Dec. 05--HAMPTON--
Few real estate deals have had more impact on the history of Hampton and the north shore of Hampton Roads than the sale of 1,659 acres of Back River farmland that unfolded during the last weeks of 1916.
Engineered by a small group of local businessmen, the $290,000 purchase by the federal government quickly transformed the rural landscape, changing fields of wheat and corn and a considerable stretch of often wet lowlands into a pioneering complex of landing strips and aeronautical labs.
Early Wind Tunnel
It also reshaped the character of what had been a mostly pastoral Southern coastal town, dragging it headlong into the modern era.
"Massive Army Aviation School and Experimental Station will be located on the Back River near Hampton," a Daily Press headline proclaimed on Dec. 5, 1916, one day after the acquisition was approved by the Army and the National Advisory Council on Aeronautics.
"(A) fine Christmas for the entire Lower Peninsula," the paper also crowed as the potential impact of the project became clearer.
"The future of this favored section of Virginia is made."
Even the project's giddiest advocates, however, could not have predicted just how deeply the new venture would reshape Hampton and the surrounding region in just a few years.
"The pace of life here changed very rapidly -- away from the water, away from the land and toward technology and engineering," says Hampton History Museum J. Michael Cobb, describing the impact of what are now Langley Air Force Base and NASA Langley Research Center.
"Langley brought a different way of thinking. It brought a different culture. And it changed forever a place that once thought of itself as Crabtown -- and Crabtown only."
Founded by the Army Signal Corps and the National Advisory Council on Aeronautics, Langley Field -- which housed both Army fliers and the scientists and engineers of Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory -- was designed to reverse the nation's declining role in aviation.
" World War I made it painfully clear that -- though flight started here -- we were way behind in the number of airplanes we had. We were behind in performance," says Gail S. Langevin, history liaison for NASA Langley.
"And their mission was to re-establish the United States as a leader."
The government's investment had an immediate impact on Hampton and surrounding Elizabeth City County, transforming the town and farms with a beefed-up electrical grid, new roads and streetcar lines.
Langley also became an economic engine, providing local merchants, industry and suppliers with a regular, well-heeled buyer and bankrolling good jobs.
Still, the growing corps of scientists and engineers at NACA lagged far behind such dashing Army pilots as Billy Mitchell when it came to winning acceptance. Local people puzzled over their strange manners and obsession with technical questions, nicknaming these mostly Northern transplants the "NACA Nuts."
"In some ways, you can't blame them," says Auburn University historian James R. Hansen, author of numerous books on NASA.
"Some of the people at NACA were very eccentric, very idiosyncratic characters -- and some of them had no patience for people who weren't like them."
Hampton girls built the first bridges, drawing the young scientists and engineers into the life of the town through marriage.
But the biggest change came during the space race, when the center's crucial role in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs transformed its nuts into wizards.
Among the most telling parts of this shift is the fact that Phoebus-born Hamptonian Christopher Columbus Kraft not only led the original task force but also become NASA's first flight director.
Shuttle astronaut Robert Satcher is among the other Hampton-born figures who have followed.
"If you asked what Hampton would have been like without NASA and the Air Force, it's hard to imagine," Hansen says.
"Because now they seem inseparable."
-- Mark St. John Erickson
Billy Mitchell at Langley Field
Copyright 2013 - Daily Press (Newport News, Va.)
