National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, Flight Operations

Administrative History

The administrative history of these records was conveyed by Mr. Landis, with comments by Warren Hall and corrections from the written materials noted.

Daily records of flight activity of the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which took place at what is now Moffett Field, California, were recorded by the committee’s Flight Operations Group. When the National Aeronautics and Space Act became law in July 29, 1958, the NACA was incorporated into NASA and the group came under the purview of the NASA Ames Research Center (Hartman, 1970). The group was initially located in Building N210, which, in addition to being one of the first buildings, was one of the first hangars erected by the NACA. Later, Flight Operations moved to another hangar, Building N211, which is still in use today.

The Flight Operations Group used these daily logs to record such information as tests performed (e.g., "Remote control of SB2C-5," "body drop" or "Calibration of N.A.A. swivel head & ck. of transducers") and round-trip flights between Moffett Field and locations such as the High Speed Flight Research Station at Muroc, California (now Dryden Flight Research Center), Sacramento, and various Air Force bases. Although most of the flights appear to have been for testing, pilot training exercises and passenger transport, some were for equipment transfer. Pilots, co-pilots, and flight mechanics are indicated, but only by last name (e.g., there are multiple listings for a "Cooper" who was, presumably, George E. Cooper, a test pilot at the time these logs were created). Other information recorded in the logs includes passengers by last name, including an entry for a "Hemingway."

Flight Operations organized daily flight logs by calendar year until the 1970s, when the group began to keep them by fiscal year. During the 1960s, Flight Operations initiated the process of maintaining flight log records on computers, while retaining the traditional practice of keeping track of flights using pen and paper. Although the computer records included details similar to those in the paper records, such as the crew, type of aircraft, and purpose of the flight, they contained more information than the traditional, paper-based logs. Unlike the early logs, details in the computer records were encoded, requiring the use of a key to decipher their meaning, making the contents less accessible than the physical books. However, the computerized logs contained much more data, such as pilot qualifications (e.g., experience flying a given aircraft, date of last flight, date of last physical), which helped dispatchers readily determine whether a pilot was eligible to fly. Flight Operations kept paper-based daily flight logs until 1985, after which only computer records were kept.

In addition to the logs maintained by Flight Operations such as those in this collection, pilots kept personal flight logs.

From the guide to the Daily Flight Logs, 1949-1950, (Ames Research Center, )

Administrative History

The administrative history of these records was conveyed by Mr. Landis, with comments by Warren Hall and corrections from the written materials noted.

Daily records of flight activity of the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which took place at what is now Moffett Field, California, were recorded by the committee’s Flight Operations Group. When the National Aeronautics and Space Act became law in July 29, 1958, the NACA was incorporated into NASA and the group came under the purview of the NASA Ames Research Center (Hartman, 1970). The group was initially located in Building N210, which, in addition to being one of the first buildings, was one of the first hangars erected by the NACA. Later, Flight Operations moved to another hangar, Building N211, which is still in use today.

The Flight Operations Group used these daily logs to record such information as tests performed (e.g., "Remote control of SB2C-5," "body drop" or "Calibration of N.A.A. swivel head & ck. of transducers") and round-trip flights between Moffett Field and locations such as the High Speed Flight Research Station at Muroc, California (now Dryden Flight Research Center), Sacramento, and various Air Force bases. Although most of the flights appear to have been for testing, pilot training exercises and passenger transport, some were for equipment transfer. Pilots, co-pilots, and flight mechanics are indicated, but only by last name (e.g., there are multiple listings for a "Cooper" who was, presumably, George E. Cooper, a test pilot at the time these logs were created). Other information recorded in the logs includes passengers by last name, including an entry for a "Hemingway."

Flight Operations organized daily flight logs by calendar year until the 1970s, when the group began to keep them by fiscal year. During the 1960s, Flight Operations initiated the process of maintaining flight log records on computers, while retaining the traditional practice of keeping track of flights using pen and paper. Although the computer records included details similar to those in the paper records, such as the crew, type of aircraft, and purpose of the flight, they contained more information than the traditional, paper-based logs. Unlike the early logs, details in the computer records were encoded, requiring the use of a key to decipher their meaning, making the contents less accessible than the physical books. However, the computerized logs contained much more data, such as pilot qualifications (e.g., experience flying a given aircraft, date of last flight, date of last physical), which helped dispatchers readily determine whether a pilot was eligible to fly. Flight Operations kept paper-based daily flight logs until 1985, after which only computer records were kept.

In addition to the logs maintained by Flight Operations such as those in this collection, pilots kept personal flight logs.

From the guide to the Daily Flight Logs, 1949-1950, (Ames Research Center, )