Milton Windler

Milton "Milt" Windler was a NASA flight director whose Maroon Flight team helped guide Apollo crews through the Moon race and the Apollo 13 crisis. He died on 1 October 2026 at the age of 94, surrounded by his family, according to a notice reported by collectSPACE. The cause of death was not publicly disclosed.

Windler was born on 10 January 1932 in Hampton, Virginia. He graduated from Virginia Tech (then Virginia Polytechnic Institute) in 1954 with a degree in aeronautical engineering. While in school he joined the U.S. Air Force Reserve Officers' Training Corps, worked briefly for NACA, NASA's predecessor, and then served four years in the Air Force as a jet fighter pilot. He returned to NACA at Langley Research Center in Virginia as the agency became NASA, then moved to Houston as the Manned Spacecraft Center (today Johnson Space Center) was being established.

In 1959 he entered Project Mercury in the recovery division and later supported Gemini recovery work. In 1968 Chris Kraft promoted him to flight director to support Gene Kranz after Kranz took on extra duties following the Apollo 1 fire. Windler was the seventh person named to the console and one of the first drawn from outside the core flight operations team. He chose the team color Maroon and became known as Maroon Flight.

As flight director he led shifts for Apollo 8 (including the trans-lunar injection that sent the first humans beyond Earth orbit), Apollo 10, Apollo 11, Apollo 12, Apollo 13 (as lead flight director), Apollo 14, and Apollo 15, then all three crewed Skylab missions. For Apollo 13 he and fellow directors worked round the clock after an oxygen-tank explosion crippled the spacecraft; Windler and Gerry Griffin's teams helped choose how to fire the lunar module engine to put the crew on a path home. President Richard Nixon awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the Apollo 13 Mission Operations Team in 1970. Windler also received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal.

After Apollo he worked in the Space Shuttle Project Office on Remote Manipulator System (Canadarm) operations until 1978, then consulted in private industry on International Space Station operations and verification. In a 2006 University of North Texas oral history he reflected that Apollo moved so fast there was little time to savor history as it happened.

He was married to Betty (née Selby). They had three children and eight grandchildren. A memorial was planned at the family's former church in Friendswood, Texas. Windler is remembered as Maroon Flight: a recovery engineer turned flight director who helped send crews to the Moon and bring Apollo 13 home.