David Hugh McCulloch (April 23, 1890 – September 20, 1955) was an early American aviator who worked with Glenn Curtiss from 1912.

Curtiss won the world's first air race at Reims in France in August 1909, and was now becoming the driving force in American aviation.

Helen's father, Robert Maitland Fair, had been managing partner of Marshall Field's,[2][3] then the biggest retail business in the world.

[4] McCulloch's wife Helen had started coming to Palm Beach in the early 1900s, making deep-sea fishing trips with Lawrence Waterbury II and Payne Whitney.

McCulloch and his wife built a house in Palm Beach where he was a founding member of the Bath and Tennis Club.

Among these friends were Harry Frank Guggenheim, Edward Francis Hutton, Nelson Slater, Vincent Astor (from whom he bought Shore Cottage in Sands Point), and Rodman Wanamaker.

In 1916 McCulloch became the manager and chief pilot of the newly formed Rodman Wanamaker American Trans-Oceanic Company based in Port Washington, New York.

He agreed to instruct the Yale students and put them through a thorough, methodical course at Port Washington and Huntington in the summer and fall, and West Palm Beach in the winter.

[13] By 1915, the US Navy had begun experimenting with aircraft landing on ships but the value of seaplanes for coastal defense was not fully realized.

During the week of September 5, 1915, the annual training maneuver of the Naval Reserve and the regular Navy were taking place at Gravesend Bay in Brooklyn.

They received praise from the Navy and to quote Alan R. Hawley, president of the Aero Club of America, from a letter to F. Trubee Davison, "The fact that we have not an adequate Air Service accentuates the value of the efforts being made by the patriotic members of your Unit.

He was chosen as co-pilot of the NC-3, the flagship plane, along with Holden C. Richardson as pilot and John Henry Towers as navigator and commander of the fleet.

While at sea for two days McCulloch and the rest of the crew of the NC-3 alternated tying themselves to the wing opposite the one with the broken pontoon so as to keep the flying boat level.

McCulloch and his crew went by destroyer to Plymouth, England, to join the festivities in Europe for this first successful transatlantic crossing by air.

[16]McCulloch reentered the United States Navy on June 29, 1942, as a Lieutenant Commander to assist the Naval Air Force with administrative duties during World War II.

His first duties were with the training department at Floyd Bennett Field in New York, and he was later transferred to the staff of Vice Admiral Patrick N. L. Bellinger and stationed in Norfolk, Virginia.