Shown is the family of Walt Williams: Helen, his widow, sons Charles and Howard, daughter Elizabeth Williams Powell, their spouses and children unveiling the new sign redesignating the Facility.

The test facility provides state-of-the-art capabilities for thorough ground testing of advanced research aircraft. It allows researchers and technicians to integrate and test aircraft systems before each research flight, which greatly enhances the safety of each mission.

In September 1946 Williams became engineer-in-charge of a team of five engineers who arrived at Muroc Army Air Base (now Edwards AFB) from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’s Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, Hampton, Virginia (now NASA's Langley Research Center), to prepare for supersonic research flights in a joint NACA-Army Air Forces program involving the rocket-powered X-1. This established the first permanent NACA presence at the Mojave Desert site although initially the five engineers and others who followed them were on temporary assignment. Over time, Walt continued to be in charge during the many name changes for the NACA-NASA organization, with Williams ending his stay as Chief of the NASA Flight Research Center in September 1959 (today NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center).