2008 Honorary Degree
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At age 101, he is retired and living in Tempe, Ariz., after a successful career that included flying more than 7,000 test flights for United Airlines as the company's chief test pilot. He spent much of his professional life in Wyoming, where he was elected to the state House of Representatives twice in the 1950s.
Johnson was born in June 1906 in Goodland, Ind., where he spent his childhood before coming to Purdue to earn his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1930. That year, he started pilot training at March Field in California and had several adventure-filled years with the U.S. Army Air Corps (the precursor to the Air Force) before returning to civilian life. His first job was with Ball Brothers in Muncie, Ind., as the pilot of an S-39 amphibian aircraft.
Johnson was responsible for several hallmark designs and innovations that improved air safety. Throughout his life, he worked to improve technology that existed, and invented or innovated that which did not, including developing the procedure for safely landing large aircraft that became the world standard. This procedure revolutionized flight, because at the time, it was quite dangerous to fly; and not only were people afraid to fly, but many people lost their lives in the landing of the aircraft.
After providing engineering flight test/development in the Pacific during World War II, Johnson followed his entrepreneurial interests, organizing several business entities, including Aeronautic Services Corp. and Master Equipment Corp.
He also owned a variety of war surplus aircraft, operating an entire squadron of 22 of them from three main bases in Georgia, Arizona and Wyoming. Capt. Johnson flew these former WWII aircraft, bombing fire ants and forest fires until he was 82 years old.
Johnson was a founder of Teton National Insurance Co., a Wyoming domestic life insurer. He is a member of the Wyoming and Arizona Aviation Hall of Fame and he still occasionally flies with friends in antique aircraft and visits with former employees and aviation enthusiasts.
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