In an interview following retirement in 1960, Rodja Milovanović set out: "I have always been flying and will continue to. It doesn’t matter where and on which aircraft. I can never reconcile myself with retirement. Some fear heights, some fear non-heights."
That brief statement reflects the life and philosophy of one of the best Serbian and Yugoslav pilots. And indeed, when you say Rodja Milovanović, you mean flying! Although he entered aviation relatively late in life – he was already 27, as in 1929 he completed Pilot School of the First Flying Corps in Novi Sad – he continued flying for a full 42 years, until he turned 69.
After Pilot School and later Fighter Aircraft Pilot School, which he completed in Zemun in 1930, his personal records contained this description: "Excellent fighter plane pilot; flies with great determination; a safe and reliable pilot; carries out his assignments with excellence". Rodja Milovanović then began searching for new challenges in civil aviation. As early as 1933, he obtained a pilot’s license for tourist planes which he flew at Aeroklub Beograd through May 1, 1934, after which he joined Aeroput, the civil aviation society in which he remained until the beginning of the war in 1941. In the meantime, he graduated from Law School.
 As World War II started, so began the most exciting stage in the life of Captain Milovanović. Having been mobilised on April 1, 1941, for the Air Force Headquarters Transport Group, seven days later he flew a Lockheed Electra 10 to Athens. On the way back, British Anti- Aircraft Artillery mistakenly shot him down where the Vardar River flows into the sea near Thessaloniki. After a brief stay in Greece, he departed with a formation of Yugoslav airplanes to Cairo, where in early 1943 he joined the RAF. Over the next three years, under RAF command, he called at airfields from southern England, via the Mediterranean, all the way to India flying Wellington, Liberator B-24, Douglas C-47, DC-3-47 and other aircraft. Rodja Milovanović flew across the ocean as many as 42 times, and his name was last mentioned in the British press in 1946, when after the war with Japan ended, he brought over the first group of British officers who had been held in Japanese POW camps.
He remained in the RAF through September 27, 1946, having received the Order of the STAR for merit conferred only on the best pilots. Several months later, he began flying as a pilot for the Scandinavian air company SAS.
However, his heart told him to go home and he returned to Yugoslavia. A month after the national air company was established, he began flying for Yugoslav Airlines (JAT). His first flight was on May 31, 1947 on a C-47 YU-ABB to Zagreb and Ljubljana.
 Milovanović flew for 14 years as a JAT pilot, where he was a crew leader and instructor on the DC-3, C-47, Convair 340, Convair 440 Metropolitan and the four-engine DC-6 aircraft. Among other things, he conducted the opening flight on the line to London in 1955. That same year, he flew a D-6 to New York and San Diego. During his career as a civilian aviation pilot, he never experienced an accident. By July 1954, he had already flown one million kilometres, for which then president Josip Broz Tito conferred on him the Order of Merit for the People Second Class.
His last flight for JAT was on June 29, 1960, on the Belgrade-Split-Zagreb line, after which went into retirement.
His own records show that he flew 80 different type of aircraft, and spent 15,000 hours as an airliner pilot in the air, covering over 4 million kilometres.
Upon retiring as a pilot, he worked as a civil aviation flight inspector beginning in 1963, but this was not all. From 1967 to April 1971, he was flying again to various parts of the world. Among others, he flew as a crew member with Lin Air Brindisi and Air Transport Sahara. He flew small agricultural Piper aircraft from Belgrade to Khartoum in the Sudan. He also performed a number of promotional flights with the Beechcraft, and flew a Dornier aircraft for the Putnik travel agency.
He died at 71, on December 20, 1973, leaving an indelible mark on Serbian aviation. | 
