National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
| NACA | |
The official seal of NACA, depicting the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina
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| Agency overview | |
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| Formed | March 3, 1915 |
| Dissolved | October 1, 1958 (43 years) |
| Superseding agency | |
| Jurisdiction | Federal government of the United States |
The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a U.S. federal agency founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved, and its assets and personnel transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NACA was pronounced as discrete letters, rather than as a whole word (and after NASA first was established, its acronym was pronounced as discrete letters in the early years).
Among other advancements, NACA research and development produced the NACA duct, a type of air intake used in modern automotive applications, the NACA cowling, and several series of NACA airfoils which are still used in aircraft manufacturing.
During World War II, NACA was described as "The Force Behind Our Air Supremacy" due to its key role in producing working superchargers for high altitude bombers, and for producing the cutting-edge wing profiles for the North American P-51 Mustang. NACA was also key in developing the area rule that is used on all modern supersonic aircraft, and conducted the key compressibility research that enabled the Bell X-1 to break the sound barrier.
NACA was established by the federal government through enabling legislation as an emergency measure during World War I to promote industry, academic, and government coordination on war-related projects. It was modeled on similar national agencies found in Europe. Such agencies were the French L’Etablissement Central de l’Aérostation Militaire in Meudon (now Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aerospatiales), the German Aerodynamic Laboratory of the University of Göttingen, and the Russian Aerodynamic Institute of Koutchino with a Soviet successor agency, the "Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute", still known in post-Soviet Russia as TsAGI today, in 1918. The most influential agency upon which the NACA was based was the British Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.
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