Melvin N. Gough

Melvin N. Gough was born in Washington, D. C., in 1906. He received a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1926. In the same year he began a long career with the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in Hampton, Virginia. From 1926 to 1958, Gough was successively an engineer, a test pilot (after being commissioned as a naval aviator in 1929), Chief Test Pilot, and Chief of Flight Research at NACA-Langley.

When NACA became NASA in 1958, Gough transferred to Cape Canaveral to act as Director of NASA Operations at the Atlantic Missile Range for two years. In 1960, he became Director of the Bureau of Safety for the Civil Aeronautics Board and, in 1962, he was Director of Aircraft Development of the Federal Aviation Agency, retiring from government service in 1964. He died on March 6, 1994.

Gough served on the Board of Governors of the Flight Safety Foundation as a charter member of the Society of Air Safety Investigators. He received the Octave Chanute Award for Test Pilots from the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences in 1941 for "outstanding contributions in the field of aeronautics"; the Distinguished Service Award from the Flight Safety Foundation in 1956 for "distinguished service in achieving safer utilization of aircraft"; and the Flight Safety Foundation's Laura Taber Barbour Award in 1960 for championing "through unstinting personal activity the cause of flight safety." For his contributions to aeronautical history, Gough was inducted into the Virginia Aviation Hall of Fame.

See finding aid for the Melvin N. Gough Papers to view more materials available for research.

Aerial photograph of Langley Field at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Virginia.
Aerial photograph of a hangar at the NACA Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Virginia, including multiple aircraft and employees.
Letter from Boyd C. Myers, II, Secretary of the Panel on Aircraft Accident Survival of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Committee on Operating Problems.
Notes taken by Melvin Gough on the director of NASA activies at the Air Force Missile Test Center during his time assisting with the organization of NASA.
NASA Fact Sheet no. 3A, describing the origins of the organization and its leadership.
Volume 3, issue 12 of the NASA Flight Research Center X-Press newsletter, published in Edwards, California.
Request to Aeronautical Consultants, Inc. from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to contract the organization in order to provide a "study of astronautic safety associated with the manned space flight program."

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