Stanley Hiller Jr.

Alice just informed me that Stanley Hiller Jr., vertical flight pioneer and founder of the Hiller Aviation Museum, died last Thursday at the age of 81. Though his death seems to have gone unnoticed by most major news outlets, Hiller was a major figure in the history of flight.

The son of aviation pioneer Stanley Van Winkle Hiller and an impressive aifcraft designer in his own right, Stanley Hiller Jr. is the father of the modern helicopter.

At the age of 12, he founded Hiller Industries to produce and sell miniture racing cars. The next year, he and his father invented a die-casting machine that enabled him to make and market things as diverse as frying pans and water pistols. By the time he was 20, he was designing his own aircraft.

He readily acknowledged the influence of his father, an inventor and aircraft engineer who had been designing, building, and flying airplanes since 1909. When asked by a reporter how he had achieved so much in so few years, the 23 year old Stanley Hiller Jr. quipped, “I was fortunate in my choice of a father".

While attending the University of California, a professor reportedly told Hiller that his helicopter design would never fly. Undeterred, he went on to found Hiller Aircraft Company in 1942 and United Helicopters Incorporated in 1945. Together they produced over 20 helicopter models and more than 3,000 aircraft in two decades of operation.

Hiller Aircraft merged with Fairchild in 1964. For the next thirty years, his Hiller Investment Company specialized in restoring troubled companies to profitability. Never losing his interest in flight, he continually collected aircraft. In 1998 he founded the The Hiller Aviation Institute and Museum at the San Carlos Airport.

San Mateo County Times Obitutary


Stanley Van Winkle Hiller Sr.


One of Stanley Hiller Sr.'s first planes, the Paterson-Hiller Nieuport-type monoplane powered by the 25 h.p. H.K.B. rotary engine, at Sunset Field, Alameda, California in June 1911.


Stanley Hiller Jr.


Stanley Hiller Up in the "Hornet", California, 1952, photo by John Gutmann courtesy of SFMOMA.



The Hiller X-44, the first helicopter with all metal rotorblades.



Hiller HJ-1.


Hiller J-5


Designed to be portable, the Hiller Rotocycle XROE-1 can fly a solo pilot at over 50 mph.



Stanley Hiller Jr. became the first person to fly a helicopter across America in this helicopter of his own design, the Hiller 360.


The Experimental X-18 tilt wing rotorcraft, the world's first Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) aircraft ever made and flown, can fly like a helicopter or an airplane.



Hiller UH-12


Stanley Hiller Jr. with the X-44