers swept the wing back from the fuselage, it would offset the increase in drag beyond speeds of Mach 1. Busemann offered a revolutionary answer to the problem of high-speed aerodynamics and the sound barrier. In retrospect, the Volta Conference proved to be a turning point in high-speed aerodynamics research, espe­cially for Nazi Germany. In 1944, Dietrich Kuchemann discovered that a contoured fuselage resembling the now-iconic Coca-Cola soft drink bot­tle was ideal when combined with Busemann’s swept wings. American researcher Robert T. Jones independently discovered the swept wing at NACA Langley almost a decade after the Volta Conference. Jones was a respected Langley aerodynamicist, and his five-page 1945 report pro­vided a standard definition of the aerodynamics of a swept wing. The report appeared at the same time that high-speed aerodynamic infor­mation from Nazi Germany was reaching the United States.[143]

As the German and American high-speed traditions merged after World War II, the American aeronautical community realized that there were still many questions to be answered regarding high-speed flight. Three NACA programs in the late 1940s and early 1950s overcame the remaining aerodynamic and facility "barriers” in what John Becker char­acterized as "one of the most effective team efforts in the annals of aero­nautics.” The National Aeronautics Association recognized these NACA achievements three times through aviation’s highest award, the Collier Trophy, for 1947, 1951, and 1954. The first award, for the achievement of supersonic flight by the X-1, was presented jointly to John Stack of the NACA, manufacturer Lawrence D. Bell, and Air Force test pilot Capt. Charles E. "Chuck” Yeager. The second award in 1952 recognized the slotted transonic tunnel development pioneered by John Stack and his associates at NACA Langley.[144] The third award recognized the direct byproduct of the development of a wind tunnel in which the visionary mind of Dick Whitcomb developed the design concept that would enable aircraft to efficiently transition from subsonic to supersonic speeds through the transonic regime.