Meet Anne Millbrooke, Aviation Historian

Welcome, Anne Millbrooke, award winning aviation author, editor, and pilot.

Anne, tell me how your relationship with flying and aviation writing began.

I grew up on the cloudy coast of Washington state and I didn’t ride in an airplane until I was in college. I majored in history and wrote a doctoral dissertation on the history of geology, so I came to aviation relatively late.

Working as an archivist and historian for United Technologies Corporation, I became immersed in the history of aviation through the company's subsidiary companies, Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky, and what was then Hamilton Standard. I loved touring the research facilities, factories, and records storage, as well as reading the historical documentation.

While a National Science Foundation Visiting Professor at Montana State University in the mid-1990s, I found myself in a delightfully clear climate (for the most part) and became a private pilot. Later, while living in Alaska, I spent two fun summers working with NASA's supersonic transport program at the Langley Research Center in Virginia. Right now, I am secretary-treasurer of the Gallatin Valley Hangar of the Montana Pilots Association.

I wrote Aviation History for Jeppesen and it has been in print ten years, now in an updated revised edition. This book was great fun to write, because the coverage is worldwide and I got to study many interesting stories in the process of selecting significant examples. Even revising the book was fun, as I literally wrote new text for 200 change pages, a process that again immersed me in stories from around the world. For a single paragraph on early boys book on aviation, for example, I read more than 20s boys books published from 1908 into the 1920s, books I had not had the time to read when writing the first edition. Jeppesen sells Aviation History as a textbook to aeronautics schools around the world. Winning the top history book award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics was quite an honor.


In ground school I began to compile notes and added more into a 700-page reference book Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Alphabets of Aviation. What's unique is that it’s arranged by shorthand expression. In the context of time and place, the author and reader may have known what an abbreviation, acronym, code, or mnemonic meant, but a reader may lack immediate recognition, or may associate the short term with a meaning from a different time and place. Some short-hand expressions in aviation have more than twenty meanings. I annotated as many terms as possible as to when and where the term with that specific meaning was used.

My most recent aviation publication is "History of the Space Age" in Handbook of Space Engineering, Archaeology, and Heritage. I enjoyed working with the engineers, scientists, and archeologists collaborating on this massive handbook.

What kind of books do you like to read?
I read widely, both fiction and non-fiction. Aviation, of course, but also mysteries, nature, history, and poetry.

What's your favorite "flying" book?
Stick and Rudder taught me much when I was learning to fly. Books by Saint-Exupéry — Wind, Sand and Stars; Night Flight, and Flight to Arras — still inspire me and instill me with awe for the wonders of flight.

What are you writing now?
I have several books in progress. A history of aviation in Montana has some great tales from the state fair demonstration flights, World War I hysteria about German planes in Montana, mountain flying, agricultural planes, Army air bases during World War II, the Lend-Lease air route through Canada and Alaska to Siberia, the CIA shutting down a distinguished flying service during the Vietnam War, and recreational flying.

I also have done most of the research for a biography of Frederick B. Rentschler, founder of Pratt & Whitney and United Aircraft Corporation. And I'm writing a novel.

Thanks, Anne, for visiting and good luck with your new ventures. 

An award-winning writer and experienced editor, Anne Millbrooke has written and edited reports, press releases, exhibit text, scripts, web content, speeches, articles for newspapers and magazines, chapters of books, and books. She is available to help you get the product you need.

In addition to working in corporate communications, teaching at universities, and consulting with private companies, not-for-profit organizations, and government agencies, Anne Millbrooke has won awards for her articles and books, and won Mellon, Smithsonian, National Science Foundation, and NASA fellowships.

In June 2008 Anne helped at the starting events of the Air Race Classic, the national women's air race that Will Rogers called the Powder Puff Derby.  She judged six aviation photograph contests for Airscene in 2008; the contests are in London, but the Internet allowed her to judge the photographs from Montana.

Visit Anne's website