SCW Takes to the Air

Langley and the Flight Research Center entered into a joint program out­lined in a November 1968 memorandum. Loftin and Whitcomb lead a Langley team responsible for defining the overall objectives, determining the wing contours and construction tolerances, and conducting wind tun­nel tests during the flight program. Flight Research Center personnel deter­mined the size, weight, and balance of the wing; acquired the F-8A airframe and managed the modification program; and conducted the flight research program. North American Rockwell won the contract for the supercriti­cal wing and delivered it to the Flight Research Center in November 1970 at a cost of $1.8 million. Flight Research Center technicians installed the new wing on a Navy surplus TF-8A trainer.[214] At the onset of the flight pro­gram, Whitcomb predicted the new wing design would allow airliners to cruise 100 mph faster and close to the speed of sound (nearly 660 mph) at an altitude of 45,000 feet with the same amount of power.[215]

NASA test pilot Thomas C. McMurtry took to the air in the F-8 Supercritical Wing flight research vehicle on March 9, 1971. Eighty-six flights later, the program ended on May 23, 1973. A pivotal document gen­erated during the program was Supercritical Wing Technology—A Progress Report on Flight Evaluations, which captured the ongoing results of the program. From the standpoint of actually flying the F-8, McMurtry noted that: "the introduction of the supercritical wing is not expected to create any serious problems in day-to-day transport operations.” The combined flight and wind tunnel tests revealed increased efficiency of commercial aircraft by 15 percent and, more importantly, a 2.5-percent increase in profits. In the high-stakes business of international commercial aviation, the supercritical wing and its ability to increase the range, speed, and fuel efficiency of subsonic jet aircraft without an increase in required power or additional weight was a revolutionary new innovation.[216]

NASA went beyond flight tests with the F-8, which was a flight-test vehicle built specifically for proving the concept. The Transonic Aircraft Technology (TACT) program was a joint NASA-U. S. Air Force partner­ship begun in 1972 that investigated the application of supercritical wing technology to future combat aircraft. The program evaluated a modified General Dynamics F-111A variable-sweep tactical aircraft to ascertain its overall performance, handling qualities, and transonic maneuver­ability and to define the local aerodynamics of the airfoil and determine wake drag. Whitcomb worked directly with General Dynamics and the Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory on the concept.[217] NASA worked to refine the supercritical wing, and its resultant theory through continued comparison of wind tunnel and flight tests that continued the Langley and Flight Research Center collaboration.[218]

Whitcomb developed the supercritical airfoil using his logical cut – and-try procedures. Ironically, what was considered to be an unso­phisticated research technique in the second half of the 20th century, a process John Becker called "Edisonian,” yielded the complex super­critical airfoil. The key, once again, was the fact that the researcher, Whitcomb, possessed "truly unusual insights and intuitions.”[219] Whitcomb used his intuitive imagination to search for a solution over the course of 8 years. Mathematicians verified his work after the fact and created a formula for use by the aviation industry.[220] Whitcomb received patent No. 3,952,971 for his supercritical wing in May 1976. NASA possessed the rights to granting licenses, and several foreign nations already had filed patent applications.[221]

The spread of the supercritical wing to the aviation industry was slow in the late 1970s. There was no doubt that the supercritical wing possessed the potential of saving the airline industry $300 million annu­ally. Both Government experts and the airlines agreed on its new impor­tance. Unfortunately, the reality of the situation in the mid-1970s was that the purchase of new aircraft or conversion of existing aircraft would cost the airlines millions of dollars, and it was estimated that $1.5 bil­lion in fuel costs would be lost before the transition would be com­pleted. The impetus would be a fuel crisis like the Arab oil embargo, during which the price per gallon increased from 12 to 30 cents within the space of a year.[222]

The introduction of the supercritical wing on production aircraft centered on the Air Force’s Advanced Medium Short Take-Off and Landing (STOL) Transport competition between McDonnell-Douglas and Boeing to replace the Lockheed C-130 Hercules in the early 1970s. The McDonnell-Douglas design, the YC-15, was the first large transport with supercritical wings in 1975. Neither the YC-15 nor the Boeing YC-14 replaced the Hercules because of the cancellation of the competition, but their wings represented to the press an "exotic advance” that pro­vided new levels of aircraft fuel economy in an era of growing fuel costs.[223]

During the design process of the YC-14, Boeing aerodynamicists also selected a supercritical airfoil for the wing. They based their decision on previous research with the 747 airliner wing, data from Whitcomb’s research at Langley, and the promising performance of a Navy T-2C Buckeye that North American Aviation modified with a supercritical air­foil to gain experience for the F-8 wing project and undergoing flight tests in November 1969. Boeing’s correlation of wind tunnel and flight test data convinced the company to introduce supercritical airfoils on the YC-14 and for all of its subsequent commercial transports, includ­ing the triumphant "paperless” airplane, the 777 of the 1990s.[224]

The business jet community embraced the supercritical wing in the increasingly fuel – and energy-conscious 1970s. Business jet pioneer Bill Lear incorporated the new technology in the Canadair Challenger 600, which took to the air in 1978. Rockwell International incorporated the technology into the upgraded Sabreliner 65 of 1979. The extensively redesigned Dassault Falcon 50, introduced the same year, relied upon a supercritical wing that enabled an over-3,000-mile range.[225]

The supercritical wing program gave NASA the ability to stay in the public eye, as it was an obvious contribution to aeronautical technol­ogy. The program also improved public relations and the stature of both Langley and Dryden at a time in the 1960s and 1970s when the first "A” in NASA—aeronautics—was secondary to the single "S”—space. For this reason, historian Richard P. Hallion has called the supercritical wing program "Dryden’s life blood” in the early 1970s.[226]

Subsonic transports, business jets, STOL aircraft, and uncrewed aerial vehicles incorporate supercritical wing technology today.[227] All airliners today have supercritical airfoils custom-designed and fine – tuned by manufacturers with computational fluid dynamics software programs. There is no NASA supercritical airfoil family like the signifi­cant NACA four – and five-airfoil families. The Boeing 777 wing embod­ies a Whitcomb heritage. This revolutionary information appeared in NASA technical notes (TN) and other publications with little or no fan­fare and through direct consultation with Whitcomb. A Lockheed engi­neer and former employee of Whitcomb in the late 1960s remarked on his days at NASA Langley:

When I was working for Dick Whitcomb at NASA, there was hardly a week that went by that some industry person did not come in to see him. It was a time when NASA was being constantly asked for technical advice, and Dick always gave that advice freely. He was always there when industry wanted him to help out. This is the kind of cooperation that makes industry want to work with NASA. As a result of that sharing, we have seen the influence of supercritical technology to go just about every corner of our industry.[228]

Whitcomb set the stage and the direction of contemporary air-craft design.

More accolades were given to Whitcomb by the Government and industry during the years he worked on the supercritical wing. From NASA, he received the Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1969, and 5 years later, NASA Administrator James Fletcher awarded Whitcomb $25,000 in cash for the invention of the supercritical wing from NASA in June 1974. The NASA Inventions and Contributions Board recommended the cash prize to recognize individual contributions to the Agency’s programs. It was the largest cash award given to an individual at NASA.[229] In 1969, Whitcomb accepted the Sylvanus Albert Reed Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the organi­zation’s highest honor for achievement in aerospace engineering. In 1973, President Richard M. Nixon presented him the highest honor for science and technology awarded by the U. S. Government, the National Medal of Science.[230] The National Aeronautics Association bestowed upon Whitcomb the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy in 1974 for his dual achievements in developing the area rule and supercritical wing.[231]