Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 1, 1995 TAG: 9510020095
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL E. RUANE KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: HAMPTON, VA. LENGTH: Medium
``Ready?'' Bill Graham, the technician, shouted from the platform below. ``Ready,'' the engineers called back. Graham ran to the control panel, set the rpm dials for 180 and pressed the clear plastic button that said: Start.
Immediately, the cavernous building filled with an electric hum, then the accelerating swish, swish of the two huge propellers at one end. Small objects became airborne. A ladder blew over. And as the humid indoor windstorm gathered into a 60-mph, coat-flapping gale, engineer Don R. Riley flashed a look that said: Terrific, huh?
For 64 years, NASA Langley Research Center's full-scale wind tunnel has thrilled aeronautical engineers - testing everything from biplanes to space capsules, and drawing the likes of Orville Wright, Howard Hughes and Charles Lindbergh to its leviathan confines.
Around the middle of this month, though, this 30-by-60-foot hunk of barnstorm technology - once the largest wind tunnel in the world - is scheduled to close, a victim of age and government belt-tightening.
Beset by what the National Aeronautics and Space Administration called ``shrinking federal budgets'' and the need for ``orderly consolidation,'' the tunnel's twin 4,000-horsepower electric motors and 35.5-foot spruce props are set to shut down for good.
The final ``time stop'' entry will be made in its log book. And this wood-and-sheet metal cathedral of flight - its upper windows still stained with wartime blackout paint - will stand quiet.
It'll be a shame, say those like Riley, Graham and others who have been associated with the historic apparatus whose design began two years after Lindbergh flew the Atlantic.
``We leave behind,'' said Langley historian Richard T. Layman, ``the roots of the American aviation industry, the maturing of American aviation and the stories that go into that.''
Once this vast white structure on the shores of the Back River was a center for aviation's intelligentsia.
Here flocked names like Grumman, Northrop and Douglas, and their avant garde machines, seeking to refine their creations and wring every ounce of speed from the collision of wind and airplane.
``It was a place where confidence was obtained,'' said Joseph R. Chambers, who came to the tunnel in 1962 and rose to become Langley's current head of systems analysis, and where ``solutions to some of the most vexing ... problems that faced aviation were solved.''
Through here, starting in May 1931 and continuing until about three weeks ago, paraded almost every major military aircraft, or a model thereof, in the history of American aviation.
Prewar Navy biplanes. Army ``pursuit'' planes. Almost all the famous World War II fighters - the P-51 Mustang, the P-47 Thunderbolt, the P-38 Lightning, the F4U Corsair. Postwar jets, like the F-4, the F-15, the F-16, and later versions of the F/A-18, whose testing ended just last month.
All were subject to the tunnel's sometimes 130-mph wind stream to see how they handled or how they might be made to go a little faster, roll a little quicker, or maneuver a little more safely.
Here the muscle-bound Corsair's deadly control problems were solved. Here the P-39 Airacobra underwent ``drag cleanup'' that piled 52 mph onto its top speed of 340. And here the ragged edge of the F-4's maneuver envelope was studied and smoothed.
Not only fighters were brought in. A blimp once was tested. So was a submarine. An inflatable aircraft - which suffered ``flutter'' problems - came through, along with crop dusters, helicopters, and a weird short-takeoff airplane called the ``flying flapjack.''
And in the late 1950s, the Mercury space capsules were tested to see how they might do after re-entry.
``This place has had a lot of strange things done, as you can imagine,'' Chambers said.
The idea for wind tunnels was not new, even in the late 1920s. The Wright brothers built one of wood and glass in their bicycle shop before the historic flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903.
The object was for the plane to be suspended or supported in the middle of a man-made wind stream that simulates the dynamics of flight. This enables engineers to observe how an airplane might perform - without risking a test pilot's neck.
In the beginning, most tunnels were small and could test only models. The Hampton tunnel was built to test full-size aircraft. It was only in full scale that researchers believed they could be fairly certain how an airplane would handle.
Construction on the tunnel began in the spring of 1930, and the structure was dedicated May 27, 1931. It cost $900,000.
by CNB