Marvin Miles, 82; Former Times Aerospace Editor

Marvin Miles, retired aerospace editor of the Los Angeles Times who flew with Howard Hughes, was on a first-name basis with such aviation pioneers as Donald Douglas and the Lockheed brothers and was among the first reporters to witness both atomic and hydrogen bomb explosions, has died.

His daughter, Melanie Meyer, said her father was 82 when he died Thursday at a Glendale hospital of complications of cancer.

Miles began at The Times in 1935 and became aviation (later aerospace) editor in 1941. He retired in 1976, having become almost as well known in aviation circles as the people he wrote about.

He was in the jump seat of jets breaking the sound barrier, and was aloft when the first airborne hydrogen bomb was dropped at Bikini atoll in 1956.

He saw the first demonstration of an atomic cannon and the third test of the atomic bomb, was among the first journalists allowed behind the Berlin Wall, and swapped stories about these and other adventures with fliers Chuck Yeager and Pappy Boyington.

Because of his longtime friendship with Hughes, he was part of a panel that in 1972 used a phone hookup from the Bahamas to interview a man said to be the billionaire recluse.

Putting questions to Hughes based on their long relationship, Miles said he was satisfied that it was indeed the mysterious industrialist on the other end of the line.

Hughes had helped arrange the interview to deny that he had anything to do with a biography that was to be published by McGraw-Hill, in which author Clifford Irving said he had worked closely with his subject. Hughes repeatedly denied ever talking to Irving, much less meeting him regularly.

Irving was later imprisoned for grand larceny in connection with the sale of the fake biography.

Miles’ awards ranged from organizations such as the Air Force Assn. to the national Aviation Writers Assn. to the Civil Air Patrol.

Survivors include his wife, Betty, another daughter, Marilyn, and six grandchildren.

Services will be private.