Only recently did we hear of the passing of AutoGyro pioneer Johnny Miller aged over 100,  Wing Commander Ken Wallis is still flying gyros at 93 and even the  flexwing inventor made 97.  Now tell me again why we can’t get insurance!

Aviation pioneer Johnny Miller dies at 102

By Nathan A. Ferguson

A pilot who was almost as old as powered aviation itself has died. John M. Miller was 102.

Miller, of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., died of natural causes on June 23. Miller was born on Dec. 15, 1905, and witnessed some of aviation’s most pivotal events such as when Charles A. Lindbergh took off for Paris on his historic Atlantic crossing. Miller counted Amelia Earhart as one of his acquaintances.

He uttered his last words to his nephew. “I guess my flying days are over,” reported thePoughkeepsie Journal.

Miller started flying when he was 18 and continued until he was 101. He was known as the oldest active pilot in the United States. Miller flew for the airlines, served as a test pilot for Kellett Autogiro Company, and was the founding director of the American Bonanza Society.

One of his most interesting jobs was flying the airmail off the roof of the downtown Philadelphia post office in an autogiro. Three of the airplanes Miller flew are on exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum.

Besides aviation, Miller was known for his healthy lifestyle. He never smoked or drank alcohol and maintained the same weight and blood pressure as when he was 18. For exercise, he took brisk walks up and down hills.

The Davis-Monthan Aviation Field Register has posted a detailed biography of Miller’s life along with videos of the autogiro.

Obituary:

Francis Rogallo, an aeronautical engineer who was considered the father of modern hang gliding and other

recreational sports for inventing a flexible wing in 1948, which revolutionised nonpowered flight, died at the

age of 97 on 1 September of natural causes at his home in Southern Shores, North Carolina said Carol

Sparks, his daughter. “He was a researcher at what is now the National Aeronautics and Space

Administration who dreamed of coming up with an affordable way for people to fly,” his daughter said.

At first, the agency was not interested in the idea, so Rogallo developed the lightweight wing at his Virginia

home with his wife, Gertrude, a former schoolteacher and expert seamstress. They cut the first prototype

from their old kitchen curtains and later tested models in makeshift wind tunnels in their basement. By 1951,

they had patented a flexible wing with fabric that spread into a fan shape with help from wind pressure.

“Such a flexible wing does not exist in nature,” Rogallo told Invention & Technology magazine in 1998.

“Even birds’ wings have bones and a rigid shape.”

With further development by others, the Rogallo wing transformed personal flight, beginning in the 1960s.

“People were building their own wings from pictures in magazines. They were teaching themselves to fly,”

said Mike Meier, president of the Hang Glider Manufacturers’ Assn. and a principal at Wills Wing Inc., a

hang glider manufacturer in Orange. “Suddenly, here was this idea that people had dreamed about for

thousands of years — to be able to fly like a bird with a personal set of wings,” Meier said. “All of a sudden,

with a very simple apparatus, this was possible. It was rofound.” Rogallo’s kite-like apparatus led not only to

hang gliding, but to paragliding, ultralight flight and kite boarding, amongst other pursuits, according to the

Rogallo Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded in 1992. “Without his invention, we may not have had

personal flight for several more generations,” said John Harris, president of the foundation. “It made

inexpensive flight possible for many, many people.”

Francis Melvin Rogallo, the second of four sons of Mathieu and Marie Rogallo, was born 27 January 1912,

in Sanger, then a frontier town near Fresno. His Polish immigrant father ran a hotel there, but died when

Francis was about 12.

Rogallo had been captivated by flight since he was seven and saw his first plane, a barnstormer, fly over his

town. Years later, he tried to join the military to become a pilot, but was rejected because he had lost part of

a foot in a childhood accident.

Instead, he attended Stanford University and studied mechanical engineering and aeronautics, graduating in

1935. A year later, he joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in Virginia, the precursor to

NASA.

He oversaw aerodynamic research and airplane development and managed research for a low-speed air

tunnel. Rogallo also held patents on about 25 devices, which included wing controls, airfoils and target kites.

For nearly a decade, Rogallo tried to interest the government and military aircraft builders in his wing design

“but no one would seriously consider it as a man-carrying aircraft,” he told the Washington Post in 1978. A

diminutive version of the wing made it to market in the 1950s in the form of a kite manufactured by a

Connecticut company.

After the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, the space race was on and NASA became

interested in the Rogallo wing as a potential tool for bringing satellites back to Earth. The Rogallos released

their patent to the U.S. government so that it could be used for public good, according to the foundation and

never profited from the wing’s future uses.

NASA began a series of experiments and by 1960 made the first test flights of the ‘Fleep,’ conceived as a

flying Jeep, powered by a small engine and the Rogallo wing for lift. In a 1965 test, a Gemini capsule landed

softly using the flexible wing, but NASA abandoned the approach in favour of standard parachutes and

ocean recoveries. Pioneers on at least two continents had seen pictures of the Rogallo wing and started

putting together hang gliders despite admonitions, such as one in a 1961 issue of Popular Mechanics that

warned: “Do not try to design or build one yourself.”

Rogallo retired in 1970 and chose to move near Kitty Hawk, N.C., where the Wright brothers pioneered

powered, manned flight. He had once met Orville Wright, in 1939.

About once a month, until his 80th birthday, Rogallo would drive five miles to Jockey’s Ridge State Park and

fly his red-and-white hang glider. The only time he was ever hurt hang gliding, he later recalled, was when

someone else crashed into him.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 9:18 pm and is filed under Reference Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.