John MacDonald Miller (15 December 1905 − 23 June 2008) was a barnstorming pilot, the first person to make a US transcontinental flight in a rotorcraft, the first to land a rotorcraft on the roof of a building, and the first to fly a scheduled US mail rotorcraft service. He was also a test pilot and airline captain. He became the oldest active pilot in the US, making his first flight on his 18th birthday and ending at the age of 101. He died aged 102.
Early life John Miller was the first child of Theodore and Florence MacDonald Miller of Poughkeepsie, New York. He had a sister, photo-reporter Elizabeth "Lee" and brother, Erik. Theodore Miller was the manager of the De Laval Cream Separator Company, one of the largest businesses in the area, and Johnny attended a local preparatory school, Oakwood Friends School.
At the age of four Miller saw Glen Curtiss fly from a field opposite his father's farm as one of two permitted refuelling stops during his successful attempt to win the New York World newspaper prize of $10,000 for a flight from Albany to New York City, and decided to become a pilot. In 1915 Miller met and talked to famous aviator Ruth Law and sat in the cockpit of her Wright Model B aircraft. He studied Horatio Barber's flying instruction book Aerobatics given to him by an uncle.
Miller took his first flight in a Curtiss JN-4 Jenny in the summer of 1922 at Asbury Park, New Jersey.
Barnstorming In 1923 a barnstorming pilot, Sloan "Swanee" Taylor, gave pleasure flights in a decrepit Jenny from a field near his home, and the 17-year-old Miller, who was working in a machine shop during school holidays, helped him with maintenance and repairs. The aircraft was actually the Canadian version of the Jenny, a Canuck, but was modified with larger wings, giving slower take-offs and landings. It was previously owned by Ruth Law, and had a brand new engine. At the end of the season, Taylor gave Miller a 5-minute ride, then gave him the Jenny, saying that it would be cheaper to buy a new aircraft rather than repair this one. After doing a lot of repairs to it himself, Miller practised on the ground for a few weeks, and on his 18th birthday found himself rapidly approaching a stone wall, so rather than crashing into it, he applied more power and took off. After around an hour's flying, exploring the effect of the controls, he eventually managed a reasonable landing, whereupon a local farmer who had been watching him, asked him if he gave rides. Miller said yes, and took him up for a handful of change, and on landing two other passers-by asked for rides, which he also did, charging $5 a flight, the amount painted on the side of the aircraft. Miller did some more pleasure flights, then at Christmas he took it to a local barn and with the help of friends did extensive repairs. By the summer of 1924 he had finished, did more flights, mainly with the friends, and then sold it before starting college.
Miller made the trip to Roosevelt Field on 20 May 1927 to watch Charles Lindbergh take off on his pioneering transatlantic flight. A month later he graduated from a mechanical engineering course at Pratt Institute of Technology in 1927, gained his A&P (airframe and powerplant) licence (no. 2906) and then worked for a while as a mechanic with Gates Flying Circus. He gained his transport pilot's licence (no. 5945) in 1928 with the Curtiss School of Flight at Mineola, Long Island, New York, and did more barnstorming and pleasure flights with his four-passenger Standard J-1 which he had rebuilt over six months from a near-wreck. He started air racing in a Travel Air 2000.
In 1927 the mayor of Poughkeepsie, John Kelsey Sague (later to become Miller's father-in-law), established Poughkeepsie Airport at Red Oaks Mill to the south-east of the town, which in 1931 Miller took over and ran. He established his company, Giro Flyers Ltd in the hangar there. His main business was repair and maintenance of the aircraft, many of them New Standard models, used by bootleggers to bring alcohol in from Canada. Miller's interest in this lucrative business carried on until the end of prohibition in 1933, but the airport carried on until it was closed in 1938.
In 1931 he acquired New Standard D-24 c/n102 registered NC193E. Its fuselage had been damaged when Anthony Fokker wrecked a line of parked aircraft while landing his Express aircraft at Teterboro Airport,. It was powered by a Hispano-Suiza E engine. Miller rebuilt it with a Wright J-5 engine, turning it into a D-25. Assisted by efficient ground crew to marshal the passengers and refuel the aircraft, he would do up to 350 short flights (less than a minute each) a day. While doing aerobatics in the New Standard, Marine Corps officers saw him and invited him to join the Reserve at Pensacola, Florida, and he served for a while at Quantico, Virginia, as a qualified naval aviator. Miller sold the D-25 in 1935.
Autogyros Pitcairn
In 1923 Miller read about the progress that Juan de la Cierva was making with autogyros in Madrid. Miller wrote to him, and received two letters in return, explaining how autogyros work. In 1929 Cierva had visited the US and sold the licence for his designs to Harold Pitcairn, forming the Pitcairn-Cierva Autogiro Company. Miller's correspondence had continued, and he visited Pitcairn, soon ordering a PCA-2, becoming the first private individual in the US to purchase an autogyro, at a cost of $15,000 ().
He then formulated a plan to perform the first transcontinental autogyro flight, which he soon discovered would be in competition with Amelia Earhart, whose Pitcairn autogyro was sponsored by the Beech-Nut food company, then well known for its chewing gum. Miller realised that Pitcairn was keen for the famous Earhart to get her aircraft first to ensure maximum publicity, but Miller arranged to learn to fly a similar machine at Pitcairn's plant before his own aircraft was ready. This enabled him to do detailed training and planning before the long-distance flight, and to set off before Earhart was ready to undertake her flight, for which she was evidently under-prepared. He did practice flights at the Pitcairn plant at Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, between 9 and 12 May 1931, making 110 practice landings with a total of 5.5 hours of flying logged.
Miller took delivery of his new machine, a black PCA-2 c/n B-13, registered NC10781, which he named Missing Link on 12 May 1931. Two days later, on 14 May, he transferred it to his newly formed company, Giro Flyers, Ltd. On the same day he set off from Willow Grove on his transcontinental flight. He stopped off at the Omaha Air Races, where he did 14 demonstration flights, finally reaching Naval Air Station San Diego, now Naval Air Station North Island, on 28 May. He had spent 43.8 hours in the air and had no mechanical problems with the aircraft. His flight set a record which lasted 72 years, when it was broken by Andrew Keech in his Herron-Keech Little Wing LW-5 on 3 October 2003.
While he was in San Diego, Miller demonstrated the PCA-2 to the military at the North Island, Coronado, base, including giving passenger flights to two admirals. These were the first ever autogyro flights on the west coast of the US. Fêted by oil companies and film star Mary Pickford, his departure was delayed until 21 June, when he started the return flight to Willow Grove, arriving on 1 July. When Pitcairn mechanics inspected the aircraft, all that was needed was an oil change.
Earhart flew her PCA-2. NC10780, setting out from Newark Metropolitan Airport on 28 May and after an unhurried journey with many publicity stops reached Oakland, California on 6 June. She and her sponsor were extremely disappointed to learn that Miller had beaten her, and resolved to try to beat his west-to-east performance. However, she crashed at Abilene, Texas during the attempt, finishing her journey by train but still garnering more publicity than Miller.
Miller carried on over the next four years demonstrating the autogyro at air races, and air shows, and developed the skill of looping it, becoming the first person to loop a rotorcraft (though not the first person to demonstrate it publicly). He incorporated the manoeuvre into his displays, often adding a roll at the top. He was being paid $1,000 per display. In the 1932 Cleveland National Air Races he was performing a mock dogfight against a modified Curtiss Pusher and on landing, his autogyro was hit by the Curtiss as it overflew him, probably the result of a strong wind on the fragile biplane. Miller and his passenger were unharmed, but the Curtiss pilot, his friend Al Wilson, died two days later of his injuries. The autogyro was damaged and was grounded for 27 days waiting for new rotors and a rudder. There is film of the crash.
On 26 January 1934 he was banner-towing in the PCA-2. He took off from Newark for a flight around Manhattan. The engine stopped over North Arlington, New Jersey and he landed safely in a cemetery, fixed the engine and took off from among the gravestones.
In 1936 he joined United Air Lines as a Boeing 247D co-pilot flying the Cheyenne to Salt Lake City and New York to Chicago routes. He flew with United for around 18 months, and was about to be promoted to captain when he was contacted by W. Wallace Kellett.
Kellett Kellett had obtained a licence to produce Pitcairn autogyros, and asked Miller to be the test pilot for his new wingless version, the two-seat KD-1. The D in the name stood for Direct control, meaning that the rotor was responsible for all aerodynamic control, so that ailerons (and therefore the wings), elevators and indeed airspeed were no longer required. Other test pilots had declined to fly it, fearing for the safety of the aircraft, but Miller, thoroughly understanding the principles involved, was convinced that the radical new design would be safe, and accepted Kellett's offer. The testing went well, Miller even becoming the first pilot to dive an autogyro – the advancing rotors went near-supersonic and caused severe problems for Miller, but he survived, shaken but unscathed, and the aircraft sustained only minor damage, mainly to the rotor blades. The inspector who had asked for this test then declined to pass the aircraft but Miller told him that any aircraft subject to that level of abuse where it and the pilot both survived was obviously worthy of a certificate, and the inspector agreed.
This success emboldened Kellett and Miller to lobby Washington to enable regular autogyro mail services to start, and an act was passed on 15 April 1938. Remarkably, the act released rotary-winged aircraft from most of the safety provisions that applied to fixed-wing aircraft, mainly on account of their ability to land safely almost anywhere in the event of an emergency. This exemption largely continues into the 21st century.
Kellett then approached several airlines to bid on mail contracts for an autogyro service. At first only TWA was interested, but Miller thought that they just wanted the publicity. He made two demonstration flights for them between the Chicago postal facility and Chicago Municipal Airport (now Midway Airport), but TWA then rejected the idea.
Kellett and Miller then approached Eddie Rickenbacker of Eastern Air Lines with a view to using Kellett autogyros to fly the mail between the main post office in Philadelphia and the nearby Camden Central Airport in New Jersey, a distance of just under six miles, crossing the Delaware River and saving a considerable amount of time. Rickenbacker was very enthusiastic and agreed to run a one-year trial. He offered Miller the job as chief pilot of the operation. To Kellett's surprise, Miller asked for twice the amount that Kellett was paying him, and Rickenbacker agreed, even offering to take him on as a regular pilot if the mail service ended.