Abstract:
Inspired watching Glenn Curtiss landing to refuel on his historic 1910 flight from Albany to New York City, the almost 5-year old John McDonald "Johnny" Miller decided he wanted to be a pilot, a decision reinforced five years later in a chance encounter with famed aviatrix Ruth Law (3rd licensed woman pilot in America) at the Curtiss Flying school in Mineola, Long Island. Miller taught himself to fly in used WWI Jenny from a text by Captain Horatio Barber, a book Miller still had in his family home in Poughkeepsie, NY eighty years later. His career in aviation, begun in a $1,500 used WWI aircraft, would span eight decades and see him as an Eastern Airline pilot flying jets - a career captured in his email address adopted in his ninth decade from jennys2jets, but Miller was most famous for being the man who beat Amelia Earhart in the first transcontinental Autogiro flight in 1931 and the 1939-1940 experimental Autogiro Airmail Route between the 30th Street Post Office roof in Philadelphia and Camden, NJ. In between, Miller supported himself with maintenance work on bootleggers airplanes and airshow performances, one of which resulted in the death of 'Al' Wilson whose replica Curtiss biplane fatally crashed in a mock dogfight with Miller's PCA-2 Autogiro. Miller's career spanned 85 years and, at his death at 102 & 1/2, he was still a licensed and active pilot. He had thrilled thousands with his Autogiro exhibitions, and while he was not the first, his daring Autogiro 'loop-the-loop' never failed to have the crowd cheering and was captured in the 1935 film Ladies Crave Excitement. Miller was an outsider - not part of the Pitcairn business enterprise which championed Earhart and, from such a truly unique vantage point, was in a special position to observe and comment. His triumphant transcontinental flight in 1931 and the 1939-1940 Autogiro Airmail Route neatly bracket the age of the American Autogiro - John McDonald Miller was part that decade, and his frequent writings provide a unique record and attest to the fabulous life of this American original.