Betty Miller steps out of the Piper Apache at Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 13 May 1963. (Photograph by Barry Pascoe, from the Courier-Mail Photo Archives)
30 April–13 May 1963: Betty Miller, a 37-year-old flight instructor from Santa Monica, California, became the first woman to complete a solo Trans-Pacific flight. She was also the first pilot to make a Trans-Pacific flight without a navigator.
Betty Miller was delivering a twin-engine Piper PA-23-160 Apache H, N4315Y, from the United States to its owner in Australia, Fred Margison. An auxiliary fuel tank was placed in the passenger compartment.
Mrs. Miller began her flight from Oakland, California, at 6:35 a.m., Pacific Standard Time. The first leg was approximately 2,400 miles (3,682 kilometers) to Honolulu on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, flown in 17 hours, 3 minutes. She was delayed there for 4 days while a radio was repaired.
Betty Miller with the Piper PA-23-160 Apache H at Honolulu, Hawaii, 30 April 1963. (Salt Lake Tribune)
The next stop was Canton Island, a small island in the Phoenix Islands, just south of the Equator and approximately half-way between Hawaii and Fiji. The elapsed time for this 1,700-mile (2,736 kilkometers) flight was 13 hours, 6 minutes. From Canton to Fiji was 1,250 miles (2,012 kilometers). The elapsed time was 8 hours, 27 minutes. On the fourth leg, intended to be the final stage, she was forced to divert to Noumea, New Caledonia, because of severe weather.
With delays for rest and waiting for good weather, Miller’s flight took nearly two weeks. She took off from Nadi Airport, Viti Levu, Fiji, at 4:47 a.m., local, and finally arrived at Eagle Farm Airport, Brisbane, Queensland, at 10:20 p.m., Australian Eastern Standard Time, after crossing 7,400 miles (11,909 kilometers) of ocean, in a total of 51 hours, 38 minutes in the air.
Betty Miller in the cockpit of the Piper Apache, before departing on her Trans-Pacific Flight. (Betty Miller collection)
Contemporary newspapers called Miller “the flying housewife,” which demeaned her actual qualifications. At the time of her Trans-Pacific flight, she was a commercial pilot and flight instructor, rated in single- and multi-engine airplanes and helicopters. She owned and operated a flight school and charter company based at Santa Monica Airport on the Southern California coast. In fourteen years as a pilot, Betty Miller had logged more than 6,500 hours of flight time.
Betty Miller with President John F. Kennedy at the White House. Left to right, Administrator Najeeb Halaby, Federal Aviation Administration; President Kennedy; Mrs. Miller; Mrs. Jane Briggs Hart; Mr. Charles Miller. (Robert L. Knudsen/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum KN-C29599)
President John F. Kennedy awarded Mrs. Miller the Federal Aviation Administration Gold Medal for Exceptional Service. On 14 September 1964, President Lyndon Johnson presented her with the Harmon International Trophy. (Also receiving the Harmon at the ceremony were Astronaut Gordon Cooper and test pilot Fitzhugh Fulton.)
Two years later, Mrs. Miller flew across the Atlantic Ocean.
Finally, in another first, the photograph of Betty Miller arriving at Brisbane was the very first to be transmitted by a new wire-photo process.
Betty Jean Verret was born 6 April 1926 at Venice, California. She was the second of three daughters of Earday Verret, a street car conductor, and Bertha DeLay Verret. She graduated from Venice High School in 1942.
Miss Verret was employed by the Civil Aeronautics Administration as an Aircraft Communicator. While working at Wendover, Utah, she met Chuck Miller. They married and lived in Santa Monica, California, where they operated a flight school.
Mrs. Miller was a member of the Ninety-Nines, the Whirly-Girls, and was chair of the FAA Women’s Advisory Committee.
Betty Jean Verret Miller died 21 February 2018 at Bountiful, Utah, at the age of 91 years.
Piper PA-23-160 Apache 23-2039, registered VH-IMB, at Archerfield Airport (ACF), near Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, circa 1967. (Ed Coates Collection)
The airplane flown by Betty Miller was a Piper PA-23-160 Apache H, serial number 23-2039, manufactured in December 1961 by the Piper Aircraft Corporation at Vero Beach, Florida. It was assigned U.S. registration N4315Y and was painted white and “El Paso Brown” (a dark metallic brown color). In January 1962 the new Apache was delivered to Brown Flying Services, San Antonio, Texas.¹
The Piper PA-23-160 Apache H was a 4-place, twin-engine light airplane with retractable tricycle landing gear. It was 27 feet, 2 inches (8.280 meters) long with a wingspan of 37 feet, 0 inches (11.278 meters) and overall height of 10 feet, 1 inch (3.073 meters). The airplane had an empty weight of 2,230 pounds (1,011.5 kilograms) and maximum gross weight of 3,800 pounds (1,723.7 kilograms).
The Apache H was powered by two air-cooled, normally-aspirated, 319.749-cubic-inch-displacement (5.240 liter) Lycoming O-320-B2B horizontally-opposed 4-cylinder overhead valve (OHV) engines with a compression ratio of 8.5:1. The O-320-B2B is a direct-drive, right-hand tractor engine, rated at 160 horsepower at 2,700 r.p.m. The O-320-B2B is 2 feet, 5.56 inches (0.751 meters) long, 2 feet, 8.24 inches (0.819 meters) wide and 1 foot, 10.99 inches (0.584 meters) high. It weighs 278 pounds (126.1 kilograms). The engines turned two-bladed Hartzell constant-speed propellers.
The PA-23-160 had a cruise speed of 150 knots (173 miles per hour/278 kilometers per hour) and maximum speed was 159 knots (183 miles per hour/295 kilometers per hour). The service ceiling was 17,000 feet (5,182 meters).
Piper PA-23-160 Apache H 23-2039, registered VH-IMB, photographed at Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia, 5 November 1978. (Photograph courtesy of Danny Tanner)
N4315Y was re-registered VH-IMB, 22 May 1963, after its arrival in Australia. The airplane remains operational.
Piper PA-23-160 Apache H 23-2039, VH-IMB, registered to Beltana Aviation Pty. Ltd., photographed at Watts Bridge Airfield, Queensland, Australia, 28 August 2010. (Robert Frola via Wikipedia)
¹ Thanks to Roger Peperell, Company Historian, Piper Aircraft, Inc., for researching the history of Betty Miller’s Apache.
English Electric A.1 VH799, first of four prototypes of the Canberra bomber. (BAE Systems)Bee Beamont with an English Electric Canberra
Friday, 13 May 1949: At Warton Aerodrome, Lancashire, Chief Test Pilot Roland Prosper Beamont, C.B.E., D..S.O and Bar, D.F.C. and Bar, made the first test flight of the English Electric A.1 prototype, VN799, a very high altitude light bomber powered by two turbojet engines.
VN799 was the first of four prototypes. Three were equipped with Rolls-Royce
The newly completed airplane had been rolled out 2 May, and over the next several days underwent a series of static and taxi tests. The prototype was painted overall “plate blue.”
Rollout of English Electric A.1 VN799 at Warton Aerodrome, 2 May 1949.Ministry of Aircraft Production authorization for the Canberra’s first flight. The test pilot is specified by name. The serial numbers of the two Rolls-Royce jet engines are also listed.
“Bee” Beamont flew the prototype for approximately one-half hour. Other than a problem in yaw, which would be corrected with minor modifications to the vertical fin and rudder over the next several test flights, the aircraft performed very well. Months earlier, the bomber had been ordered into production “off the drawing board.”
English Electric A.1 VN799. Note the rounded vertical fin of this early configuration.
British bombers have traditionally been named for cities. Canberra, capitol of Australia, was selected as the new airplane’s name in January 1950.
The English Electric B. Mk. I was a twin engine mid-wing bomber, operated by a pilot and navigator/bombardier. The Mk. I was 63 feet, 11 inches (19.482 meters) long, with a wing span of 66 feet, 3 inches (20.193 meters), and overall height of 15 feet, 6.9 inches. (4.747 meters). The wing used a symmetrical airfoil and had 2° angle of incidence. The inner wing had 2° dihedral, and the outer wing, 4° 21′. The total wing area was 960 square feet (89.2 square meters). The tailplane had a span of 27 feet, 4.9 inches (8.354 meters) with 1° angle of incidence and 10° dihedral. Total area of the stabilizer and elevators was 171.1 square feet (15.90 square meters).
Canberra VN799 at Farnborough Air Show, 1949. Note the squared-off vertical fin. (Ed Coates Collection)
VN799 was powered by two pre-production Rolls-Royce Avon R.A.2 engines. The Avon R.A.2 was a single-spool, axial flow turbojet with a 12-stage compressor section and single-stage turbine. It was rated at 6,000 pounds of thrust (26.69 kilonewtons). It weighed 2,400 pounds (1,089 kilograms). VN799 was the first British airplane built with an axial-flow turbojet engine.
VN799, flown by Flight Lieutenant Harry Maule with Scientific Officer I Mike Burgan, crashed at Sutton Heath, near RAF Woodbridge, 18 August 1953. The engines stopped due to fuel exhaustion while testing automatic landing systems. Maule and Burgan suffered minor injuries, but the airplane was destroyed. At the time of the crash, the prototype Canberra had flown a total of 1,540 hours, 40 minutes.
Canberra T.4 WJ874 is painted as the first prototype, VN799. (Ministry of Defense)
Interestingly, in October 1946, a 34-passenger civil transport variant of the Canberra was proposed, with an enlarged 10-foot-diameter fuselage.
The Canberra was produced in bomber, intruder, photo reconnaissance, electronic countermeasures and trainer variants by English Electric, Handley Page, A.V. Roe and Short and Harland. In the United States, a licensed version, the B-57A Canberra, was built by the Glenn L. Martin Company. The various versions were operated by nearly 20 nations. The Canberra was the United Kingdom’s only jet-powered bomber for four years. The last one in RAF service, a Canberra PR.9, made its final flight on 28 July 2008.
Colonel Charles E. (“Chuck”) Yeager, USAF, commanding the 405th Fighter Wing, with crew chief TSGT Rodney Sirois, before a combat mission with a Martin B-57 Canberra bomber during the Vietnam War. (Andrew Headland, Jr./Stars and Stripes)
Latécoère 28-3 F-AJNQ at Saint-Louis du Sénégal, May 1930, with Gimié, Mermoz and Dabry (Keystone)
12–13 May 1930: In an effort to connect the North African and South American air mail routes, Jean Mermoz, the chief pilot of Compagnie générale aéropostale, along with co-pilot and navigator Jean Dabry, and radio navigator Léopold Martial Émile Gimié, departed Saint-Louis, on the western coast of Senegal, French West Africa, enroute to Natal, Brazil.
Mermoz, Dabry and Gimié at Saint-Louis, 12 May 1930. (Musee Air France)
Their airplane, a pontoon-equipped Latécoère 28-3, was carrying 122 kilograms (269 pounds) of mail and fuel for 30 hours of flight. The crew had named the airplane Comte de la Vaulx, after an early French aeronaut and the founder of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
The aviators flew southwest across the South Atlantic Ocean. Natal was approximately 2,000 miles away. [3,178.879 kilometers; 1,975.264 statute miles; 1,716.595 nautical miles]
Gimié transmitted a radio message: “19º Frame-A.J.N.Q. Mermoz, Dabry, Gimié, partis pour Natal à 10 h. 56 locale.” (“19º Frame-A.J.N.Q. Mermoz, Dabry, Gimié, left for Natal at 10:56 a.m., local.”) Gimié was an expert in radio-navigation. The airplane was equipped with radios that could be used to triangulate their position using nine land stations and several ships along their course.
A contemporary United Press wire service news report stated that they arrived at Natal at 6:15 a.m., local time. The actual duration of the flight is difficult to determine. Sources very from as few as 17 hours to as many as 21 hours, 24 minutes. The U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission reported that the flight took 19 hours, 35 minutes.
This was the first non-stop flight to cross the South Atlantic.
(Left to right) Jean Dabry, Jean Mermoz and Léopold Gimié. (le Figaro)
Antoine Saint Exupéry, a fellow Aéropostale pilot, described a portion of Mermoz’s transatlantic flight in Wind, Sand and Stars:
And yet we have all known flights when of a sudden, each for himself, it has seemed to us that we have crossed the border of the world of reality; when, only a couple of hours from port, we have felt ourselves more distant from it than we should feel if we were in India; when there was a premonition of an incursion into a forbidden world whence it was going to be infinitely difficult to return.
Thus, when Mermoz first crossed the South Atlantic in a hydroplane, as day was dying he ran foul of the Black Hole region, ² off Africa. Straight ahead of him were the tails of tornadoes rising minute by minute gradually higher, rising as a wall is built; and then night came down upon these preliminaries and swallowed them up; and when, and hour later, he slipped under the clouds, he came out into a fantastic kingdom.
Multiple waterspouts.
Great black waterspouts had reared themselves seemingly in the immobility of temple pillars. Swollen at their tops, they were supporting the squat and lowering arch of the tempest, but through the rifts in the arch there fell slabs of light and the full moon sent her radiant beams between the pillars down upon the frozen tiles of the sea. Through these uninhabited ruins Mermoz made his way, gliding slantwise from one channel of light to the next, circling round those giant pillars in which there must have rumbled the upsurge of the sea, flying for four hours through these corridors of moonlight toward the exit from the temple. And this spectacle was so overwhelming that only after he had got through the Black Hole did Mermoz awaken to the fact that he had not been afraid.
Atlantic Ocean waterspouts. (NOAA)
—Wind, Sand and Stars, by Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger comte de Saint Exupéry, translated by Lewis Galantière, Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, Chapter 1 at Pages 16–17.
Latécoère 28-3 (Late 28.org)
The airplane flown by Mermoz, Dabry and Gimié was a Latécoère 28-3, registration F-AJNQ, built by Société Industrielle d’Aviation Latécoère at Toulouse, France. The airplane’s serial number is reported as both “Nº 909” and “Nº 919.” It was a large, single-engine, high-wing monoplane with an enclosed cabin. Also known as the Laté 28, the airplane could be equipped with fixed landing gear or pontoons for water operations. The airplane’s fuselage was constructed of duralumin, a hardened alloy of aluminum, with a duralumin sheet skin. The wings were also of metal construction, covered with fabric.
The Latécoère 28-3 was 44 feet, 4 inches (13.513 meters) long with a wingspan of 62 feet, 6 inches (19.050) and height of 10 feet, 7½ inches (3.24 meters).
Latécoère 28-3 F-AJNQ, Comte de la Vaulx.
The pontoons were also constructed of Duralumin. Each had ten floatation compartments. They were 26 feet, 4 inches (8.026 meters) long, 4 feet, 5 inches (1.346 meters) wide and 2 feet, 9 inches (0.838 meters) deep.
The Latécoère 28-3 had an empty weight of 5,720 pounds (2595 kilograms), and gross weight of 11,044 pounds (5,010 kilograms). Its fuel capacity was 556 gallons¹ (2,528 liters).
The pilot’s station was an enclosed cockpit at the leading edge of the wing, behind the engine, while the navigator and radio operator were in a cabin below and behind the cockpit. The air mail cargo was placed in a separate compartment.
Latécoère 28-3 floatplane. (late28.org)(The Art of the Airways, by Geza Szurovy)
The Latécoère 28-3 was powered by a single right-hand-tractor, water-cooled, normally-aspirated, 31.403 liter (1,916.351 cubic inches) Hispano Suiza 12Lbr single overhead camshaft (SOHC) 60° V-12 engine with a compression ratio of 6.2:1. This engine was rated at 630 cheval vapeur (621.4 horsepower) at 2,000 r.p.m. The two-bladed, fixed-pitch propeller was driven through a gear reduction unit. The 12Lbr was 1.85 meters (6.07 feet) long, 0.75 meters (2.46 feet) wide and 1.02 meters (3.35 feet) high. It weighed 440 kilograms (970 pounds).
The airplane had a maximum speed of 140 miles per hour (225 kilometers per hour). Its service ceiling was 13,000 feet (3,962 meters).
F-AJNQ departed Natal on 8 June for the return flight to Africa. After about 14 hours, the engine developed a serious oil leak. Mermoz made a forced landing near the despatch boat Phocée, approximately 900 kilometers (560 miles) from their destination. The three crew members and the mail were transferred from F-AJNQ to the Phocée. The airplane was set adrift.
Compagnie générale aéropostale timetable, May 1930. (Air Ticket History)
¹ The source of the fuel capacity was a contemporary British periodical. Though not specified, TDiA assumes that the capacity was given in Imperial Gallons.
² The “Black Hole region” refers to “the doldrums” or Intertropical Convergence Zone.
Joan Merriam Smith, with her Piper PA-23-160 Apache E, N3251P, photographed 23 January 1965. (Los Angeles Public Library, Valley Times Collection)
At 1:00 p.m., 17 March 1964, Joan Merriam Smith departed Oakland International Airport, on California’s San Francisco Bay, on what would be the first leg of an around-the world flight. Her first stop would be Tucson, Arizona, approximately 650 nautical miles (1,200 kilometers) to the east-southeast.
Mrs. Smith intended to follow the easterly route of Amelia Earhart, who had departed from Oakland on both of her attempts at the around-the-world flight. The first try, 17 March 1937, was a westerly route, with a first stop at Hawaii. The second try, 2 June 1937, was an eastbound route.
The two routes were planned to take advantage of seasonal weather patterns.
Mrs. Smith wanted to follow Earhart’s eastbound route, but by leaving in mid-March, she put herself at a disadvantage with respect to the weather she would encounter as she traveled around the Earth.
Unlike Earhart, who had two of the world’s foremost navigators in her flight crew, Mrs. Smith would fly alone, her only companion a small teddy bear. She would navigate by pilotage and ded reckoning, and by using radio aids such as non-directional beacons (NDBs) and VHF omnidirectional ranges (VORs).
Joan Ann Merriam Smith loading a teddy bear into her 1958 Piper PA-23-160 Apache E, N3251P. Note the auxiliary fuel tank in the cabin. (Calisphere)
Forecast adverse weather caused her to leave Tucson for her next stop, New Orleans, Louisiana, at 2:00 a.m., 18 March. Dodging the weather, she was forced to make an intermediate fuel stop at Lubbock, Texas. She finally arrived in New Orleans at 4:00 p.m. that afternoon. After another early morning start, she flew on to Miami, Florida, on 19 March.
A detailed story of Joan Merriam Smith’s flight is told in Fate on a Folded Wing, written by Tiffany Ann Brown.¹ Her route followed Earhart’s eastward across the United States; south over the Caribbean Sea to South America; then across the South Atlantic Ocean; Africa, Asia, and finally, to the Pacific Ocean, where Mrs. Smith’s route diverged from Earhart’s.
Smith’s itinerary: Across the United States from Oakland, California, to Tucson, Arizona; Lubbock, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; Miami, Florida. Then over the Caribbean Sea to San Juan, Paramaribo, Natal; east across the South Atlantic to Dakar, Gao, Fort-Lamy, Al-Fashir, Khartoum, Aden. From Africa, Smith headed into South Asia: Karachi, Calcutta, Akyab, Rangoon; and then Southeast Asia: Bangkok, Singapore, Jakarta, Surabaya, Kupang; Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia; and Lae, New Guinea. From here, Smith deviated from Earhart’s route across the Pacific Ocean by flying to Guam instead of Howland Island; then Wake Island; Midway Island; Honolulu, Hawaii; and, finally Oakland.
Mrs. Smith’s flight was troubled by adverse weather, leaking fuel tanks, out-of-calibration radio equipment, a recalcitrant autopilot, problems with the hydraulic and electrical systems, and a heater that would not work. And weather. . .
She arrived back at Oakland International at 9:12 a.m., on 12 May 1964, having flown approximately 27,750 miles (44,659 kilometers). The total duration of her journey was 55 days, 20 hours, 12 minutes. She had flown 35 legs on 23 days. Mrs. Smith wrote that the circumnavigation had taken a total of 170 flight hours, with 47 hours on instruments and 26 hours of night time.
Joan Merriam Smith is credited with having made the first solo circumnavigation of the Earth by the Equatorial route, and the longest solo flight.
Joan Merriam Smith with her Piper PA-23-160 Apache E, N3251P, “City of Long Beach.” (UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library)
The airplane flown by Joan Merriam Smith was a Piper PA-23-160 Apache E, serial number 23-1196, U.S. registration N3251P, which she had named City of Long Beach. The red and white airplane was manufactured by the Piper Aircraft Corporation at Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, in 1958. It had been purchased by the State of Illinois Department of Aeronautics to use checking state-owned aeronautical facilities. When the the state acquired a faster aircraft, the Apache was sold in November 1963. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a registration certificate to Mrs. Smith on 30 December 1963.
The Piper PA-23-160 Apache E was a 4-place, twin-engine, light airplane with retractable tricycle landing gear. It was 27 feet, 2 inches (8.280 meters) long with a wingspan of 37 feet, 0 inches (11.278 meters) and overall height of 10 feet, 1 inch (3.073 meters). The airplane had an empty weight of 2,230 pounds (1,011.5 kilograms) and maximum gross weight of 3,800 pounds (1,723.7 kilograms).
Joan Merriam Smith’s 1958 Piper PA-23-160 Apache E, N3251P, “City of Long Beach.” (Les Clark/Photovault.com)
The Apache E was powered by two air-cooled, normally-aspirated, 319.749-cubic-inch-displacement (5.240 liter) Lycoming O-320-B horizontally-opposed 4-cylinder overhead valve (OHV) engines with a compression ratio of 8.5:1. The O-320-B is a direct-drive, right-hand tractor engine, rated at 160 horsepower at 2,700 r.p.m. The O-320-B is 2 feet, 5.56 inches (0.751 meters) long, 2 feet, 8.24 inches (0.819 meters) wide and 1 foot, 10.99 inches (0.584 meters) high. It weighs 278 pounds (126.1 kilograms). The engines turned two-bladed Hartzell constant-speed propellers.
N3251P’s engines were modified with Rajay Co., Inc., Turbo 200 turbochargers.
Piper PA-23-160 Apache E, N3251P. (Detail from image at Fate on a Folded Wing)
The PA-23-160 had a cruise speed of 150 knots (173 miles per hour/278 kilometers per hour) and maximum speed was 159 knots (183 miles per hour/295 kilometers per hour). The service ceiling was 17,000 feet (5,182 meters).
During a flight from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Long Beach, 9 January 1965, the cabin heater in the nose of the Apache caught fire. With the cabin filled with smoke and gasoline fumes, and unable to reach any airport, Mrs. Smith crash-landed the airplane in rocky terrain in the Ord Mountains, southeast of Barstow in the high desert of southern California. After it has slid to a stop, N3251P continued to burn and was largely destroyed. Mrs. Smith and her passenger, Willam Harry Eytchison, were slightly injured.
At the time of the accident, N3251P had just under 3,000 hours total time on the airframe (TTAF), and less than 400 hours on new engines (TSN).
The burned out wreck of Joan Merriam Smith’s Piper PA-23-160 Apache E, N3251P. (Image from Fate on a Folded Wing)
Joan Ann Merriam was born 3 August 1936 at Oceanside, Long Island, New York, U.S.A. She was the daughter of Arthur Ray Merriam, Jr., a railroad office stenographer, and Ann Marie Lofgren Merriam. The family relocated to Wayne, Michigan, where Joan attended Jefferson Junior High School and Wayne High School.
Joan Ann Merriam, Wayne High School, 1952. (Spectator)
Joan’s father died at the age of 43, New Year’s Day, 1952. She and her mother then moved to Miami, Florida. Flying from Detroit to Miami aboard a Lockheed Constellation, Joan was allowed to visit the flight deck and speak to the crew.
The airline flight sparked an interest in aviation. She began taking lessons at the age of 15. Joan learned to fly at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Institute, then located at at Tamiami Airport. She first soloed an airplane at the age of 16 years. On 7 November 1953, shortly after her 17th birthday, she was issued private pilot certificate. Special permission was obtained from the FAA for her to take the written exams for commercial pilot before she turned 18.
Joan graduated from Miami Senior High School in 1954.
The prototype Cessna 140, NC77260, circa 1946. (Cessna Aircraft Company)“JOAN MERRIAM Pretty Pilot” (23 December 1953)
Mrs. Merriam gave Joan a Cessna 140, a single-engine light airplane, making her one of the youngest people in the United States to own an airplane. Joan said that her mother was “the bravest passenger,” as she practiced all of the maneuvers required for a commercial pilot’s license. By the time she was 18, she earned a commercial pilot certificate with an instrument rating, and a flight instructor certificate. She began instructing at Tamiami. She flew charters from Florida to Texas, living in that state before moving to Panama City, Florida. On her twenty-third birthday, the earliest that she was eligible, Miss Merriam was issued an airline transport pilot certificate (ATP) by the FAA. She had flown nearly 5,000 hours.
Miss Merriam would later own a Piper Cub modified for aerobatics, a second Cessna 140, and a Cessna 172.
In the fall of 1955, Miss Merriam married Harold MacDonald, a student in aeronautical engineering. She worked as a flight instructor for Avex, Inc., at Tamiami Airport. Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald soon divorced.
Joan Ann Merriam, circa 1958.
In 1960, Miss Merriam was living in Panama City, Florida, where she was employed as a pilot for West Florida Natural Gas Company, one of very few women who flew as corporate pilots at the time. (Contemporary newspapers reported that she was “one of three women corporation pilots in the country.”) Reflecting the sexist attitudes of the time, news features often described her as a “blue-eyed platinum blonde,” and made mention of “her personal aerodynamic attributes.” In an interview, Miss Merriam said that a major reason preventing more women from executive flying were, “executive’s wives, and executive’s secretaries.”
She had met Lieutenant (j.g.) Marvin G. (“Jack”) Smith, Jr., U.S. Navy, in 1958. Lieutenant Smith was executive officer of USS Vital (MSO-474), an Agile-class minesweeper homeported at Panama City. She moved to San Leandro, California, and worked as a contract instrument flight instructor at Oakland International Airport for the Sixth United States Army, which was then based at the Presidio of San Francisco.
Miss Merriam and Lieutenant Smith were married at Monterey, California, 23 September 1960. The couple later moved to Long Beach, where Lieutenant Commander Smith’s next ship, USS Endurance (AM-435), was homeported.
Prototype 1960 Cessna 182D Skylane, c/n 51623, N2323G. This airplane is very similar to that flown by Joan Merriam Smith on 17 February 1965. (Cessna Aircraft Company)
In February 1965, Joan Merriam Smith was flying for Rajay Industries out of Long Beach, California. (Rajay was a turbocharger manufacturer which had supplied the turbos for Mrs. Smith’s Apache.) She had been conducting functional and reliability tests on a modified Cessna 182C Skylane, N8784T. The airplane was owned by the V. E. Kuster Co., of Long Beach, a supplier of oil field equipment.
The flight test plan for 17 February 1965 called for the Cessna to be flown at altitudes between 5,000 and 23,000 feet (1,524–7,010 meters). Mrs. Smith was flying. Also on board was her biographer, Beatrice Ann (“Trixie”) Schubert.
Smith was flying across the San Gabriel Mountains, which divide southern California’s coastal plain from the high desert. The highest peak in the range, Mount San Antonio, which was not far east of her course, rises to 10,046 feet (3,062 meters).
The San Gabriel Mountains of southern California, viewed from the south in winter. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Witnesses said that the airplane had been flying normally, estimated at between 1,000 and 2,000 feet (305–610 meters) above the mountainous terrain, when the right wing folded back along the fuselage. The airplane, with the engine revving, went into a dive and crashed into the north slope of Blue Ridge, a few miles west of Wrightwood, California, 10–12 seconds later. There was an explosion and fire.
Joan Merriam Smith and Trixie Ann Schubert were killed.
Investigators found that both wings had failed outboard of the struts. The outer wing panels, both ailerons and the left elevator were located approximately 1½ miles (2½ kilometers) from the point of impact. Examination showed that the aircraft had suffered severe loads. “There was no evidence of fatigue or failure of the aircraft before the inflight structural failure.”
The Civil Aeronautics Board reported the Probable Cause: “The pilot entered an area of light to moderate turbulence at high speed, during which aerodynamic forces exceeding the structural strength of the aircraft caused in-flight structural failure.” According to the CAB, the Cessna 182 had an airspeed in excess of 190 miles per hour (306 kilometers per hour) when it entered the area of turbulence.
Her remains were interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Cypress, California.
(Scott Wilson/Find a Grave)Harmon Aviatrix Trophy (NASM)
For her accomplishment, Joan Merriam Smith was posthumously awarded the Harmon Aviatrix Trophy for 1965. At a ceremony held in the Indian Treaty Room of the Executive Office Building, 15 December 1965, the trophy was presented to her husband, Lieutenant Commander Marvin G. Smith, Jr., by Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
Mrs. Smith had intended to attempt an altitude record with the turbocharged Skylane. On 20 July 1965, her husband, Marvin G. Smith, set the record at 10,689.6 meters (35,070.9 feet), flying a Cessna 210A Centurion with an IO-470 engine.²
TDiA would like to thank Ms. Tiffany Ann Brown for suggesting this subject, and for her invaluable contribution.
¹ Fate on a Folded Wing: The True Story of Pioneering Solo Pilot Joan Merriam Smith, by Tiffany Ann Brown. Lucky Bat Books, 2019.
² FAI Record File Number 9977 (Class C, Sub-Class C1c: powered airplanes, takeoff weight 1000 to 1750 kg).
Jean LeRoy “Skip” Ziegler, with the Bell X-5 at Edwards Air Force Base, 1951. (LIFE Magazine)
12 May 1953: A Boeing B-50A-5-BO Superfortress, 46-011, modified to carry a Bell X-2 supersonic research rocketplane, was engaged in a captive test flight at 30,000 feet (9,144 meters) over Lake Ontario, between Canada and the United States. The number two X-2, 46-675, was in the bomb bay.
The bomber was equipped with a system to keep the X-2’s liquid oxygen tank filled as the cryogenic oxidizer boiled off. With Bell’s Chief of Flight Research, test pilot Jean Leroy (“Skip”) Ziegler, in the bomb bay above the X-2, the system operation was being tested.
There was an explosion. The X-2 fell from the bomber and dropped into Lake Ontario, between Trenton, Ontario, Canada, and Rochester, New York, U.S.A. Skip Ziegler and an engineer aboard the bomber, Frank Wolko, were both lost. A technician, Robert F. Walters, who was in the aft section of the B-50 with Wolko, was badly burned and suffered an injured eye.
The B-50’s pilots, William J. Leyshon and David Howe, made an emergency landing at the Bell Aircraft Corporation factory airport at Wheatfield, New York (now, the Niagara Falls International Airport, IAG). The bomber was so heavily damaged that it never flew again.
Heavy fog over the lake hampered search efforts. Neither the bodies of Ziegler and Wolko or the wreckage of the X-2 were ever found.
A Bell X-2 rocketplane is loaded aboard the Boeing B-50A-5-BO Superfortress “mothership,” 46-011. (U.S. Air Force)
After a series of explosions of early rocketplanes, the X-1A, X-1-3, X-1D and the X-2, investigators discovered that leather gaskets which were used in the fuel system had been treated with tricresyl phosphate (TCP). When this was exposed to liquid oxygen an explosion could result. The leather gaskets were removed from the other rocketplanes and the explosions stopped.
The X-2 was a joint project of the U.S. Air Force and NACA (the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, the predecessor of NASA). The rocketplane was designed and built by Bell Aircraft Corporation of Buffalo, New York, to explore supersonic flight at speeds beyond the capabilities of the earlier Bell X-1 and Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket. Two X-2s were built.
In addition to the aerodynamic effects of speeds in the Mach 2.0–Mach 3.0 range, engineers knew that the high temperatures created by aerodynamic friction would be a problem, so the aircraft was built from stainless steel and K-Monel, a copper-nickel alloy.
The Bell Aircraft Corporation X-2 was 37 feet, 10 inches (11.532 meters) long with a wingspan of 32 feet, 3 inches (9.830 meters) and height of 11 feet, 10 inches (3.607 meters). Its empty weight was 12,375 pounds (5,613 kilograms) and loaded weight was 24,910 pounds (11,299 kilograms).
The X-2 was powered by a throttleable two-chamber Curtiss-Wright XLR25-CW-1 rocket engine that produced 2,500–15,000 pounds of thrust (11.12–66.72 kilonewtons)
Boeing EB-50D Superfortress 48-096 with a Bell X-2 (U.S. Air Force)
Rather than use its limited fuel capacity to take off and climb to altitude, the X-2 was dropped from a modified heavy bomber as had been the earlier rocketplanes.
The launch altitude was 30,000 feet (9,144 meters). After the fuel was exhausted, the X-2 glided to a touchdown on Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards Air Force Base.
The X-2 reached a maximum speed of Mach 3.196 (2,094 miles per hour/3,370 kilometers per hour) and maximum altitude of 126,200 feet (38,466 meters).
Bell X-2 46-675 on its transportation dolly at Edwards Air Force Base, California, 1952. (NASA)
Jean LeRoy Ziegler was born 1 January 1920 at Endeavor, Pennsylvania. He was the first of three sons of LeRoy Curtiss (“Lee”) Ziegler, a stationary engineer for a gas field, and Daisy Pearl Gesin Zeigler.
Ziegler attended Endeavor High School, and then studied at Pennsylvania State College for two years.
Jean LeRoy Ziegler, circa 1940. (Niagara Aerospace Museum)
During the last week of June 1940, Ziegler enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps. He was sent to the Alabama Institute of Aeronautics at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for Phase 1 primary flight training. He then went on to advanced training at Maxwell Army Air Field, near Montgomery, Alabama. Upon graduation, Ziegler was commissioned as a second lieutenant, 7 February 1941.
Lieutenant Ziegler was assigned to Patterson Field, Fairfield, Ohio, as at transport pilot.
In September 1941, Lieutenant Ziegler, a reserve officer, was released from active duty. He was then employed by Pan American Airways-Africa, Limited. On 26 September 1941, he departed Ohio for New York, and from there traveled to Africa for a six-month assignment.
Pan American Airways-Africa, Limited, routes
Ziegler flew the Douglas DC-3 for Pan Am in Africa and the Middle East, India, Burma and China. He is credited with being one of the first three pilots to fly cargo from Burma to China over the Himalaya Mountains, a route that would be know as “The Hump.” He flew ammunition and fuel to the American Volunteer Group (better known as the “Flying Tigers”) in China, and returned with Chinese refugees.
On 10 June 1942, Ziegler returned to the United States, arriving in Miami, Florida, via Port of Spain, Trinidad, aboard a Pan American Airways Boeing 314A, NC18612, Cape Town Clipper. (This was the last Model 314 built by Boeing.)
Boeing 314A NC18612, Clipper Cape Town. (David J. Gauthier Collection, 1000aircraftphotos.com)
After a few months, Ziegler was hired by the Curtiss-Wright Corporation, Airplane Division, as a production test pilot. He was assigned to Plant 2 at Cheektowaga, New York. He would fly the P-40 Warhawk and SB2C Helldiver.
Curtiss Gets Another New Test Aviator
Military Supply Pilot Joins Buffalo Staff
Jean L. Ziegler of Endeavor, Pa., who flew hundreds of refugees into India when the Japs swarmed through Burma last year, has been added to the production test pilot staff of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation Airplane Division in Buffalo.
The 22-year-old flier is the second to join Curtiss here within a week. Donald Armstrong, 22, former flight lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Air Force, reported last week.
Graduate of Army School
Ziegler entered the Army Flying School at Maxwell Field, Ala., in June 1940, and was graduated from the advanced course a year later. He was transferred to a transport unit at Patterson Field, O., where he remained until September, 1941. Then he was hired by Pan American Airways to serve as a pilot on military supply routes of the transport ferry command in Africa, India, the Middle East, China and Burma.
When the Japs began an intensive drive toward the north in Burma, Ziegler was on of the airmen who volunteered to fly refugees into India. He carried fuel and ammunition to Burma units of the American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers) and came out with plane loads of men women and children. The planes used were Douglas DC-3s.
Ziegler was born in Franklin, Pa., and attended Pen State for two years before enrolling at Maxwell Field. He holds a second lieutenant’s commission in the Army Air Corps Reserve.
—Buffalo Courier Express, Vol. CVIII, No. 99, Tuesday 27 October 1942, Page 7 Column 1 and 2
On 22 December 1942, Ziegler registered for Selective Service (conscription). His draft card describes him as 6 feet, 1 inch (185 centimeters) tall, 170 pounds (77 kilograms), with brown hair, gray eyes, and a ruddy complexion.
Motor Trouble caused Test PilotJean L. Ziegler to crash land a Curtiss-Wright P-40 at the municipal airport Friday afternoon. He was unhurt. The plane was damaged slightly. Gasoline in an auxiliary tank ignited but firemen of Engine 27 quickly put out the flames.
At 4:00 p.m., 13 March 1943, Jean LeRoy Ziegler married Miss Flora Mae Thompson at the Endeavor Presbyterian Church, in their hometown of Endeavor, Pennsylvania. The ceremony was officiated by Reverend Taylor. Miss Thompson was a fellow student at Endeavour High School. She was trained as a nurse at the Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo, New York. At the time of their marriage, she had been employed there for one year. The couple would have three daughters, Sandra, Patricia, and Mary.
Skip Ziegler’s Curtiss-Wright XP-40Q-2A-CU, NX300B (ex-USAAF P-40K-1-CU 45-45722), circa September 1947. (Military Matters)
On 1 September 1947, Skip Ziegler was involved in an interesting incident at the National Air Races in Cleveland, Ohio. Flying his Curtiss-Wright XP-40Q-2A-CU Warhawk, NX300B, he had qualified in thirteenth place for the twelve airplane field in the Thompson Trophy Race. But a faster airplane, NACA test pilot Howard Clifton “Tick” Lilly’s Bell P-63A-7-BE King Cobra, NX69901 (42-69063), flown by William Bour, which had qualified, was also in earlier race. With only ten minutes between the two races, starters thought that P-63 might not be ready in time for the start of the Thompson. They allowed Ziegler to take the seventh place in the starting lineup.
Bour did make it to the starting line in time, but officials failed to tell Ziegler to withdraw. The twelve-airplane race started with thirteen airplanes.
During the fourteenth lap of the twenty-lap race, Ziegler was in fourth place when the engine of his XP-40Q caught fire. He bailed out in front of the viewing grandstands and parachuted to the ground, suffering a broken leg. His airplane crashed and was destroyed. (This was the second crash during the race. Only six airplanes finished.) Cook Cleland won the Thompson Trophy with his #74 Goodyear F2G-2 Corsair, N5577N (Bu. No. 88463).
By 1949, Ziegler and his family had moved to Los Angeles, California, where he was employed as a test pilot for North American Aviation, Inc. On 26 September 1949, he took off from Vultee Field, Downey, California, on the first flight of the XT-28, 48-1371, the first of two prototype trainers for the U. S. Air Force. This would go into production as the T-28A Trojan.
The first of two prototype North American Aviation XT-28s, 48-1371, lands at Edwards Air Force Base, 3 February 1950. (U.S. Air Force)
On 1 October 1950, Ziegler became the chief test pilot for the Bell Aircraft Corporation. He was involved in testing Bell’s experimental aircraft at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
On 20 June 1951, he took the experimental variable-sweep Bell X-5, 50-1838, for its first flight. Ziegler would deploy the X-5’s variable sweep wings in flight for the first time on 27 July 1951.
The Bell X-5 had variable sweep wings. (U.S. Air Force 151021-F-DW547-002)
Three days earlier, 24 July 1951, Ziegler made the first glide flight in the new Bell X-1D, 48-1386. This was a second-generation supersonic rocketplane built of the Air Force. This research aircraft was instrumented for the investigation of aerodynamic heating. Its nose gear was damaged on landing. This would be the X-1D’s only successful free flight. On 22 August 1951, following an internal explosion, it was jettisoned from its EB-50A mother ship and destroyed on impact with the desert floor.
Bell X-1D 48-1386. (Bell Aircraft Corporation)
On 8 October 1951, Ziegler made the twentieth and final contractor’s flight of the X-5 before turning over to its Air Force test pilot, Major Frank Kendall (“Pete”) Everest.
On 27 June 1952, Ziegler made the first glide flight of the new, swept-wing Bell X-2 Mach 3 research rocketplane. The second X-2, 46-675, was the first of the two to fly.
Bell X-2 46-675 after nose gear collapsed on landing at Edward Air Force Base, California, 27 June 1952. Bell Aircraft Corporation test pilot Jean Leroy (“Skip”) Zielgler is still seated in the cockpit. (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Armstrong Flight Research Center, E-749)
On 14 February 1953, the Bell X-1A, 48-1387, made its first first powered flight with Skip Ziegler in the cockpit. The X-1A, like the X-1D, was a second second generation version of the X-1 series. Originally ordered by the Air Force, it had been taken over by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Delays caused by a redesign of the fuel system and lack of funding resulted in it being competed three years behind schedule.
Bell X-1A 46-1384 (U.S. Air Force)
Ziegler demonstrated the successful operation of the X-1A with all four chambers of its Reaction Motors XLR-11-RM-5 rocket engine on 26 March 1953. During a flight on 10 April 1953, Ziegler encountered a low-frequency vibration in its elevators, limiting the rocketplane to 0.93 Mach. During another flight on 25 April 1953, the X-1A’s fuel system turbopump oversped. Ziegler shut down the rocket engine and jettisoned the remaining fuel before gliding to a landing.
As described above, Jean LeRoy Ziegler was killed on 13 May 1953 as a result of an internal explosion of the second Bell X-2. His body was never recovered.
