Air University Review, November-December 1976

At some point during the past two decades, America embarked on a new industrial revolution, which will have an impact on the destinies of men and nations potentially as great as that which so radically altered men's lives in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The nature and dimensions of this revolution are not easy to grasp. The terms of science and engineering which describe this revolution, once confined to the university, are bantered about in nearly every walk of life; the jargon of business has even taken on a new space-age vocabulary. The core of this revolution can easily be traced to a galloping technological advance. Radically new scientific techniques for systematized application have been coupled to problems of almost infinite complexity.

Out of this technological revolution has evolved a close relationship between science and government which has existed for nearly two centuries. But the close relationship that exists today has come about since the Second World War. This partnership progressed into an interdependent vitality which now provides security and welfare for the nation and stable growth and support for science.¹

The critical place that research and development (R&D) occupies in our culture and the amount of resources being invested in it require that much more be known about its functions. C. W. Sherwin, former Deputy Director of Defense Research and Engineering, wrote:

"Within one generation, modern science and the complex, sophisticated technology, which both springs from it and supports it, have suddenly become the primary basis of national wealth and military power and also a primary tool of social and economic revolution."² Our survival as a free nation is directly related to our technological superiority maintained by the R&D effort.

The nation's expenditure in basic research has risen to about $4.0 billion in current dollars. However, inflation has eroded the increases over the last 15 years so as to hold funding at about the 1965 level. The proportion of all R&D funds expended for basic research has remained essentially constant at about 13 percent since 1965. The portion of Department of Defense (DOD) funds invested in basic research has consistently been about three percent of the total R&D budget.

As a country so well known for its achievement in science, little in our early history shows a sustained interest in scientific work. In general our early work was entirely in applied science, carried on in random, sporadic fashion and, for the most part, outside the university or the government. ³In the early days such men as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin contributed to and influenced scientific development through their own engineering, inventions, and discoveries and in the thought and wording of the Constitution. Patent rights, national surveys and census, and a standard for weights and measures are only a few of the basic ideas of data taking and scientific procedures that pervaded the writing of the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton made the keystone of his system for the development of American manufactures a system of government bounties and subsidies to scientists and inventors, to accompany the use of tariffs and other government policies for the encouragement of industrialization.⁴

John Quincy Adams believed that the key to the preservation of the Union the use of all the resources of applied science to create a system of transportation and communication throughout the nation.⁵ But he was the last of the great statesmen of the Federalist period w combined politics with a personal interest in science. As Secretary of State personally prepared for the Congress a "Report upon Weights and Measures."⁶ In later life he continued his support of a wide variety of scientific programs, and he was killed while traveling to Cincinnati in 1848 to dedicate an astronomical observatory.⁷

A review of the Republic's first 150 years of experience with science show a coherent pattern on two distinct levels. On the pragmatic level of science responding to the needs of society, the story is one of great accomplishment; steamboats, wireless telegraphy, the cotton gin, motor cars, and airplanes, etc., all attest to this ability. However, on the higher plane of the attempt to create a comprehensive organization of science as a fundamental institution of state, the record is not so clear. In the event that science crossed with practicality, or with government needs, the government gave short-term support.⁸ The Lewis and Clark expedition and the Coastal Survey were early examples of the use of short-term applied science in the field.⁹ During the period of the Civil War, glimpse of other uses of science widened its scope, and in the four decades following 1865, an organized scientific establishment evolved within the government oriented to the immediate problems faced.¹⁰ Two isolated acts are significant the creation of the National Academy of Sciences in 1863, to give scientific advice to any requesting government agency; and the Executive Order of 11 May 1918, which set up the National Research Council, "to stimulate research in the mathematical, physical, and biological sciences, and in the application of the sciences." They were ineffective, however, because they were not government agencies supported by Congress and thus always lacked adequate funding.¹¹

With World War I the establishment had to shift into the field of weapons on a large scale for the first time. By the 1930s government science had become so interrelated with society, other research institutes, and the economy of the country that it in turn was affected by the upheavals of the Depression era.¹² The main point is that the nature of this early twentieth-century American scientific organization was entirely applied. The numbers of scientists engaged exclusively in basic research were so few that all of them in the United States could gather in a college auditorium with room to spare.¹³

The only basic research in the world of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was done in Europe. The first research laboratories organized solely for pure science were the "teaching laboratories" under Dr. Justus von Liebig at the University of Giessen. These laboratories placed the young student scientist under von Liebig solely for research. The enthusiasm was such that the only problem encountered was getting them out of the laboratory long enough to clean the floors.¹⁴ The idea and organization of such a laboratory have been extremely popular in Germany and still exist today.¹⁵ The renowned research efforts of Germany perhaps are a direct result.

From the very beginning, pure scientific research was government subsidized in the principal European countries.¹⁶ This support is in marked contrast to the practice of the U.S. Congress to fund only limited and strictly utilitarian projects.¹⁷ Not only was there a lack of government support but also a lack of private gifts or bequests. It is interesting that the first large sum of money bequested for the support of science in America came from a foreigner, the Englishman James Smithson. It took Congress nearly ten years to accept the gift and create the Smithsonian Institution. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the large fortunes of Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and James Lick endowed science with private research foundations.¹⁸ Early in the twentieth century, the federal government established its own scientific bureaus: the Bureau of Mines, the National Bureau of Standards, the National Institutes of Health, the Naval Research Laboratory, and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics are a few examples. By 1940 a credible government scientific organization existed. Its emphasis was on applied research, but there was also some expenditure for pure research.¹⁹

The threats of war were plain by this time. In anticipation of American involvement, President Roosevelt set up the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) on 27 June 1940 for the express purpose of improvement of instrumentalities, methods, and materials of warfare, with Dr. Vannevar Bush as its director.²⁰ It was expanded into the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) on 28 June 1941 and given full powers to organize the scientific effort of the nation on a wartime foundation.²¹ Thus, by the time the United States was drawn into the war, science was organized to meet the challenge.

With the end of World War II in 1945 and the demise of the OSRD, its many scientific projects had to be either phased out or distributed among existing civilian and military agencies, for the scientists who had been engaged in OSRD returned to the universities or to private research laboratories, leaving a large gap in technically competent people.²² The main concern of the military services during the war years was almost solely with advanced engineering and production.²³ Whether the military could shoulder the additional responsibilities of applied and basic research during peacetime was a question still to be resolved.

In Dr. Bush's report, Science, the Endless Frontier, he spoke out on military research. He proposed that military research be under civilian control and that the military engage only in "research on the improvement of existing weapons." He further recommended that civilian-controlled military research be made one of the responsibilities of a "National Research Foundation," an agency proposed by Bush to promote the national interest of science.²⁴

Such a civilian orientation to military research was in direct opposition to the already existing plans of the Army Air Forces (AAF), under General H. H. Arnold, to develop "a Buck Rogers program for the next twenty years. General Arnold had already created, in November 1944, an Army Air Forces Scientific Advisory Group with Dr. Theodor von Kármán, a Hungarian-born aerodynamicist, as its chairman.²⁵ Possibly because of his foreign background but more because this did not conform to his concept of military research, von Kármán could not accept civilian control of research and conducted an eight-month-long investigation of the problem. To state his case, he prepared the AAF Scientific Advisory Group report, Toward New Horizons, which held that a national program in basic research was a " necessary adjunct" to the maintenance of a strong military posture.²⁶ He contended that "Every scientific development eventually finds its way into the field of military applications." It was essential, therefore, that government sponsor basic research. But this sponsorship should not be concentrated in one controlling organization; several competing federal agencies should foster research, including an agency of the Army Air Forces. The AAF should not delegate its responsibility to pursue scientific knowledge to any other agency but should be free to call upon any scientific organization or individual for scientific assistance. It was imperative that the AAF be permitted to expand its direct relations, both spiritual and contractual, with the scientific community. No one should act as "the only source of information" between science and the AAF.²⁷

However, von Kármán's report was not translated into action. To begin with, General Arnold, suffering from a chronic heart ailment, retired in March 1946. His successors, as well as many on the Air Staff, favored leaving research to civilians. Then came the problems of declining budgets and demobilization and, in 1947, the establishment of the Air Force as a separate service. The Air Staff had its hands full with the problems of creating an Air Force in-being.²⁸

Nevertheless, government science did not remain static. OSRD went out of existence, and the newly created Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the military services fell heir to its offices.²⁹ The Department of Defense was established, and the Secretary of Defense was placed in an authoritative position over the affairs of the three services. The Congress placed particular emphasis on giving the Secretary of Defense direction and control over the field of research and engineering. The National Security Act of 1947 contained the following provisions:

In enacting this legislation, it is the intent of Congress to provide a comprehensive program for the future security of the United States; to provide for the establishment of integrated policies and procedures for the departments, agencies, and functions of the Government relating to national security; to provide a Department of Defense, including the three military departments of the Army, the Navy (including naval aviation and the United States Marine Corps), and the Air Force under the direction, authority, and control of the Secretary of Defense; to provide that each military department shall be separately organized under its own Secretary and shall function under the direction, authority, and control of the Secretary of Defense;…³⁰

The Navy, by this time, had already persuaded Congress to create the Office of Naval Research (ONR) with a broad charter to conduct research (1946). It was clear that no matter what decisions were made at DOD concerning military research, the Navy would control and conduct its own research program.³¹

The actual overall control in DOD went to the Research and Development Board (RDB), which had authority to preside over military research and development. Dr. Bush was placed at the helm, but without money, facilities, or power the board served only as a high-level coordinating committee.³²

The Air Force, in the meantime, found itself restricted in research to aeronautical sciences, although it was recognized that its efforts would have to be closely correlated with other sciences outside this area. The job of correlation fell to the RDB.³³ Why, the Air Force could ask, should the Navy, through the Office of Naval Research, engage in the full spectrum of research, while the Air Force was narrowly restricted? It was a question that no one outside the Air Force appeared to ask, much less answer.

The problem at hand was to create a research organization and get on with the actual business of doing the research. There was yet another hurdle to cross. Stuart Symington’s, then Secretary of the Air Force, was convinced that the Air Force R&D program should be decisively emphasized, but only for development. There would be a research division, but merely to seek answers to problems posed by the development program.³⁴ To von Kármán, a research program subservient to development was no research program at all.³⁵ Symington’s could not accept the idea that an agency of the Air Force, with a strictly military outlook, was the proper place to conduct research. "It is more fitting," he wrote to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, "that an agency such as the proposed National Foundation look after basic research. . . . Since there was no national foundation at that time, Symington concluded that, as an interim measure, "the military establishment must . . . pursue basic research on a broad scale."³⁶

Earlier, in the summer of 1947, von Kármán had recommended to the Air Staff that a research organization similar to ONR be established, which would conduct both a contrasting program with universities and industry and an in-house program of research. The Air Staff was receptive, but Lieutenant General Benjamin W. Chidlaw, the Commander of the Air Materiel Command (AMC), the organization with the bulk of the Air Force R&D, provided the most vigorous opposition. Chidlaw contended that the office should be located at Wright Field instead of the proposed site at Washington, D.C., and should fall under the Engineering Division of AMC, where it could serve and be controlled by the Air Materiel Command.³⁷ Chidlaw carried the day, and after undergoing several organizational changes the office was established as the Office of Air Research (February 1949). It was moved from under the Engineering Division to a slot parallel to it, and Colonel Leighton I. Davis was appointed the organization's first chief.³⁸

After the first year of operation, the office was no closer to a viable research organization than it had been in the beginning. Staffed with only 33 people and no laboratory facilities, the organization was threatened with failure. Its budgets were disapproved, which deterred everything else. In August 1949, Colonel Davis was selected for the Air War College and left his command feeling that a miracle would be necessary in order to put research on a sound footing in the Air Force.³⁹

At the DOD level, several attempts were made to coalesce all basic research in the physical sciences into a single organization. The Navy attempted to take advantage of this kind of thinking by suggesting that ONR be given the responsibility. Only a determined effort by von Kármán and members of the Air Staff prevented this from occurring.⁴⁰ At about the same time, the Research and Development Board, DOD, suggested that a new civilian research agency similar to OSRD be constructed and given charge of all government research. This proposal, in turn, was defeated by von Kármán.⁴¹

The main problem was that the Air Force was not organized for R&D management. An independent research or development command did not exist; what R&D did exist was part of Air Materiel Command, which encompassed supply, procurement, testing, advanced engineering, exploratory development, research, and many other small pocket organizations.⁴² The normal operation was channeled into quick-payoff development at the expense of research as well as much of the development projects of a long-term nature. In short, immediate demand, procurement, maintenance, and supply were conflicting with efforts in research.⁴³

Another major problem was separate funding for R&D. Without a budget of its own, R&D could never argue its case before the Air Staff or defend itself from the monetary policies of Air Materiel Command. R&D usually got what money was left over from logistics.⁴⁴

Contributing greatly to this problem were the personnel policies governing a career in Research and Development. In 1949, a career in R&D was considered a one-way street to oblivion. More-aggressive officers sought duty in the operational commands, while officers of less competence tended to gravitate to organizations like AMC. It was with such officers that R&D offices were often staffed.⁴⁵ However, aggressive officers with a scientific background were at a premium in the military. With the great exodus after the war of nearly all the scientists and engineers, there simply were not enough to go around. Low pay, the lack of challenging work in research, and the unending government red tape did little to lure scientists away from the congenial atmosphere of university laboratories.⁴⁶

With so many internal problems, it was obvious that some sort of reorganization would have to take place. A civilian committee headed by Dr. Louis Bidenour, physicist (soon to become the first Chief Scientist of the Air Force), concluded the investigation in September 1949. There commendations to the Air Staff were to give full representation to R&D on the Air Staff, create an independent R&D command with a separate budget, and eliminate discriminatory personnel policies.⁴⁷ These findings were corroborated by a similar military committee, which based its report on the work done by the Air University staff.⁴⁸

After considering both the Air University Report and the Ridenour Report, the Air Staff, late in January 1950, created the Air Research and Development Command (ARDC), which would be devoted entirely to problems of research and development.⁴⁹ The goals relating to research were defined broadly by the Ridenour Report. They included supporting a program in basic research by contract, establishing an Air Force science fellowship program, and transforming the Air Force Institute of Technology into a first-rate graduate school of engineering. The Office of Air Research would play the key role in the dispatch of these goals. The kind of research that would be done in-house was not left to conjecture: the report stated that the research would be of potential interest to the Air Force but that it would also be in broad fields and would not be directed toward definite goals or applications. The research contract itself did not even specify what was to be investigated, except in terms proposed by the investigator. Moreover, contracts were awarded less with regard to the description of the project than with regard to the ability and promise of the principal investigator. It was evident that the Ridenour Report endorsed a systematic pursuit of fundamental science for the Air Force.⁵⁰

To implement the program was yet another matter. The many small research projects scattered through AMC had to be transferred along with the work that was going on in the Office of Air Research. This removal was accomplished fairly easily, since nearly everyone agreed that research should be under the auspices of ARDC. However, development projects were transferred only after a bitter fight, which lasted a full fifteen months. It was April 1951 before the new command became operational.⁵¹

The job of organizing ARDC's research efforts went to Brigadier General Donald J. Keirn. He proposed to create an academic atmosphere conducive to scientific thought and envisioned the organization as similar to the Office of Naval Research, comprising both a contract and an in-house research program. Scientists attached to the command would monitor relevant contracts, do in-house research, and advise on supervisory duties. The main item in the program was a modern in-house laboratory where the scientist could be free to pursue his projects and from which the Air Force could draw inspiration and ideas as well as have a pool of in-house competence.⁵²

The idea never got off of the ground. The main opposition came, strangely enough, from Chief Scientist Ridenour, who looked at the proposed research laboratory as a private scientific playhouse. His opinion was formed from an inspection trip of Air Force laboratories, where he found ramshackle facilities, manned by second-rate scientists, strangling in a maze of red tape. He had come to the conclusion, since writing the Ridenour Report, that Air Force laboratories could never attain the stature of even a mediocre university laboratory.⁵³ The whole idea of an internal laboratory was dropped, and the dismemberment of Keirn's command took place. His job, the Assistant for Research in the Basic Sciences, was changed to the Office of Scientific Research, and Colonel Oliver G. Haygood, a subscriber to the views of Dr. Ridenour, became the new head of the research agency.⁵⁴

After seven years of turmoil, a course had been set for Air Force research. By embarking on a program involving research solely by contract, the Air Force was admitting that it could not manage an in-house research program. Perhaps, at the time, this judgment was correct. The Air Force research program had a great deal of growing to do, but it was evident that it would only be a matter of time before some sort of in-house program would be started. The beginning would have to come from the applied sciences, which it did some six years later.

In May 1958 Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle, Air Force Reserve, officially dedicated a new physical sciences building at Wright Field to pioneer in applied research for military application. The building was a part of the Office of Scientific Research and was staffed by scientists who had been doing basic research for years. By this time, despite the purport of Doolittle's words and despite preoccupation with research with specific applications, this new laboratory had already begun to function as a basic research laboratory.⁵⁵

That same year, the Department of Defense was reorganized so that research and engineering became functionally organized throughout the Department. The Defense Reorganization Act of 1958 defines the responsibilities of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering as follows:

The Director performs such duties with respect to research and engineering as the Secretary of Defense may prescribe, including, but not limited to, the following; (1) to be the principal advisor to the Secretary of Defense on scientific and technical matters; (2) to supervise all research and engineering activities in the Department of Defense; and (3) to direct and control (including their assignment or reassignment) research and engineering activities that the Secretary deems to require centralized management.⁵⁶

To enable the Director of Defense Research and Engineering to carry out these responsibilities, the Secretary of Defense, by means of Department of Defense Directive 5129.1, delegated authority to him to:

Approve, modify, or disapprove programs and projects of the military departments and other Department of Defense agencies in his assigned fields to eliminate unpromising or unnecessarily duplicative programs, and initiate or support promising ones for research and development.⁵⁷  

The Joint Chiefs of Staff have been given responsibility for advising the Secretary of Defense on the military worth of R&D objectives. Their duties are stated in Department of Defense Directive 5100.1 as follows:

To advise and assist the Secretary of Defense in research and engineering matters by preparing: (a) statements of broad strategic guidance to be used in the preparation of an integrated Department of Defense program; (b) statements of overall military requirements; (c) statements of the relative military importance of development activities to meet the needs of the unified and specified commanders; and (d) recommendations for the assignment of specific new weapons to the armed forces.⁵⁸

The effect of this reorganization along with the impact of the Soviet Sputnik inspired an extensive reorganization in ARDC in January 1960. Under the new setup, ARDC was reshaped along functional lines. Out of this emerged the Air Force Research Division, into which went nearly all of ARDC's basic research activities, which up to that time had been officially operating as applied laboratories. The remaining development projects were organized into the Air Force Systems Command (AFSC), which still retained a good measure of research capability.⁵⁹

But the process did not end there. A year later in April 1961, the Air Force Research Division was broken off, renamed the Office of Aerospace Research, and given the status of a major air command. It included three in-house laboratories, which had sprung up under applied research: Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories, Cambridge, Massachusetts (AFCRL); the Aeronautical Research Laboratory, Wright Field, Ohio (ARL); and the Frank J. Seiler Laboratory, Air Force Academy, Colorado, which was added in September of that year. An office was established to manage scientific contracts other than those handled by the laboratory scientists relating directly to their in-house work: the Office of Scientific Research in Washington, D.C. A number of liaison offices were also added through AFSC and NASA as well as foreign contracting offices in Europe and South America.⁶⁰

The status of research was, indeed, greatly aided by the sequence of events in the late '50s. Principal among these were the launching of Sputnik I, the subsequent emphasis on government research in the applied sciences as well as basic research in the physical sciences, and the tremendous demands of a technically conscious public.

The major reorganization in 1961 established research as a separate command directly under the Chief of Staff, USAF, while the development laboratories and product divisions were established in the Air Force Systems Command. Nine years later, research was moved into AFSC and functionally organized as a laboratory. This move stressed the role of research to support the development laboratories and product divisions. Again in 1975, as a result of a study of the utilization of the Air Force laboratories (the Chapman Report),⁶¹ the research laboratories at ARL and AFCRL were reorganized into the development laboratories, and the Office of Scientific Research (OSR), was made single manager of all basic research in the Air Force. OSR still functions under AFSC, but it at once retains the focus of basic research and also ensures close liaison with development needs. The quantity and quality of research problems are by no means diminished but, in fact, are challenged by the deficiencies of weapon systems and their application. Strong leadership in research can keep these lines clear and serve well both an innovative basic research effort and a technology-dependent development and production division.

The Evolution of the Air Force research laboratory has been a difficult one. The main problems have been, from the very beginning, the lack of military commanders with a scientific background or interest and the absence of a sustained drive by the government to foster basic research throughout government agencies. The original plans of Dr. Bush over thirty-five years ago slowly came to fruition, while General Keirn's dream of an in-house research laboratory was only a few years premature. The military has had a negative inertia, or incompetence, in scientific matters to overcome, and still, today, it is engaged in trying to dispel this stigma.⁶² However, the organization of an in-house basic research effort with a basic research mission geared to development needs now forms the nucleus around which creative scientists can work. Perhaps it is not yet the optimum organization, but in consideration of its historical development, the scientist and the necessary environment are at last conversant in a military household.

The long-range objectives of the military services are supported primarily by the technology evolved from our basic research today. The Air Force development laboratories are making a significant contribution to this objective in basic research and in applied and developmental projects. This organization can meet the challenge.

1. A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belnap Press of Harvard University, 1957), p. 1.

2. C. W. Sherwin, "A Challenge to the Scientific Community," Naval Research Reviews, November 1963, p. 2.

3. Don K. Price, Government and Science. Their Dynamic Relation in American Democracy (New York: New York University Press, 1954), pp. 4-31.

4. "Report on Manufactures," in The Works of Alexander Hamilton (New York: Williams and Whiting, 1810), vol. I, pp. 235-36.

5. Price, p. 6.

6. John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State of the United States. Report upon Weights and Measures, Prepared in Obedience to a Resolution of the Senate of the Third March, 1817. Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1821. Thomas Jefferson, as Secretary of State, had submitted to the House of Representatives on 17 July 1790 a Report of the Secretary of State on the Subject of Establishing the Uniformity of the Weights, Measures, and Coins of the United States.

7. Price, p. 7.

8. Dupree, p. 380.

9. Ibid., p. 375.

10.Ibid., p. 176.

11. James P. Baxter III, Scientists against Time (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1946). p. 13.

12. Dupree. p. 376.

13. Ralph E. Lapp, The New Priesthood (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 3.

14. E. Mendelsohn, "The Emergence of Science as a Profession to Nineteenth-Century Europe," The Management of Scientists (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), pp. 18-21.

15. Interview with R. Bauerlein, July 1964.

16. Vannevar Bush, Science, the Endless Frontier (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1945), p. 78.

17. Dupree, p. passim, pp. 375-82.

18. Bush, p. 78.

19. Ibid., pp.79, 81.

20. Executive Order, pursuant to section 2 of the Act of 29 August 1916 (39 Statute 649), for "Establishing the National Defense Research Committee," signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt 27 June 1940.

21. Executive Order Number 8807 (as amended by Executive Order Number 9389, dated 18 October 1953), "Establishing the Office of Scientific Research and Development in the Executive Office of the President and Defining Its Functions and Duties," signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt on 28 June 1941.

22. Bush, p. 78: Price, p.32.

23. Bush, p.28.

24. Ibid., pp.33-34.

25. H. H. Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949). pp. 532-42, 580.

26. Theodor von Kármán, Toward New Horizons (Air Materiel Command Publications Branch, 1945). This report was issued in two installments, Where We Stand, August 1945. and "Science, the Key to Air Supremacy," in December 1945.

27. Theodor von Kármán, Where We Stand, passim. These ideas can also be found in a personal letter from von Kármán to General H. H. Arnold, 15 December 1945, MS.

28. Ethel M. DeHaven, History of the Separation of Research and Development from the Air Materiel Command (AMC Historical Study. 1952), pp. 35-39.

29. Joseph Stefan Dupré and Sanford A. Lakoff, Science and the Nation (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 65.

30. United States Congress. An Act To Promote the National Security by Providing for a Secretary of Defense; for a National Military Establishment, for a Department of the Army, a Department of Navy, and a Department of the Air Force; and for the Coordination of the Activities of the National Military Establishment with Other Departments and Agencies of the Government Concerned with the National Security, Public Law 253, 80^th Congress, 1^st Session, 1947, vol, 61, p. 495.

31. Rear Admiral Julius A. Furer, Administration of the Navy Department in World War II (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1959), p. 806.

32. Dupré and Lakoff, pp. 36-37.

33. Thomas K. Finletter, Survival in the Air Age: A Report by the President's Air Policy Commission (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1948), pp. 73-96.

34. Letter, W. Stuart Symington to Theodor von Kármán, 28 November 1949, MS.

35. von Kármán, passim. This idea of research being subservient to development is criticized in nearly every publication cited. Especially interesting are the debates in the Congressional Hearings of the Committee on Government Research, Part I, 88th Congress, 1st Session, 1963, p. 175.

36. Memo, W. Stuart Symington to Secretary James Forrestal, Subject: "Air Force Concept of Basic Research, " dated 2 March 1948, MS.

37. von Kármán, transcript of personal interview with Samuel Milner, OAR Historian, 23 July 1960; also letter, von Kármán to Symington, 15 January 1949, MS.

38. Letter, Maj. Gen. Leighton I. Davis to Samuel Milner, 26 October 1960, MS.

39. Ibid.

40. Air Force Scientific Adivisory Board, "Research and Development in the Air Force," p. 81, MS. Hereafter cited as the Ridenour Report.

41. DeHaven, p. 2, letter, von Kármán to Dr. Karl T. Compton, Chairman of RDB, 28 February 1949.

42. "Research and Development in the United States Air Force." Air University, 18 November 1949, Tab A, p. 2ff. Hereafter cited as Air University Report.

43. Letter von Kármán to Symington, 15 January 1949, MS.

44. Air University Report, p. 4.

45. Ibid., Tab B, pp. 1-4.

46. Transcript of meeting of the Air Staff, 3 January 1950, MS.

47. Ridenour Report, passim.

48. Memo General Muir S. Fairchild to Eugene M. Zuckert, Subject: Establishment of a Deputy Chief of Staff for Development and a Research and Development Command," 1 February 1950, MS.

49.Transcript of meeting of the Air Staff, 3 January 1950, MS.

50. Ridenour Report, pp.36-37, 80-83.

51. Text of briefing for Major General David M. Schlatter, Commander ARDC, 3 January 1952, p. 2, MS.

52. Brigadier General Donald J. Keirn, personal interview with Samuel Milner, OAR Historian, 15 December 1959.

53. Memo, Louis N. Ridenour to General Schlatter, Subject: "Office of Air Research," 12 October 1950, MS.

54. History of the Air Force Research and Development Command, 1 July-31 December 1952. ARDC Historical Division. p. 94.

55. History of the Aeronautical Research Laboratory (ARL), January-June 1958, p. 4. Each year a listing of the technical publications and presentations was printed by each laboratory in OAR, from which a master copy was made and retained at OAR Headquarters. From a review of this list, it is obvious that nearly all the work that went on in the laboratory at ARL between 1954 and 1958 was basic in nature.

56. U.S. Congress. An Act To Promote the National Defense by Providing for the Reorganization of the Department of Defense and for Other Purposes. Public law 599, 85th Congress. 2d Session, vol. 75, p. 520.

57. Office of Department of Defense Department of Defense Directive 5129.1, 10 February 1959, p. 4.

58. Office of Department of Defense. Department of Defense Directive 5100.1, 31 December 1958, p. 5.

59. Air Force Regulation 23-8, Air Force Systems Command (Washington: Department of the Air Force, 8 August 1962), p. 1.

60. Air Force Regulation 23-18, The Office of Aerospace Research (Washington: Department of the Air Force, 8 August 1963).

61. United States Air Force. Report of the Special Study Group on the Utilization of the Air Force Laboratories, Andrews AFB. Maryland, Hq Systems Command, August 1964.

62. Kurt Lang, "Technology sod Career Management in the Military Establishment," in The New Military, Morris Janowitz. editor (New York, Russell Sage Foundation. 1964). Mr. Lang had this to say of the military: "Laboratory developments are, in one way or another, either incomprehensible or unacceptable to the established military professional. Their utility is apparent to the innovator rather than the consumer and generally they must be imposed on the soldier by some third party. The process of military development is entirely under military control, the acceptance or rejection of specific ideas is generally routine procedure."

We wish to express our appreciation to Lieutenant Colonel Enrique Ramirez, Directorate of Mathematical and Information Sciences of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Air Force Systems Command, for his assistance in coordinating the articles by Colonel Robert M. Detweiler and Colonel James E. Strub.