Chapter IV

RESEARCH

AND DEVELOPMENT

By the early 1930's the gap between aircraft performance and human tolerances had become increasingly critical. According to Armstrong in his Principles and Practice of Aviation Medicine, the "human element was becoming the weakest link in the chain," thus creating an "urgent need" for further medical studies.' At the School of Aviation Medicine, research activities were primarily concerned with such matters as the selection of personnel and the physiological and psychological factors relating to the individual flyer. These aspects of aviation medicine would be continuing matters of concern, but now there was an added requirement to strengthen that "weakest link" of the air weapons system, the human element.

Possibly more than anyone else in America Lt. Col. Malcolm C. Grow (MC), then flight surgeon at Patterson Air Field, was aware of this need; for in the course of his normal duties he came in contact with test pilots, 4 miles away at Wright Field, who constantly sought his advice. Eventually he was given a desk in the Equipment Branch, Engineering Division, Wright Field, where he spent a part of each week in addition to his regular duties at Patterson Field. His first major project was to determine the maximum percentage of carbon monoxide permissible in the cockpit of experimental aircraft undergoing service test, a figure that was to be set at .005 concentration. His findings were published in a technical paper 3 in 1934, the first of its kind in the field. Subsequently it became a standard source for foreign countries as well as the United States. Illustrative of other projects undertaken in this period by Lt. Colonel Grow was research to develop less bulky flying clothing.

3

It soon became apparent that a systematic research program must be established in the field of human engineering, and that the lag in research since the days at Mineola must now be overcome. Capt. Harry G. Armstrong (MC), who joined him shortly, was also interested and began collecting equipment,

including the old pressure chamber which had survived the fire at Mineola. A small laboratory was established in the basement of the Engineers' Building.* Meanwhile, Lt. Colonel Grow was ordered to report to the Office of the Chief of Army Air Corps as Assistant Chief Flight Surgeon. Upon the retirement of Col. Glen Jones he became Chief Flight Surgeon and as such was in a position to defend and procure funds for the development of a permanent aeromedical research laboratory to meet the critical needs of military aviation. Nearly 20 years later he recalled that there was opposition to his choice of the site at Wright Field rather than at the School of Aviation Medicine. It seemed to him, however, that the major need was "to keep the engineers aware of the human element" and that the way to do so "was to have medical officers nearby."5

6

The Laboratory was opened on 15 September 1934 with Colonel Grow and Captain Armstrong named as co-founders. On 26 June 1936 Dr. J. W. Heim, a former resident fellow and lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health, reported for duty as Associate Physiologist. In 1938 Dr. Ernest P. A. Pincoff joined the staff upon his graduation from the University of Rochester. In February 1941 Dr. D. B. Dill of the Fatigue Laboratory at Harvard joined the Laboratory as Director of Research. He was succeeded by Col. W. Randolph Lovelace, II. During the succeeding peacetime years the Laboratory, under the guidance of Major Armstrong, was to become the major aeromedical center in the United States and possibly in the world. Major Armstrong was succeeded as Director on 16 September 1940 by Capt. Otis O. Benson, Jr. (MC). As war drew nearer, plans for expansion got rapidly under way. These plans included a new laboratory building which was officially opened a year later. As of late September 1941 there was an impressive staff of specialists on duty at the Laboratory."

With entry of the United States into war, it was apparent that research activities at the School of Aviation Medicine would also have to be expanded. There is the story, however apocryphal it may be, of the senior officer at the School who shortly after Pearl Harbor had felt the pressures too much upon one occasion and exploded that "the School was a fine military installation until the damn war came along." Certainly the School was called upon to make an abruptly swift transition from peace to war and the volume of its work was measured in units of a thousand instead of units of one; but in the area of research the transition to meet the wartime mission was fruitful even if sudden.

Major Armstrong, after leaving the Laboratory at Wright Field, had assumed duties as Director of Research at the School and was therefore in a position to view the total problem of aeromedical research in the Air Force