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MILLING, T. DEWITT, BRIG. GEN USAF. – BIOG FILE – FOLDER NO. ITEM NO.

30 YEARS IN THE AIR – ILL 
NEW YORK WORLD TELEGRAM 
NEW YORK, CITY, NEW YORK 
SATURDAY, SEPT. 2nd, 1939

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Were First to Fly.

Down in the Milling household in Louisiana they wondered why Tommy didn't write. When he did, they learned that he was at Dayton learning to manage a Wright biplane. He and Henry H. Arnold, now chief of the United States Air Corps, were the first to fly, now that Congress had decided to finance a permanent air squad. They got their precious wings and their military pilots' licenses on the same day.

Together they went to College Park, Md., first flyers at the army's first school of flying. Lieut. Roy C. Kirkland had built hangars for four planes and Capt. Charles DeForrest Chandler was on hand as commanding officer. At first they had only two Wright planes. Milling instructed Kirkland while Arnold taught Chandler. The quartet became fast friends, flying together on expeditions which took them as far as 50 miles away. They had forced landings and crackups and they learn aviation science in the bitter school of experience.

Had No Text Books.

"It is almost impossible for the present day flier to envisage the difficulties confronting the student of 1911," says Col. Kirkland, now retired and living at Coronado, Cal. "The pioneer flier could learn practically nothing on the theory of flight before he entered on his training. The practical fliers of that time wrote little or nothing of what they had learned.

"Each student flier, after he had learned to manage his plane in still air, had to learn by experience the effects of strange wind currents, wind gusts and the influence of terrain — he had to do this with no instruments, no straps to hold him in his seat, no parachute and practically no horsepower. The only instruments he had were his eyes, ears and the sense of field."

Milling Mopped Up.

All this was good enough for his three friends, but Tommy Milling was ready to conquer new worlds. Before the summer of 1911 was over he was off to the Boston air meet, a green Army pilot pitting his skill and daring against civilians who were aerial veterans compared with him.

It proved a Milling mop-up. He took prizes totalling $7700 in the preliminaries and walked away with the $5000 grand prize for a 175-mile hop over a triangular course to Nashua, N.H.; Providence, R.I., and back to Boston. Night fell on the last leg of the jaunt, and Lieut. Milling found himself engaged in his first night flight.

More by guesswork than actual knowledge he steered toward what he thought was Boston. He was pounding through the darkness, looking for a smooth spot to set her down, when he saw the flicker of flames. Four huge bonfires had been lighted to mark the corners of the flying field and Lieut. Milling landed smoothly, the only contestant to finish at all.

By 1939 standards, that doesn't sound like much of a flight. But for 1911 it was as daring a venture, as much an aviation triumph, as Charles Lindbergh's historic flight to Paris 16 years later. Milling, too, was a hero who didn't want public acclaim. All he wanted was to show them he could do it. He showed 'em, took his money and hurried back to the safe seclusion of Army life at College Park.

Set Speed Record.

He spent a year at College Park, training more pilots, and in 1912 was sent to Texas City on the Mexican border with four planes to establish another air base. There he achieved his greatest triumph, in 1913, when he flew 224 miles from Texas City to San Antonio in four hours and 23 minutes, with a passenger. His average speed was 68.9 miles an hour.

Of this remarkable feat, Major Gen. W. H. Carter, his commanding officer, wrote:

"The results of this trip show Lieut. Milling to have become one of the foremost aviators of the world." Other less conservative experts hailed Tommy Milling as the "greatest all-round airman in the world."

The "Four Musketeers of College Park" were parted now, but they remained among the lucky 50 per cent of pioneer pilots who were to survive hazardous business of operating the Army's first planes. Gen. Arnold still takes an occasional turn at the controls of 1939 fighting planes. Milling and Kirkland have retired after long careers in the air service.

Col. Chandler, long the balloon expert of the Army, author of several books on aviation, died last May. In 1912, after the death of two fliers, it was Col. Chandler who coined the slogan, "The conquest of the air must go on."

New Fliers Appear.

The College Park school was moving into its second season in 1912 when another group of young army lieutenants got busy on the west coast under supervision of Glenn Curtiss and to civilian instructors. They started the flying field on North Island in San Diego Harbor, where they threw up rude hangars and lived in tents as they learn to fly two so-called grass cutters known familiarly as "Julia" and "Lizzie."

To the North Island school came Douglas B. Netherwood, now colonel in command of Maxwell Field at Montgomery, Ala.; Hollis LeR. Muller, now colonel in charge of the Coast Artillery Corps organized reserves at Wilmington, Del dot, and Louis H. Brereton now colonel at Barksdale Field, Shreveport, La.

To North Island also came Lieut. Louis E. Goodier, Jr., whose career as an aviator does not furnish material for a success story. It lasted barely two and a half years and ended in 1914 with this brief item on the news wires:

"SAN DIEGO, Nov. 5. — In a fall of nearly 100 feet today Capt. L. E. Goodier, Jr., 27, Aviation Corps, U.S.A., and Glenn Martin, a well known aviator, were badly injured. It was said that both men will recover."

But that isn't half the story. Lieut. Goodier was the first Curtiss student, the first officer to get a pilots license at North Island.

Crashed Flying Boat.

"And I was North Island's first casualty," he recalls now at his home in Santa Barbara, retired for disability with the rank of major. "It was four days after I got my military aviator rating. We had the first flying boat ever purchased by the army, and I crashed in the bay. Mr. Curtiss and John D. Cooper, his civilian instructor, came to my rescue in their flying boat. They put me across the bow and taxied back to the hangars. Mr. Curtiss used to say it was the first aeroplane rescue in aviation. I spent four months recovering from a fractured skull."

In his brief career Major Goodier piled up a surprising number of "firsts," not all of them enviable. He piloted the first explosive bomb-dropping experiments ever conducted in the army, participating with Riley Scott, the inventor, in risky tests of new releasing devices, racks and 50-pound bombs.

Survived Bad Crack-up.

"I flew the first Curtiss Jenny (motor and propeller in front) and I believe I got another "first" by wrecking it," he said. "A rudder wire turnbuckle parted while I was in the air and the loose cable found itself in the wheel of the control. I could do nothing but turn in one direction. I did that until I was getting over the ocean, so I decided to try a landing.

"Naturally, it was not a straight one, and the wheels dished and the ship started over on its back. I heard the prop splinter as we flopped over. I hung suspended, then released my safety belt and dropped neatly to the ground.

"In November, 1914, I was along with Glenn Martin in a ship he had entered in the army competition. We were making the last test, for slow speed. In making a turn we went into what they say was the first tail spin known. We had but about 150 feet altitude, so we didn't come out.

"I stayed in hospital nearly two years. That ended my career as a pilot. It resulted in my retirement from active service in 1916."

The END.
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