John J. Montgomery

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Montgomery at the Hiller

After sketching in Evergreen, I headed north up the Peninsula to San Carlos. My destination: the Hiller Aviation Museum.

I was here to see and sketch three gliders and look at a plaque. The three gliders are replicas of the Gull, Santa Clara, and Evergreen, all designed by John J. Montgomery. Two are suspended from the ceiling and the Evergreen sits in a dark corner with a dubious mannequin, representing John Montgomery, sitting at the controls.

The odd mannequin of John Montgomery really looks like he’s three sheets to the wind!

The plaque sits off to the left of the replica of the Evergreen and mannequin. I have seen a plaque like this before, last fall in Roanoke, Virginia and also at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento.

The plaque in Roanoke honored the engineering achievements of Norfolk and Western’s J-Class No. 611. The plaque at the Hiller, by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, designates the glider as an International Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. The plaque reads:

Montgomery Glider

1883

This replica represents the first heavier-than-air craft to achieve controlled, piloted flight. The glider’s design was based on the pioneering aerodynamic theories and experimental procedures of John Joseph Montgomery (1858-1911), who designed, built, and flew it. This glider was way ahead of its time, incorporating a single parabolic, cambered wing, with stabilizing and control surfaces at the rear of the fuselage, with his glider’s success, Montgomery demonstrated aerodynamic principles and designs fundamental to modern aircraft.

The plaques placement is a bit unfortunate because it actually refers to the Gull, which hangs above and not the Evergreen (the curator I talked to admitted that this part of the museum has been neglected).

John Montgomery was a true Californian, born in Yuba City. He was many things in the Golden State: inventor, pilot, engineer, physicist, and a professor at Santa Clara University.

He studied the soaring flight of hawks, eagles, pelicans, turkey vultures, and gulls around San Diego Bay and further inland and then tried to design his gliders influenced by nature’s own design. He referred to birds as, “tutors in the art of flying”. Montgomery put this understanding the flight of birds with creating a heavier than air glider this way, “It has always seemed to me that the secret of aerial navigation lay in the discovery of the principle of bird’s flight.”

In 1883 the flying professor made pioneering flights near the Mexican border at Otay Mesa. His flights lasted up to 600 feet. He had not yet learned how to design a glider that could soar upwards like a turkey vulture.

Here he flew the Gull, the replica now hangs in the Hiller Aviation Museum.

So I did a loose sketch of the Gull.

I chose to sketched the Gull loosely with another mannequin of Montgomery (as a younger man) perched uncomfortably on the glider’s “saddle”. I left out all the other aircraft around it and used my artistic license to add the setting: Otay Mesa.
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Professor John Montgomery and Evergreen

Previously I had written about aviation history above the skies of Aptos on the Monterey Bay. The man who designed the glider was a Professor John L. Montgomery.

Montgomery had a long history of flight development in California. He is overshadowed by aviation developments in Europe and on the East Coast. And his accomplishments are eclipsed by the Wright Brothers, who must have had a better PR man.

There are a few reasons for this. Montgomery had trouble securing patients for his flight inventions and being far away on the west coast and far from the national media in New York and Boston meant that his exploits didn’t get the same coverage as the Wrights. Even though he flew a glider 20 years before the famous Wright Brothers.

I wanted to visit and sketch the hillside where be flew his last glider. This is in the Evergreen neighborhood of East San Jose. The hillside is now named Montgomery Hill in his honor and is behind present day, Evergreen Valley College.

I arrived at the collage early on Sunday morning, free parking! My plan was to walk up to the observatory and sketch Montgomery Hill.

The Observatory at Evergreen Valley College.

I positioned myself so I could sketch the dome of the observatory in the foreground and the hill that stretched off into the distance (featured sketch right).

The hill before me was where Montgomery did many test flights with the glider her designed. The glider was named after this area: Evergreen.

A 1911 photograph of Montgomery flying the Evergreen, shortly before his death. The location is now called Montgomery Hill.

In was on this hill on October 31, 1911, that Professor Montgomery crashed his glider Evergreen, and died of his injuries. He was 53 years old.

Montgomery Hill, the sight of Montgomery’s last flight.

John J. Montgomery is starting to get the recognition in aviation history that he so rightly deserves. In the Evergreen neighborhood at the intersection of San Felipe and Yerba Buena, there is a 30 foot wing that stretches up to the sky (featured sketch).

This Public art is titled “Soaring Flight” (2008) by artist Kent Roberts.

On an interesting side note, sculptor Kent Roberts (1947-2019) was a Bay Area artist. Before attending the San Francisco Art Institute, he served as an officer in the US Navy aboard an aircraft carrier. The ship’s name: the USS Kitty Hawk.

Uncanny.