Fred Weick

Fred Ernest Weick
Portrait of Fred E. Weick, 1936
Born	1899 Berwyn, Illinois
Died	8 July 1993 Vero Beach, Florida
Known for	Aircraft Engineer
Spouse(s)	Dorothy Church
Awards	Daniel Guggenheim Medal (1989)

Fred Ernest Weick (1899 Berwyn, Illinois – July 8, 1993) was one of the United States' earliest aviation pioneers, working as an airmail pilot, research engineer, and aircraft designer. A contemporary of aviation legends Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart, he did not receive the same attention as his more glamorous colleagues, yet his contribution to the United States' struggling aircraft industry was "in the league of the Wright Brothers".

A 1922 graduate of the University of Illinois, he was one of the first university graduates to apply his degree to a career in aeronautics. Weick was also one of the first engineers hired by the original U.S. Air Mail Service. His efforts in the early 1920s to establish emergency fields for night-flying mail pilots addressed a major challenge.

Weick worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) at its Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, in Hampton, Virginia beginning in November 1925. He helped design the first wind tunnel devoted to full-scale propeller research and wrote a textbook on propeller design that became a classic.

It was also at Langley that Weick headed the development of streamlined, low-drag engine cowling technology that was to advance aircraft performance dramatically. The NACA cowling first revolutionized civil air transport by making aircraft faster and more profitable. It also found application on the bombers and fighters of World War II. For this engineering breakthrough, he won the prestigious Collier Trophy for NACA in 1929.