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Stanley Hiller, Jr.
Helicopter Pioneer
Founder, Hiller Aviation Museum
Stanley Hiller, Jr., age 81, died peacefully at
home on Thursday, April 20, 2006, of complications
associated with Alzheimer’s Disease. Stanley
Hiller, Jr. was born November 15, 1924 in San Francisco,
California to the late Stanley Hiller, Sr. and
Opal Perkins Hiller. On May 25, 1946 he was united
in marriage to Carolyn Balsdon Hiller and lived
in Atherton, California.
Stanley Hiller, Jr., began his career as one of
the world's three principal developers of vertical
flight, while still a teenager. After leading a
company that produced thousands of helicopters
for military and commercial markets worldwide,
Mr. Hiller began a remarkable second career, applying
management techniques widely sought in the turnaround
of troubled American companies.
Hiller innovations in the technology of vertical
flight included the first helicopter flown in the
western United States, the world's first successful
co-axial helicopter, the famed Flying Platform,
the one-man foldable "Rotorcycle," the unique "Hornet" helicopter
powered by rotor-tip-mounted ramjet engines, and
the first high-speed vertical take-off-and-landing
tilt-wing troop transport. Stanley Hiller's company,
Hiller Aircraft Corporation, started in 1949 as
United Helicopters when he was 18 years old, and
it was soon producing the first battlefield evacuation
helicopters for the French Indochinese War and
the Korean Conflict in the 1950s.
In his "second career" beginning in 1966, after
leaving Fairchild Hiller Corp. into which he had
merged Hiller Aircraft, Stanley Hiller created
The Hiller Group, utilizing his leadership concepts
in turning around failing companies in diverse
fields, including Reed Tool Company, Bekins Corp.,
and the huge York International air conditioning
manufacturer. His efforts were responsible for
a transformation of Baker International into its
present structure as Baker Hughes Corp. Pursuing
a management style of hands-on control of his turnaround
candidates, Mr. Hiller developed and advised the
nation's business community how corporate governance
needs to reform to succeed in a global economy.
He warned of the "feudal system" at the top of
many large corporations which would ultimately
undermine the American system of free enterprise
he cherished. In 1990s speeches and articles, he
pressed for structural solutions in such trends
as growing trade deficits, "paralyzing federal
debt," and corporate boards too weak to redesign
failing and greedy managements.
***
Stanley Hiller, Jr., spent his youth in Berkeley
California. Father Stanley was an engineer
and a dedicated inventor. He was one of the nation's "Early
Birds," having built and flown his own airplane
in 1910 at age 20. When son Stanley was asked by
a reporter years later how he had achieved so much
in so few years, the 23-year-old replied, "I was
fortunate in my choice of a father."
Using his father's tools, workbench and devoted
encouragement, Stanley at age 8 connected an old
family washing machine engine to a homemade buggy
frame and was driving it somewhat recklessly on
neighborhood sidewalks. Sitting in his father's
lap, young Stanley learned to fly before he was
10, and naturally became interested in building
and flying model planes, which to his consternation,
tended to crash. The Stanley's response was to
apply one of the airplane gas engines into a model
racing car. It was a turning point in the boy's
career: the Hiller "Comet" sped around a back
yard track at up to 60 miles per hour, and before
long a local department store was selling Comets
from a production line of neighborhood boys in
the Hiller back-yard shop. By the time he was 17,
Stanley Jr.'s Hiller Industries was turning out
350 miniature cars each month, at the rate of $100,000
a year. With some help from his father and a draftsman,
Stanley invented a die-casting machine based on
a cooling process which increased the strength
of aluminum castings for the Comet. Now a freshman
at the University of California at Berkeley, Stanley
was soon discovered by the U.S. military, not as
a draftee, but as a resource for aluminum fighter
plane parts. Although big aircraft builders hesitated
signing subcontracts with a schoolboy, Hiller Industries
was soon working in two shifts with seven casting
machines, in a $300,000-a-year payroll. In his
spare time, young Stanley designed cast aluminum
kitchen utensils to keep his die casting machines
operating when the flood of war orders dried up.
Stanley Hiller, Jr., had developed an interest
in helicopters when at age 15 he had read about
Igor Sikorsky's experiments with rotary wing aircraft,
noting that the early vehicles were compromised
by elaborate ways of compensating for inherent
instability. "I have ideas about how to correct
that," Stanley told his father, who suggested he
put the ideas into some hardware. The teenager's
idea was a co-axial rotor design, which would avoid
elaborate tail rotors and gears that con¬ trolled
the inherent yaw of Sikorsky's single-rotor models.
The concept seemed to work initially, when a model
co-axial helicopter was dropped from his father's
ninth-story office window. His schoolmates cheering
below were witnessing the birth of a new career
in aviation.
Stanley finished high school despite the many
extracurricular activities in his life, entering
the University of California at Berkeley at age
16. His college phase lasted but a year: he was
consumed with the history and technology of vertical
flight, intensifying his designing of a co-axial
with the aid of a draftsman, a welder and a part-time
auto mechanic. Although many materials were frozen
by the War Production Board, he managed to improvise
a 100-pound model. Discouraged by Army officials,
the 17-year-old inventor lugged his aircraft and
drawings to Washington DC, where higher authorities
not only permitted his proposed XH-44 helicopter
to be finished, but granted Stanley a deferment
from the draft board.
Although UC Berkeley had little chance to influence
young Stanley because he dropped out to build his
business at the end of his freshman year, the university
did yield the love of his life, Carolyn Balsdon,
whom he married when they were both 22.
By 1944, Stanley Hiller, Jr., completed the first
successful flight of a helicopter in the western
United States. He flew his yellow fabric-covered
contraption himself, although he had never flown
a helicopter nor seen one fly. After at least one
mishap, in August of that year a successful demonstration
was made at San Francisco's Marina Green, where
a plaque today commemorates the historic event.
The flight propelled the young inventor-who had
no engineering degrees and, in fact, never finished
college-into international headlines. He became
the youngest person ever to receive the coveted
Fawcett Aviation Award for major contributions
to the advancement of aviation. Eventually, the
little co-axial XH-44 "Hiller-Copter" would earn
a permanent place in Smithsonian Institution.
The early successes also attracted business investments
in Hiller's enterprise. After a brief association
with renowned WWII shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser,
separate financing and stock sales were secured,
and United Helicopters became a corporation in
1945, hopeful of opening a new age of commercial
vertical flight with the Hiller "Commuter" helicopter.
A crash of a co-axial airframe-and a miraculous
survival of pilot Stan Hiller-took him to another
rotor design he had been pondering, called the "Rotormatic
Control System." Although reverting to a single
rotor-plus tail-rotor configuration, the system
achieved remarkable stability with a simplicity
in parts that again caught the attention of the
aviation world. It was upon this design platform
that the famed Hiller "360" began the Hiller ascendance
as one of the few full-production helicopter companies
in the world. The 360 was the third helicopter
qualified by the Civil Aeronautics Administration
in U.S. history.
Post-WWII aviation was not an encouraging environment
for a young helicopter company. Now operating under
its permanent name, Hiller Aircraft Company, adventurous
steps were taken to commit the organization to
a commercial market. Hiller became the first American
company to produce helicopters without military
sponsorship. Capital was acquired from businessmen
who had faith in the new promise that helicopters
would revolutionize such utility chores as agricultural
management, crop spraying, search and rescue missions,
and remote field installations. Markets across
the globe began to respond, with the help of growing
and ingenious world sales staff Hiller had been
assembling.
The stable reliability of the 360 in utility jobs
resulted in the helicopter's recruitment as a medical
evacuation vehicle in the French Indochinese war
starting in 1949- The UH12-360 became the first
light helicopter applied to that task under difficult
jungle warfare conditions.
When the Korean Conflict broke out in 1950, the
U.S. Army finally responded to Hiller earlier pleas
to create a light utility helicopter capability.
The ensuing high-quantity orders were fulfilled
by the stressed company through rapid conversions
of commercial models. Soon Hiller Aircraft was
delivering a helicopter per day for the Korean
battlefronts, and a progression of technical advances
provided Hiller a family of aircraft alongside
the other major manufacturers, Bell, Sikorsky and
Piasecki.
What differentiated Hiller was its prolific contribution
to vertical flight technology. President Stanley
Hiller had already established a management style
that encouraged creativity, backed since the early
days by a strong and independent Board of Directors.
The result was a cohesive team that could turn
out a stream of innovative, but remarkably reliable,
vertical flight prototypes. While achieving in
the Army H-23 series the first helicopter of any
type to be approved for 1,000 hours of operation
between overhauls, all military services were coming
to depend on the creative Hiller staff to convert
the most unheard-of ideas into successful flying
hardware. Experimentation into the future was in
Stanley Hiller's nature as a child, and it conferred
to his company as an adult. As early as 1947, the
Hiller creative group had experimented with rotor
systems which tilted forward for higher speed horizontal
flight. The company's concepts of pure jet lift
was the first in its genre proposed to the military.
By 1951 Hiller was flying a two-place "Hornet" powered
by ram¬ jets at the blade tips, where, Stan
Hiller had long maintained, "the power is needed," eliminating
much of the helicopter's weight and complexity
in transmissions and tail rotors. A fleet of H-32
Hornet evaluation aircraft were delivered to the
Army, Navy and Marines in 1956. Huge Flying Cranes
were studied under military contract, as early
as the latel940s, later replacing the tip ram jets
with more fuel-efficient turbojets.
Hiller Aircraft Corporation's propensity for attracting
headlines and life magazine covers was started
when its soft-spoken but exuberantly promotional
leader was a teenager, and by the 1950s a zenith
in pub¬ lie awareness was reached as a corporate
fountain of aviation ideas attacked yet another
series of vertical flight technologies. The Hiller
Flying Platform perched a pilot atop ducted propellers,
requiring him to simply lean in the direction he
wanted to go. Improbable as it appeared, the platform
hovered and darted, with its standing passenger
often using both arms to fire a rifle or take photographs.
Begun for the U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics
in 1954, the Hiller XROE-1 one-man "Rotorcycle" could
be parachuted in a pod behind enemy lines, assembled
in nine minutes by its recipient on the ground,
and take off to fly with all the speed, altitude
and hovering capability of a large helicopter.
Delivered in evaluation quantities for testing
in world locations, the little Rotorcycle was known
to fly in weather eschewed by full-size helicopters.
In 1956, as Hiller military and commercial utility
helicopters continued to gain acceptance as depend¬ able
workhorses in the nation's vertical flight realm
of aviation, Hiller chose another daring step:
the development of a high speed vertical takeoff
and landing transport plane to deposit troops and
equipment into restricted battlefield locations.
The project's X-18 test bed was made of borrowed
engines and fuselage parts, but the 17-ton plane
managed to complete test flights at Edwards Air
Force Base in 1959-60, proving the long-held Hiller
idea that a tilting wing-engine approach to high
speed vertical flight was feasible. The result
was production of a evaluation fleet of Air Force
tilt-wing XC-142 transports by the consortium of
Hiller, Chance-Vought and Ryan. Challenged in jungles
and on aircraft carriers, the XC-142 proved the
point, as did all Hiller's experimental hardware
surprises: they did what they were supposed to
do, safely, and with considerable fanfare, minus
only full production contracts to follow. Clearly,
these and many other Hiller creations were meant
to teach the world what could be done in vertical
flight in every possible field requirement.
Predictive of his oncoming career as a corporate
turnaround specialist, Stanley Hiller was asked
in the mid-1960s when he was President of the U.
S. Army Aviation Association, to describe in the
Association's magazine how he managed people to
perform as creative teams so successfully. The
resulting article, Hiller's "Art of Looking Backward
from the Future," was noted by observers in the
business world. Hiller eschewed the common way
to advance technology based on rate of progress
in the past. His technique was to establish what
goal in any technology was sought in the future,
drawing a performance timeline from that future
point back to the present. Dramatizing such goals
to employees, and establishing individual roles
in the ambitious timeline embodied Hiller's management
technique. That way, he was fond of saying, "each
person owns the plan."
In 1968, after merging Hiller Aircraft into what
became Fairchild Hiller Corporation, Stan Hiller
left aviation to open Hiller Investment Co. Its
purpose was to realize the opportunities in bringing
together strong management groups and effective
boards of directors to revitalize companies with
large asset bases not being employed as effectively
as possible. Asked if he was entering the venture
capitalism field, Mr. Hiller replied in an press
interview, "We roll up our sleeves and get into
the companies, so we are not passive investors.
We become chairman or chief executive officer,
and don't take our money until employees have a
turnaround, and the company's shareholders realize
their promised returns."
Following this unique, personal-commitment approach,
and backed by a reservoir of strong managers eager
to participate in this non-hostile takeover process,
the Hiller group launched a 20-year progression
of corporate turnarounds, starting by "cleaning
up" mini-conglomerate G.W. Murphy Industries
which the group changed into Reed Tool Co. and
in 1979 sold it to energy giant Baker International.
Soon after that success, the Hiller group took
control of the nation's largest moving and storage
company, Bekins Co., reversing 20 years of declining
earnings as a percent of sales.
Approaching age 60, the man who had started as
CEO of his own company as a teenager now became
deeply committed taking the roles of CEO or board
chairman of challenging enterprises in a wide variety
of industries, helping them become the innovative,
flexible organizations he knew they had the potential
to be. He took leadership roles in of all of them,
including Baker International, for which he fashioned
a merger with Hughes Tool Company to become today's
Baker Hughes Corporation. One of Mr. Hiller's most
successful turnarounds came close to the end of
his career. At an age when most men contemplate
retirement, he persuaded Borg-Warner to spin off
to shareholders its failing York International,
one of the world's largest air conditioning firms,
and put him in charge as CEO. Stanley and Carolyn
Hiller took up residence in York, Pennsylvania,
until the job could be completed. "The challenges
are intimidating," Business Week magazine reported
at the outset. Borg-Warner Vice President Donald
Trauscht said, "I sincerely doubt we would be doing
this with anybody else but Stan and his team. In
all my years in business and in life, I've never
run into anyone like Stan." A year after Mr. Hiller
took the helm of the once-floundering company he
affectionately called "Yorkie," the company posted
a five-fold increase in profits, a 130% rise in
stock price, and a stable employment.
Stanley Hiller was often quoted in the media on
his abiding opposition to business practices which
undermine the vitality of corporations. Among them
were the unfriendly takeovers; "slash-and-burn" tactics
aimed not at building companies but draining their
assets; die excessive remuneration of many American
CEOs...and the "feudal system" at the top of many
companies that stifles change and innovation. A
Hiller motivation throughout his long career, stretching
from age 15 to beyond 70, was what people can do
when motivated and enabled.
Acknowledging that aviation was an exciting career,
Hiller created an education-based aviation museum-now
one of the nation's largest-in San Carlos, California.
He considered it his contribution to the community
which nurtured his own success. The Hiller Aviation
Museum is an institution of education and research
and has a goal to stimulate and engage our communities
to discover the past, celebrate the present, and
imagine the future of greater aviation with a focus
on unique technological innovations and innovators.
In his 78th year, Stanley Hiller was awarded Smithsonian's
2002 National Air and Space Museum Trophy for Lifetime
Achievement, "for your distinguished career as
a leader in aviation innovation and excellence." That
year also, his aviation community honored his lifelong
contribution to the progress of aviation with its
Medal of Achievement, presented by the San Francisco
Aeronautical Society.
Stanley is survived by his wife, Carolyn Balsdon
Hiller; his sons, Jeffrey and Stephen Hiller and
their wives, Mary Hiller and Barbara Hiller; his
seven granddaughters, Christy Hiller Myronowicz
and her husband Cameron of Hermosa Beach, California,
Brooke and Carrie Hiller of Atherton, daughters
of Stephen and Barbara Hiller and Maryann, Kristen,
Constance and Samantha Hiller, of Atherton, California,
daughters of Jeffrey and Mary Hiller; and his sister,
Patricia Hiller Chadwick, of London, England.
Memorial services for Stanley Hiller, Jr. will
be held at 1:00 p.m., Friday, May 5, 2006 at the
Hiller Aviation Museum, 601 Skyway Road, San Carlos.
Pastor Richard Foster will officiate.
In lieu of flowers, memorial funds have been established
in his name for the Hiller Aviation Institute & Museum
Educational Fund. Checks may be made to:
Hiller Aviation Museum
C/O Stanley Hiller Education Fund
601 Skyway Rd
San Carlos, CA 94070
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