FOND FLIGHT MEMORIES FORMER NACA WORKERS GATHER FOR A REUNION.

Byline: Peggy Hager Staff Writer

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - Muroc Army Field was an inhospitable place in the late 1940s and early 1950s: primitive buildings, hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and windy almost all the time.

But for attendees of a National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics reunion, it was also a time and place they recall with fond memories.

``It's a lot different,'' said 77-year-old Edwin ``Eddie'' Edwards, looking at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center's headquarters building, hangars, test facilities and historic airplanes mounted on pedestals. ``Things have changed.''

``Mostly us,'' interjected Jim Battles, 69, who worked with Edwards on the X-1E rocket plane in the 1950s.

Edwards and Battles were among 280 former NACA workers from around the United States who attended the reunion at the NASA center.

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1957, just months before America launched its first satellite into orbit.

Much of the work done at NACA wouldn't have been possible without the work of ``human computers,'' who took all of the data received during test flights and turned it into readable information.

All of these computers were women with degrees as mathematicians.

One of the first was Vivan Adair. Now age 84, Adair worked for NACA and later NASA at Langley, Va., for 30 years.

``The reason I was there, I took a civil service test in 1941 and was called in 1943 to work the duration of the war,'' said Adair, originally from South Carolina.

She stayed on after World War II ended.

``I wrote the first FORTRAN program for IBM,'' she said. ``When IBM machines came into being in early 1950s, we programmed our own computer boards.''

Among the NACA pilots was Bob Champine.

Among his duties were piloting a P-51 Mustang to which scale test models of the full-size X planes were attached.

Champine was the sixth pilot to break the sound barrier in the X-1.

Champine, 79, now has difficulty speaking due to a stroke. His wife, Gloria, told how he began flying after winning flying lessons from a model airplane-building contest.

``When he was hired at Langley, he flew his Corsair into Langley, folded up the wings and said, `Take me to your boss,' '' she said.

``I didn't think it was funny,'' said Champine, ``but everyone else thought it was funny.''

``He was a very serious young man,'' she said.

Testing rocket-powered airplanes 50 years ago sometimes took some improvisation.

Edwards, the first crew chief on the X-1E, recalled having to release the rocket plane manually from the belly of the B-29 that carried it aloft.

``It weighed 12,500 pounds on a 4,000-pound bomb shackle and wouldn't release,'' Edwards recalled. ``The co-pilot had to pull the pin by hand with a punch and a hammer at 30,000 feet.''

The X-1 pilot had been informed that the flight had been aborted and shut down the systems. Unfortunately, the B-29 couldn't land with the X-1 on board, so the co-pilot continued to hammer out the pin.

Edwards said the pilot was very surprised to be suddenly dropped from the plane and had to immediately turn the X-1's equipment back on to land.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Former National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics employees mingle Friday at Edwards Air Force Base during a reunion attended by 280.

(2 -- color) Former X-1E Crew Chief Edwin ``Eddie'' Edwards, 77, left, and Jim Battles, 69, stand in front of a plane like the one they both worked on during Friday's reunion.

(3) Some of the 280 former NACA employees wave to a NASA photographer during Friday's reunion at Edwards Air Force Base.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer