Kevin McDowell, left, receives the Richard L. Wernecke Award for Technical Excellence in Rotorcraft Test and Evaluation from Chris Rice, chief engineer at HX-21.

Award winner Kevin McDowell, an engineer with Aircraft Test Squadron HX-21 here, thanked his mentors and colleagues for the support they had provided throughout his 23-year career.

Referring to the flight-test employees with whom he worked, he said, ‘‘I tried to stay in their shadows, but I’m here now standing on their shoulders.”

NAVAIR presents the Wernecke Award ‘‘to the engineer who does the most to promote professionalism and advance the discipline of rotary wing flight test here at Patuxent River” wrote Pax River Commanding Officer Capt. Andy Macyko in an e-mail announcing the winner.

McDowell received his award from Chris Rice, chief engineer at HX-21, who noted that 2008 was the 65th year of rotary wing testing at Pax.

McDowell, a Pittsburgh native, singled out the HX-21 ‘‘family environment” for nurturing his career from the time he joined the organization as ‘‘just a blue-collar boy from steeltown.”

‘‘Some of them are now a little long in the tooth,” he said, ‘‘but it’s a family.” He extended special thanks to the squadron’s aircraft technicians, noting that they provided a knowledge of applications and fleet operations ‘‘that we didn’t have as engineers.”

‘‘It’s been a great 23 years,” he concluded, ‘‘and I’m looking forward to the next six years, four months and seven days.”

The Wernecke Award luncheon was sponsored by the American Helicopter Society, International, and the Naval Helicopter Association. AHS Patuxent River chapter president Scott Bruce, a test pilot for the VH-71 Presidential Helicopters program, emceed the event with wry commentary between presenters.

Bruce noted that the main speaker, Roger Connor, Vertical Flight Curator at the Smithsonian Institution, had once been a fixed-wing flight instructor, an occupation ‘‘with many more moments of terror” than test-piloting.

Connor’s current curator job holds little terror, but it does contain some surprises. He discovered in his research that the limited number of helicopters in World War II – only two dozen were deployed to all combat theaters - was caused not by technical problems that retarded development but by bureaucratic resistance and infighting.

‘‘The established aeronautical authority,” he said, ‘‘tended to dismiss rotary wing aircraft as of limited potential if not outright uselessness.”

Connor showed the luncheon audience numerous examples of this attitude in a visually rich presentation of archival photos, historical documents and newsreel footage.

‘‘We are really not interested in it,” was Assistant Secretary of the Navy Charles Edison’s reaction in 1938 to the new ‘‘rotoplane.” Edison wrote that the novel aircraft ‘‘might be of some use in antisubmarine work,” but that was only ‘‘a minor application which hardly justifies expenditure of experimental funds at present.”

The ‘‘greatest villain in this story,” Connor said, was the Army Air Corps, forerunner of the Air Force. Army artillery troops had been clamoring since the 1920s to try out the autogiro as an observation platform for directing firing. The first model, invented by a Spaniard, had airplane-style flight surfaces plus a lifting rotor.

But Air Corps officials were dead set against ‘‘the idea of a slower, lower flying observation aircraft,” Connor said. They espoused a ‘‘higher, faster mantra” as part of their quest to create a separate and independent Air Force.

Army ground force officers eventually ‘‘made an end run to the White House” in 1934 and persuaded President Roosevelt to order the Air Corps to procure autogiros for testing.

An impressive German helicopter later influenced the Air Corps to also support helicopters for its vertical takeoff requirements. During a fly-off competition, two helicopters decisively outscored two autogiros, leading the Air Corps to fully embrace helicopter development.

But the Navy was still not on board. During World War II the Army tried to team with the Coast Guard to adapt helicopters for anti-submarine work. But the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics dismissed the idea, Conner said.

The Navy considered fighting subs ‘‘their pigeon,” a Coast Guard commander wrote, and refused to cooperate. The reason, he said, was ‘‘because – to put it plainly – of the fear that someone other than the Navy would get the credit if the experiment were a success.”

The situation became ‘‘embarrassing” in 1945, Connor said, when the Commander of Pacific Fleet Air Forces asked for Navy helicopters to supplement the Army aircraft he had been relying on for mail and personnel deliveries.

But the Navy had only one helo, and it was sitting with its pilot at Pax River. Coast Guard aircraft and crews had to be flown to the Pacific to support the fleet. ‘‘This unfortunate situation finally shook the Bureau of Aeronautics out of its torpor,” Connor said, ‘‘and the requirement for a dedicated shipboard helicopter was born.”

‘‘There’s a lesson here,” said Bruce after Connor’s presentation, noting that members of the helicopter community have traditionally felt underappreciated for their contributions.

To make sure Connor knew how much his talk was appreciated, Bruce presented him with a ‘‘very valuable” short-sleeved shirt bearing the official AHS emblem. As he held it up for Connor to admire, Bruce said, ‘‘I’ve seen these selling for thousands of dollars on e-Bay.”