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AN INTERVIEW WITH RUSSELL ROBINSON
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Recently, San Francisco Section Chairman, Stephen Jaeger interviewed 92 year old Russell Robinson, an AIAA Fellow and member for 67 years. He retired from NASA in 1970. For those of my generation and younger, 1939 is antiquity - an ancient world of heavy black cars, radio programs and Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was a real pleasure to talk to someone who not only experienced 1939 but helped shaped part of the Bay Area's contribution to aerospace engineering that year. It was sixty years ago last month that ground was broken for the new NACA Aeronautics Laboratory at Moffett Field. Russell Robinson was there. In 1939, he was detailed to an NACA committee in charge of finding a suitable West Coast location for a second national aeronautics laboratory. The possibility of involvement in Europe's newest war highlighted America's vulnerability in having their only aeronautics laboratory at Langley, Virginia on the East Coast. The committee looked at the availability of machine shops, cost of electric power, proximity of universities and flying weather as the important criteria to guide their decisions. After reviewing over 30 competing sites, they selected Moffett Field. As a California native and Stanford graduate, Mr. Robinson was more than happy to locate the new laboratory amongst the fruit orchards of the Santa Clara Valley. |
Born in Spokane Washington, but raised mostly in Santa Monica, Robinson clearly has a love for California and the West Coast. In 1924, a teenage Rus Robinson watched four Douglas World Cruisers takeoff from Clover Field in Santa Monica as they embarked on a daring round-the-world flight. Robinson, however, credits Lindbergh's 1927 flight for inspiring his interest in aviation. Mr. Robinson received his Engineer's degree in 1930 from Stanford University and began working at NACA Langley for $2000 per year, a comfortable sum for a young bachelor in depression-era Virginia. "We were Damn Yankees, even if we were from the far west" says Robinson. "but we were a godsend to the young ladies."
Working for Smitty DeFrance, as a young engineer, Robinson recalled DeFrance's reaction to the young engineer's strut-brace monoplane design. DeFrance suggested that the monoplane would never replace the biplane. "I thought, 'Heresy! How can you not see that cleaning up the airplane is the answer to a lot of evils.'" An incredulous Robinson remembers. DeFrance's World War I flying experience, no doubt, instilled his reverent attitude towards biplanes.
Moving on to NACA headquarters in 1940, Robinson and his wife, whom he met there, got to cross paths with many notable pioneers of aviation including Orville Wright, Igor Sikorsky and Charles Lindbergh. Robinson even worked on a committee with Lindbergh to establish the NACA laboratory in Cleveland. Of Lindbergh, "I would call him intense and a perfectionist."
In comparison to today's engineering field, which places a lot of emphasis on the level of college education, many early contributions to aeronautics came from engineers without advanced degrees. "I couldn't possibly say it was easier to be a giant in those days because it wasn't," Robinson noted, "but it was easier to make strides then because the airplane was so crude." We agreed that in some ways the early aviation industry mirrors the intense atmosphere of today's software and computer industry. The average age of a 1930's NACA employee was 26. "It was just like graduate school and we had the best equipment."
During the 1940's, NACA Ames worked to support the Army and Navy conducting research on such problems as the shockwave instability that plagued the P-38 Lightning in high speed dives and the "duct rumble" problem with the air intake of the P-51 Mustang. Even the gruff Kelly Johnson of Lockheed praised NACA for its work.
In 1950, Mr. Robinson returned to his beloved California to serve the remainder of his career at Ames. He was there in 1958, when the United States, in its efforts to catch up with the Soviet's Sputnik success, proposed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). I told Robinson I assumed it was a simple decision to transform the NACA to NASA. "It wasn't simple at all." Robinson says, "The Air Corp wanted it, the Navy wanted it. Everyone wanted to be the Space Agency." The NACA's experience with hypersonics and someone's wisdom prevailed, however, and the NACA became NASA. With the transition, they went from being a research agency serving a committee to an operations agency under a single administrator. Research was delegated to a minor role&emdash;-a decision that is still being questioned today. NASA Ames went on to contribute significantly to the national quest for the Moon through its research on hypersonics and heat shield technology.
Mr. Robinson took up flying for a few years after retirement but now spends most days with his wife at his home in Los Altos Hills. Some of his time is spent catching up on all the novels he neglected to read during his long career.
Our afternoon conversation eventually led to the subject of the late William F. Durand (1859 - 1958), the patriarch of the Stanford University's Aeronautics and Astronautics department. Robinson, who knew Dr. Durand in his later years, is still fascinated with Durand's life story and maintains an on-going correspondence with Durand's secretary. He kindly loaned me his signed copy of Durand's autobiography, a book that is long out of print. I took the book home with me and read it into the late hours. I was transfixed by this story of a man, famous in his own time, whose contributions to the waning century's great scientific achievements have been all but forgotten by today's engineers.
For me, the parallel is illuminating: The young Russell Robinson with the octogenarian William Durand discussing a career that spans from the sea trials of the U.S. Navy's first iron ship to his 1940's chairmanship of the NACA committee on the development of jet propulsion. Now, 92 year old Russell Robinson sits down with me and relates the story of aeronautical research from World War II fighters to the Apollo missions and beyond. I hope I can have as interesting a career to talk about in the 21st Century.
-Stephen M. Jaeger
Copyright © 2000 AIAA San Francisco Section
(Originally published in the January/February 2000 AIAA San Francisco Section Newsletter)
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NACA Ames Groundbreaking, December 20th, 1939. Russell Robinson is at the far right in the photo. (Courtesy NASA) |
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