Highest Honors for Game-Changing Innovation

In 1954, the fifth and final of the NACA's Colliers was awarded to Richard Travis Whitcomb of Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory for the development of the Whitcomb area rule—a ''powerful, simple, and useful method of reducing greatly the sharp increase in wing drag heretofore associated with transonic flight, and which constituted a major factor requiring great reserves of power to attain supersonic speeds.'' Here Whitcomb is shown in the 8-foot High-Speed Tunnel in April 1955 examining a model designed in accordance with the area rule. Image Credit: NACA
NASA Identifier: 431297main_collier_1954