A draft deferment at seventeen

Stanley Hiller Jr. was fifteen when he designed a working coaxial helicopter model, and seventeen when he took the full-size design, the XH-44 Hiller-Copter, to the US Army in Washington. He came home with approval and a draft deferment, and in 1942 opened the first helicopter factory on the West Coast, on Addison Street in Berkeley. The University of California had admitted him as a student at fifteen.

Independence Day at Memorial Stadium

On 4 July 1944 the XH-44 made its untethered flight inside the university’s Memorial Stadium, followed months later by a public show on the Marina Green beside the Army’s Crissy Field in San Francisco. The industrialist Henry J. Kaiser came in as a partner, and in 1945 the business became United Helicopters, renamed Hiller Helicopters in 1948. Hiller was barely twenty, and already running a company that would soon sell helicopters to the US armed forces and to civil operators abroad.

The UH-12 crosses America

The breakthrough was the Model 360, sold as the UH-12. It won its production certificate on 14 October 1948 and in January 1949 became the first helicopter to fly across the United States, from California to New York. It used Hiller’s Rotor-Matic servo paddles for cyclic control. The Army took it as the H-23 Raven for observation and medical evacuation in Korea and later Vietnam, the Navy used it as a trainer, the Royal Navy too, and more than 2,000 were built until 1965.

Flying platforms and a parachute helicopter

Hiller loved odd machines. The YH-32 Hornet of 1950 had ramjets on its rotor tips and no tail rotor engine at all. The ROE Rotorcycle of 1956 was a tiny one-man helicopter for the US Marine Corps. The VZ-1 Pawnee of 1955 was a platform the pilot steered by leaning, like a giant ducted fan with a man standing on top. The X-18 of 1959 tested the tiltwing idea for transports. None went into large production.

Spy satellites in Palo Alto

One of Hiller’s strangest jobs was not an aircraft. From the early 1960s to 1969 its Palo Alto plant served as a cover for building CORONA reconnaissance satellites for the CIA. In 1964 Fairchild bought the company, and Fairchild Hiller turned out 253 FH-1100 turbine helicopters. Stanley Hiller left to become a corporate turnaround specialist, rescuing Bekins and York International, and sat on Boeing’s board from 1976 to 1998.

Fairchild, and the long afterlife

The name refused to die. A new Hiller Aviation supported the UH-12 from the 1970s, later as Rogerson Hiller, and in 1994 Stanley’s son Jeff bought the company back with Thai investors. A joint venture started building a parts plant in Zhangjiakou, China, in 2009. Stanley founded the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos in 1998 and died in 2006. The revived Hiller Aircraft Corporation of Firebaugh filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on 21 November 2024.

Fabrieken

• Addison Street works · Berkeley, California — First helicopter factory on the US West Coast, 1942
• Palo Alto plant · Palo Alto, California — Helicopter production; CORONA satellite cover early 1960s–1969
• Firebaugh facility · Firebaugh, California — Base of the revived Hiller Aircraft Corporation

Mensen

• Stanley Hiller Jr. · founder (1924–2006) — Later a corporate turnaround specialist and Boeing director 1976–1998
• Henry J. Kaiser · industrialist, partner — Backed United Helicopters from 1945
• Jeff Hiller · owner from 1994 — Repurchased the company with Thai investors

Records en primeurs

• First helicopter factory on the US West Coast, 1942
• UH-12: first helicopter to make a transcontinental flight across the United States, 1949