Abstract: The Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory (AERL) in Cleveland, Ohio became NACA's third aeronautics research facility and was re-named Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in honor of aeronautics pioneer and Director of Aeronautical Research for the NACA, George W. Lewis, following his death in 1948. Cleveland’s Hopkins Airport was host to many of the National Air Races of the 1930s and was strategically out of range of enemy WWII bombers, making it a likely R&D testing site for wartime air and space defense capabilities, which were two reasons that Congress selected it in 1940 to conduct engine research. In retrospect, Cleveland was an excellent choice for a NACA center because of Ohio’s rich history bringing forth many of the great leaders in aeronautic and astronautic history, some of whom played a role at the NACA. For example, Orville Wright, the Dayton native and co-inventor of the first successful flight of a ‘heavier than air’ craft, attended the dedication ceremonies of the AERL. Byron R. Newton was an Oberlin College graduate who became an aviation journalist, politician, and a founding member of the NACA. Neil A. Armstrong, a Wapakoneta native who became the first human to set foot on the moon, joined NACA in February 1955 as an engineer studying Mach number heat transfer, as well as serving as a test pilot who broke NACA’s Mach 5 record in an instrumented T40 air-launched rocket. Armstrong credited his female NACA coworkers, particularly those trained as English teachers and librarians, for their role in the production of technically precise and demanding research publications. Thanks to its many employees, Lewis laboratory delivered a rich history of NACA advances in combustion processes with liquid jet engines for nearly a decade that evolved, after its incorporation into NASA in 1958, into the research of liquid hydrogen rocket fuel.

1. (Image credit: NASA).
The NACA at Lewis Laboratory, a Legacy of Ohioans Solving the Problem of Flight
by Shannon Bohle
The NACA Centenary: A Symposium on 100 Years of Aerospace Research and Development
Moving Beyond Earth Gallery, National Air and Space Museum
Independence Avenue, Washington DC
Wednesday, March 4, 2015

2. (Image credit:
J. B. Lyon Company,
State Printers, 1902.
Courtesy of the library at
SUNY-Buffalo).

3. (Image credit: NASA).

5. (Image courtesy of
Wright State University).

6. (Image credit: NASA).

7. (Image credit: NASA).

8. (Image credit: Library of Congress).

9. (Image credit: NASA).

10. (Image credit: NASA).

11. (Image credit: NASA).

12. (Image credit: NASA).

13. (Image credit: NASA).

14. (Image credit: NASA).

15. (Image credit: NASA).

16. (Image credit: NASA).
(Image credit: NASA).

17. (Image credit: NASA).
(Image credit: NASA).

18. (Image credit: NASA).

19. (Image credit: NASA).

20. (Image credit: NASA).

21. (Image credit: NASA).

22. (Image credit: NASA).

23. (Image credit: NASA).

24. (Image credit: NASA).

25. (Image credit: NASA).

26. (Image credit: NASA).

27. (Image credit: NASA).

28. (Image credit: NASA).