Reminiscences of Rear Adm. Harold B. Miller, USN (Ret.)

The late Min Miller was a gifted storyteller, the kind of individual who could mesmerize an audience as he recounted his adventures. To a degree, that quality has been captured in the oral history that follows. Unfortunately, the reader can’t see Admiral Miller’s gestures, hear the inflections in his voice, or see the twinkle in his eye. Even so, his love for the Navy--and particularly naval aviation--is manifest in the pages that follow. Miller got his wings only a few years after the Navy’s first aircraft carrier, the Langley, was commissioned in the early 1920s. He served in one of the ship’s squadrons in the late 1920s. Indicative of the versatility of naval aviators of the era, he flew in battleship and cruiser floatplanes, as well as in flying boat squadrons. But the tours of duty that really set him apart from his contemporaries came in the early 1930s when he was pilot of the tiny Sparrowhawk fighter that operated from flying aircraft carriers. These were the huge rigid airships Akron and Macon. Miller was in the crew of each at the time of her loss, the Akron in 1933 and the Macon in 1935. The oral history includes an engrossing account of the Macon’s loss. Another interesting theme is Admiral Miller’s long involvement with writing and public relations. In the 1930s he did what were essentially oral history interviews with naval aviation’s pioneers and wrote the first overall account of the Navy’s entry into the air age. He and his first wife wrote numerous magazine articles, and he was later a driving force in setting up Training Literature in the Bureau of Aeronautics during World War II. This section not only enhanced training within naval aviation but also served as an effective propaganda arm for selling the program. Because of the success of those efforts, Miller was made Pacific Fleet public relations officer in 1944 and greatly improved the Navy-media relationship. That led to a spot promotion to rear admiral far ahead of his contemporaries and the head public relations billet in the Navy. After his retirement from active duty, Admiral Miller did public relations work for TWA, Pan American, the American Petroleum Institute, and Hofstra University.