space Shuttle Wings in the Garage
By Bill Messer
Editors note: Gustave Arthur Miller, known by all friends as Artie, moved to Pine
Knoll Shores in the mid ’80s after retiring from Grumman Aerospace Corporation.
Artie was the founder of the Grumman retirees club in Pine Knoll Shores, as a number
of other Grumman retirees moved here. He and wife Fran were active members of St.
Egbert Catholic Church in Morehead City, where Artie served as president of the mens
club and made weekly visits to fellow church members at the hospital who were sick or
disabled. He and Fran were active members of what was then Bogue Banks Country
Club, and ran the covered dish monthly program at the club for several years until they
were replaced by Joan and Wade Lamson later on. Artie was president of the men’s
9-hole golf league at the club as well. After helping to build the court, Artie organized
and ran the town’s Bocce club at Brock Basin, and presided over the games as well as
the pot luck lunches players enjoyed after the games. He was a Pine Knoll Association
volunteer, serving as captain for 10 years to help maintain Ocean Park, while also
sharing flag-raising and leaf-blowing duties. Most people recognize Artie, an avid bike
rider, as the “old guy” who zipped around town on his bike visiting friends and sharing
his smile with everyone. He practiced Tai Chi for 50 years, which no doubt kept him
in shape to reach 96 years of age on December 10. He and Fran had three children
and many grandchildren and great grandchildren. Artie lost his beloved Fran in 2016
after 73 years of marriage. Everyone agrees that although he hailed from New York, he
epitomized a true southern gentleman—gentle, caring, friendly, eager to help others
and a real Pine Knoll Shores asset. Writer Bill Messer had the chance to sit down with
Artie recently and shares here some details of his amazing career.
Art Miller was born during the dawn of aviation, lived near Roosevelt Field
in New York, and went to work for Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation
in 1941, building the TBF Torpedo Bomber (the same type of plane that former
President George H. W. Bush flew in WWII) and would later assemble wing
components for the space shuttle.
I had met Art Miller a few times before, and had intended to do a longer
interview for a story later. Later came quickly when I learned he was ill with not
much time left. “Til be gone by Christmas,” he told me. Some days are better than
others, and I was fortunate to find him up and alert, delighted to share some time
with someone who was interested in what he had done with his life’s work.
He began at the beginning. “I was born in 1921. I’ve been up to Kitty Hawk a
couple of times. I kind of knew about Wiley Post and the rest of those guys because
I lived not too far from Roosevelt Field. They [pioneers of aviation] seemed to
assemble at Roosevelt Field, but when I went to Ohio one time, I found out all the
rest of ’em were in Dayton.”
The Wright Brothers were Dayton boys. Art agreed that their visionary success
was built on a solid foundation of engineering and extensive wind tunnel tests of
wing airfoils. He reached over and uncovered a box to show me what was inside, a
gift he had recently received. I recognized it immediately, and you would, too, if you
followed the “Peanuts” episodes. “That’s a Sopwith Camel,” I said. Snoopy’s favorite
airplane.
“That’s right. Look inside there at the detail; you can see the flight instruments
and the control stick,” he said, and I was impressed at the incredibly fine details
of this presentation model. “It’s got twin .30 caliber machine guns, firing through
the propeller. That’s something that always puzzled me, how they do that without
shooting the propeller off,” he added.
I happened to know how, and chimed in, “There’s an interrupter gear timed to
the engine crankshaft that interrupts the firing mechanism, and it’s timed to the
rotational position of the propeller,” I said, “but I can’t remember who designed it.”
Irene, Art’s daughter, was on it, pulling out her Android tablet and looking up my
suggestion of Google search terms, “propeller, interrupter gear” and soon enough
pulled up the answer: Anthony Fokker.
Art Miller in the early days when he was in the
Navy.—Photo Courtesy of the Miller family
Satisfied and moving along, I
got to the reason I was there. “Art,
can you tell me about your work
on the space shuttle? How did you
get started at Grumman?” There’s
an unavoidable consequence of
two or more aviation enthusiasts
talking about “the old days” as any
hope of continuity goes out the
window. This was the case here,
and my best efforts at following a
logical timeline went up in the sky,
so what follows is pretty much how
the conversation went.
“What I did, the most important,
well, maybe not, but the most
interesting things, what I enjoyed
the most, was the landing on the
moon. I was a mechanic; I did what
the engineers had tried, all the tests.
When we first started working on the landing gear for the moon, we tried all kinds
of things, oleos [oil-filled shock absorbers, like on a car]. The most important
thing for landing on the moon was to get it on the ground in a level form so we
could use that as a take-off platform. Now, all the struts, oleo and that kind of stuff,
what happened when they made the test drops, it was like a pogo stick, bouncing.
You couldn’t do anything with it. I knew this guy,... an engineer in the shop
above mine, and one day they all went to lunch, these engineers, eight or nine of
’em who were working on the landing gear, and this one fella after lunch said, T
don’t understand why us bunch of guys can’t think of some way to do this. I am
disgusted with this place,’ and he put his empty soda can on the floor and crushed
it with his foot. The head engineer said, ‘That’s it!’ ”
Art continued: “The solution was as simple as filling the gear strut with
aluminum honeycomb that would crush on touchdown impact, absorbing
the energy that would have ‘rebound’ energy released for a bounce. We made
thousands of tests, and that was it.”
Hoping to get back on a timeline, I asked, “When did you start with Grumman?”
“I started in ’41, before the war. I was a mechanic, working for the guy who was
the future manager and president of Grumman. We were working on the TBF
[Avenger torpedo dive bomber] center section, the prototype. He taught me a lot;
his name was Danny Culligan. I had come to Grumman when they offered to teach
us all we needed to know for the job, in 1940, in six months, going at night. My
father had just had a stroke and we needed the money.”
“How old were you then?” I asked.
“I was 19. We were working on the center section [of the prototype] with
the wings. It had a folding wing; we put two hinges here [indicating the root of
the wing] and two hinges on the center section, on both sides. We took the left
hand wing out of its [assembly] fixture and put that wing down and those hinges
matched perfectly, went right in. We took the right hand wing out of its fixture and
put it down, and the hinge hit the edge. ‘Oh my God, it’s a disaster,’ we thought, and
got all the engineers down there. Finally, we just took some 400 grit sandpaper and
polished off about a thousandth of an inch and it slid right in.
“The [wing building] jig was off about a thousandth, so we corrected that. So the
war came along in late ’41 and I wanted to go in the Navy right away, but my father
said to wait a little while and let the first rush get sorted out. He said, ‘I go into
New York every day and the line to get in circles around the building at least three
times’
“It was late spring or early summer and I went on down, and the Navy said they
didn’t want me because my teeth didn’t match. They took my friend, but not me.
About 10 days later I got a call and went down there, 90 Church Street. The Navy
January 2018
(Continued on page 25)
The Shoreline 5
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