Fifty years of research at ONERA

At the end of the World War II, the position of France as an aeronautical country was very critical. To help French industry to revive, the Government decided in 1946 to found ONERA (then Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aeronautiques), as a national research establishment in the aeronautical field. From the beginning, ONERA has been very active in basic and applied research as well as in experimentation tests for supporting industry. The main fields of activity are aerodynamics, energetics, materials, structures, instrumentation, and more recently data processing and systems design. Research wind tunnels with elaborated measurement instruments are located at Chalais-Meudon, near Paris. ONERA's large wind funnels are located at Modane (''Centre de Modane Avrieux'') and near Toulouse (''centre du Fauga-Mauzac). The ''Institut de Mecanique des Fluides de Lille,, houses the Office's flight mechanics facilities, specific research wind tunnels and structure laboratories. Research and studies in aerodynamics, automatics, data processing, optics, microwaves are an important activity of the ''Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches de Toulouse a. Applied physics, materials, and structures laboratories are located at Chatillon-sous-Bagneux near Paris. This establishment also houses the headquarters and the computing center. In 1963, ONERA's mission was extended to space research, in cooperation with the (I Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales''. ONERA became the ''Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aerospatiales''. ONERA has 2300 employees, among them more than 1000 scientists or high-level engineers. Their activity covers a very wide spectrum. Either for aircraft and helicopters or for missiles and launchers, all the French benefited from ONERA's research support and testing facilities. ONERA is also involved in many joint activities in cooperation with foreign research establishments. For example, the European Transonic Wind funnel (ETW), located near Cologne, is the result of an excellent cooperation between ONERA and its counterparts in Germany (DLR) in United Kingdom (DRA) and in the Netherlands (NLR). ONERA's employees may be proud of the first fifty years of their establishment. Considering aeronautical engineering as well as space engineering, ONER? will still play a leading role for the future aerospace programs.