John W. Myers, a business executive and renowned test pilot during World War II whose extraordinary flying skills earned him the nickname "Maestro," has died. He was 96.
Myers died in his sleep Thursday at his home in Beverly Hills, said Janice Merriweather, his longtime assistant.
"For us, he was a legend of legends," hotel magnate and aviation enthusiast Barron Hilton said in a statement Friday. "He was truly a pioneer and inspired many test pilots who looked up to him as their idol."
Gen. Chuck Yeager, the legendary test pilot who met Myers in 1945 as a young test pilot, agreed.
"He was about 10 years older and a role model for all of us pilots," Yeager said in a statement. "We always looked up to him."
As chief engineering test pilot for Northrop Corp. during the war, Myers most notably performed experimental test flights on the P-61 Black Widow, America's first successful night fighter, and on the first flying wing.
"John Myers was a true pioneer and legend of aviation who throughout his entire career demonstrated his exceptional flying abilities in all types of aircraft," Gen. Jack Dailey, director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, told The Times on Friday.
Dailey, a friend of Myers, described him as "a pilot's pilot. We talked about flying for hours, and his experiences were so unbelievable because of the risks he took."
During the war, Myers nearly died test-flying one prototype aircraft that never made it to production because of its performance.
"In fact," Dailey said, "he told Jack Northrop it wouldn't fly." But as chief test pilot, "he said, 'If anybody's going to fly it, it's going to be me.' He did it, and he was lucky to survive the crash."
Back then, Dailey said, "they didn't really know if those airplanes would fly or not. They didn't have the computer simulations and sophisticated wind-tunnel data we have today."
Dailey said Myers' philosophy "was that you have to go for it, and you always have to have your head a little bit out the window, meaning you're hanging it out there a bit."
Myers' exceptional skills as a pilot were evident after going to the South Pacific in 1944 to demonstrate the P-61 Black Widow to fighter pilots.
While there, Myers invited Charles Lindbergh to fly in his P-61 to an airstrip in the interior of New Guinea.
