This is J.H. Millar's obituary:
The Times
December 04, 2006
John Humphrey Millar
March 14, 1903 - December 1, 2006
Businessman who procured US wartime aircraft for the RAF and ran an aerospace company in Monaco
The several different careers contained within John Millar's long and eventful life resulted in his playing a persuasive role in wartime aircraft procurement and, after the war, in his founding a highly successful aerospace components company, Avica.
As an agent for Lockheed and Consolidated his foresight was largely responsible for RAF Coastal Command's acquiring two of its most useful wartime aircraft, the Hudson patrol bomber and the Catalina flying boat - though neither as quickly as might have been the case had he been given his head.
John Humphrey Millar was born in 1903 and educated at Charterhouse. In 1920 he went directly into business as a sales manager in an electric radiator manufacturing company. Moving on to a series of advertising agencies, he spent his spare time and money racing at Brooklands and learning to sail. During the General Strike he drove a locomotive for the Great Western Railway.
In his twenties he became fascinated by the technical advances being made in aviation. With a private pilot's certificate, he resigned his job and started to research aviation developments. His curiosity eventually took him to America, where he flew many of the prototypes then being built to the new techniques, with all-metal, sparless wings, variable pitch propellors and other innovations.
In 1936 he was taken on as an agent for Lockheed, and he also flew airliners commercially between Kansas City and Newark, New Jersey, as well as becoming the European agent for a wide variety of aircraft parts and equipment.
He formed his own company, Millar Aviation, and returned in 1938 to England where he was employed by the aeronautical engineer George Dowty. Commissioned to sell the Lockheed Model 14 twinengined all-metal bomber/transport in Britain, he was also appointed by the president of the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation to market its PBY4 long-range flying boat.
These were two very significant aircraft types. Rejected in 1937 by the British Air Ministry, against Millar's strenuous advocacy, the Hudson was eventually ordered for Coastal Command and at the outbreak of war was, with the Sunderland flying boat, one of its only useful types. In August 1941 a Hudson became the first aircraft to "capture" a U-boat, depth-charging it from the air and then, when it had surrendered, calling up surface escort ships to secure its crew.
Many Atlantic convoys had cause to bless the presence of the Consolidated Catalina flying boat, with its phenomenal range. On May 26, 1941, it was a Catalina from Iceland that located the battleship Bismarck, after she had given her pursuers the slip, and ensured her subsequent destruction.
But at the outbreak of war Britain's only long-range aircraft was Millar's one production Catalina, which he had to operate with a scratch Canadian crew.
To get them out of the water where they were vulnerable to air attack, the Catalinas needed beaching gear which had not been ordered in the contract. To help the war effort Millar offered to buy the equipment himself, spending his own commission, which was in dollars, in America. This was against the exchange control rules.
His American relationships were clearly causing difficulties with the Ministry of Aircraft Production, which hadforbidden him to contact Coastal Command or the Air Ministry. Millar was always highly scathing about the Treasury official who confiscated his passport.
After the British Government had ordered nearly 300 very long range Liberator bombers from Consolidated, Millar resigned his post with the firm, took leave from his own company and joined the Royal Navy as a lieutenant (A) RNVR. In June 1941 the Fifth Sea Lord (who was in charge of all naval aviation) retrieved his passport and sent Millar to the British Air Commission in Washington, where his expertise was put to good use in such projects as adapting US carrier-borne aircraft to carry British torpedoes.
In 1944 he was ordered to create an air freight organisation throughout India and Ceylon to support the Eastern Fleet. He surveyed all the routes, flew proving flights over them and wrote the manuals.
This was considered by the RAF to intrude on its sphere of operations. Connoisseurs of inter-service rivalry enjoy the story about the senior RAF officer who telephoned Millar:
"Millar, I want to see you about this freight business. Where are you staying?" "Actually, Archie and Lady Wavell are kindly putting me up at the Viceroy's residence." There was a pause before a chastened voice asked: "When would it be convenient to send a car for you?"
After the war Millar resumed as managing director of his company in Britain. Later in 1945 he went to America, where he settled and established Avica Equipment in Rhode Island, winning orders for advanced fuel systems for American aircraft. But legal questions about his nationality affected his status. In 1960 his American wife sold her shareholding. Selling the American company, Millar returned home, and rebuilt the business, employing more than 500 engineers and mechanics in three factories.
In 1965 Avica Equipment lost 85 per cent of its order book because of defence cuts by the new Labour Government. Moving to Geneva, Millar was unable to obtain work permits for his engineers, so he liquidated his Swiss company. He became a resident of Monaco, built a new factory there, landed contracts in France, Germany and Italy, and doubled the company's sales of aircraft, rocket and satellite components. By 1979 each French Ariane rocket carried £250,000 worth of Avica components.
The oil crisis had prompted him to invent and produce a high-efficiency, solar-powered distilling plant, and this venture became his chief interest when Avica was bought by an English public company - which soon lost the European markets. In 1983 he designed and had built in America the 110ft brigantine Centurion as a research vessel to promote solar-powered devices.
In April 1985, on the way to the Pacific without Millar on board, Centurion was stranded off Lisbon and badly damaged. Lloyds admitted liability but years of legal wrangling followed. In 1997 Millar received a settlement of $3.4 million, but legal costs left him with a huge deficit. In old age, at his home in the Alpes Maritimes, Millar continued to be busy with projects of all sorts, particularly those concerned with solar power.
In 1993 he was appointed an adviser to Prince Rainier's committee for solar energy. He was a member of the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club and the Royal Yacht Squadron, and was a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and of the Royal Society of Arts.
His first wife, Adelaide, died in 1962. He is survived by his second wife, Joanna, whom he married in 1965, and by the son and daughter of his first marriage.
John Millar, engineer and businessman, was born on March 14, 1903. He died on December 1, 2006, aged 103