The fund was terminated in 1930 because Daniel Guggenheim believed it had accomplished its objectives. Major accomplishments had been made in all of the areas that could be grouped under the general headings of education, research, and air transportation.

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In the field of education, the fund had made grants that established Guggenheim schools or research centers at the California Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Washington, Georgia School (later Institute) of Technology, Harvard University, Syracuse University, Northwestern University, and the University of Akron.

The fund also had sponsored programs of aviation education in elementary and secondary schools, created two aeronautical documentation centers in France and Germany, and made a grant to the U.S. Library of Congress for an aeronautical research collection. Because of all these efforts, the Guggenheim Fund had a marked effect on the future of American aviation. It provided a comprehensive program of organized aviation education from the first year of grade school through the graduate level in major universities.

It was recognized from the start that adverse weather, chiefly fog and other low-visibility conditions, was the most severely limiting factor in all aircraft operations. The fund set up the Daniel Guggenheim Committee on Aeronautical Meteorology, which authorized a project to study everything from fog dissipation and penetration to improved navigation, including instruments that would give the pilot absolute information about the attitude of his aircraft in flight.

This effort sought to solve three major problems for aviation: point-to-point navigation in or above the clouds; maintaining a safe attitude for an aircraft by relying solely on its cockpit instruments; and providing ground facilities that would enable a pilot to land or take off in or near actual zero-visibility conditions. To coordinate these efforts, the Full Flight Laboratory was established by the fund at Mitchell Field, Long Island. The effort also involved bringing together advances in radio navigation made by the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Standards, plus progress made in gyro instruments, principally by Elmer Sperry, inventor of the directional gyrocompass and the artificial horizon. Paul Kollsman, developer of the sensitive altimeter, also was included.

Assigned to head this effort in 1928 was Army Lieutenant James H. Jimmy Doolittle, famous by then for his stunt flying and record-setting. What many did not know at the time was that Doolittle was more than a daredevil racing and stunt pilot. He had earned a master's degree and a doctorate in engineering from MIT; hence, he was superbly and uniquely qualified to carry out the experiments.

Doolittle's role was to coordinate the logistics of the experiments, make suggestions for improvements, and do the actual flying. His catalytic influence and his more than 100 practice blind flights enabled him to make the technological leap for aviation that the Guggenheims had envisioned. He made the first takeoff, flight and landing completely by the use of instruments and without any visual reference outside his cockpit on September 24, 1929. It was a breakthrough of monumental proportions that signaled the end of the days of seat-of-the-pants flying.

Doolittle's feat led to later refinements and improvements by private industry that meant that weather need not be such a limiting factor after all. Instrument flying became routine for the airlines and military services within the next decade. The three basic instruments–the precision altimeter, sensitive to within 5 to 10 feet; the artificial horizon; and the directional gyro, all initially developed by the Guggenheim Fund's Full Flight Laboratory–gained universal acceptance and were considered essential in all subsequent aircraft intending to fly into foul weather.

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