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The Early Days of Wien Airlines

BY NOEL WIEN

[AUTHOR] During the mid-1950s Noel Wien wrote a series of “looking back” articles for the Wien Arctic Liner, an inhouse monthly publication for the airline. Selections from these first person remembrances, slightly edited, follow.

There was intrigue about the stillness of the air, and the frontier atmosphere of Fairbanks, which made me like the North from the day I arrived. For two weeks after we landed [on July 6, 1924; “we”, meaning Noel] we couldn’t find our way cross-country due to the forest fire smoke, but when it cleared, we were busy. People in Fairbanks took to the air quickly. They were hardy, willing to gamble. Ben Eielson had made a number of flights that spring before I arrived [for Rodebaugh’s Fairbanks Airplane Corporation). He had also started the Farthest-North Airplane Company the previous year, and had brought in an old reliable OX-5-powered Curtiss Jenny JN-4D open cockpit World War I training plane.

Due to the interest created by Eielson’s pioneering, we had little trouble getting flying business to outlying mining camps. Livengood, sixty miles northwest of Fairbanks, a cluster of mostly log cabins surrounded by mines, was one of the best of the gold-producing camps.

During the first season in 1924, we made thirty-four flights to Livengood, and in the summer of 1925, forty three flights.

BROKEN WATER PUMP

All went smoothly until mid-summer 1925. We had purchased a supposedly major-overhauled plane from Lincoln, Nebraska, one of the Hisso-Standard build-up headquarters. The engine worked fine on the flight to Livengood, but on the return a sudden shower of water erupted from the engine’s cooling system.

I knew that because of loss of water, the engine would soon become so hot it would stop. We were about half-way to Fairbanks, near Wickersham Dome. I spotted a shelf to one side of the Dome which seemed like the only possible chance of getting down without breaking up or going over on our back. We were cruising lower than the 2,500-foot shelf, so I had to use power to get up to it. The engine was steaming plenty when I reached a landing approach.

It was a fairly good landing place, and the airplane remained right side up without breaking anything. The problem was caused by a broken water pump; water stopped circulating, overheated, and boiled over.

The two passengers and I walked to Olnes, on the Chatanika River [fifteen miles], over miles of miserable tussocks. One of the passengers, an old sourdough, had no trouble walking. The other passenger, an insurance adjuster, had flown with me for both business and pleasure. He was my first tourist, and possibly the first flying tourist passenger in Alaska. He wore Oxford shoes and was about to give up before we arrived at the Chatanika River.

After one day of rest, I was ready to attempt another landing on Wickersham Dome. We had just hired A.A. Bennett, a new pilot, to help us fly one of the three ships we had [the two Standards and Eielson’s Jenny]. He was new to Alaska, having just arrived from San Diego, California, and was skeptical of going in with me. Our second Hisso Standard was not in shape to fly at the time, but we had Ben Eielson’s OX-5 Jenny in good flying condition, so in it off we flew to Wickersham Dome to retrieve the crippled Standard.

The day was nice and I made a good landing, but busted a tire on a protruding rock. Knowing the landing surface was rocky, we had with us an extra wheel and tire already assembled. After replacing the wheel on the Jenny, we replaced the broken water pump on the stranded Standard, and re-filled the radiator with water we had carried with us from Fairbanks.

Noel Wien worked for the Bennett-Rodebaugh company 1924-26. The Stinson Standard airplane seen here is the same model plane as the Stinson Detroiters brought to Alaska by Hubert Wilkins.

L to R. A.A. Bennett, Ed Young, Jimmy Rodebaugh, unidentified, pilot Matt Nimienen, and Leonard Seppala, one of Alaska’s most famous dog mushers. The woman in the sled is probably Sigrid, Seppala’s daughter. Driver of dog team not identified. ED YOUNG COLLECTION

I gave Bennett his choice of the two ships in which to make the attempt on take-off. Having more experience in the OX-5 Jenny, he selected it for the return flight.

The shelf on the dome was close to 2,500 feet above sea level. The Jenny was quite heavy, and its ninety-horsepower OX-5 was a very low compression engine. He used all the take-off runway there was and dropped almost out of sight down the sixty-percent mountain grade. It was a scary operation, and I didn’t blame him for talking about it for months afterwards.

My takeoff was easy because of the higher performing Standard with its 150-horsepower Hisso engine. We both landed on Weeks Field without any trouble.

It isn’t my intent to write of my experiences, but instead to give some idea of the progress made in aviation since the early days in the North.

NO WINTER FLYING

I had to discontinue flying in the fall of 1924, for the open cockpits of the Hisso Standards, plus the water-cooled engines, were not suited for the deep cold of Interior Alaska. A decision was made by Rodebaugh to try to get for the company a cabin plane with an air-cooled motor for wintertime use.

Because I was going Outside for the winter to visit my folks in Minnesota, it worked out for me to make a tour of the states to see what kinds of airplanes were being built in the United States. In my travels I learned that about all that were being manufactured were a small number of open cockpit planes with the OX-5 and Hisso motors. One exception was the Huff Deland company which built planes with an open front cockpit for two passengers and a pilot cockpit in the rear. This plane used an early model Wright air-cooled engine of about 200-horsepower. It was unsuitable for Interior Alaska winters—we (Rodebaugh et al) had decided not to settle for anything but a cabin plane, but, as I learned, no cabin planes were then being built in the United States.

THE FOKKER CABIN PLANE

Both the Wright and the Curtiss companies did their best to locate for me a company in the United States that built a cabin plane, but their efforts were unsuccessful.¹

We finally had to settle on a Dutch-built Fokker F-111, a six-place (pilot and five passengers) monoplane, a model which KLM and early German airlines had flown for scheduled airline service in Europe. It had a 235-horsepower, German, six-cylinder engine. The cabin was plush, with curtains and all the trimmings. It was built in 1921, and it was already the spring of 1925.

The Atlantic Aircraft Company, a dealer for Fokker, had three of these ships available. For $9,000 we bought one of them that had been used. I arranged for it to be shipped to Fairbanks via the Panama Canal.

This ship proved conclusively that a cabin airplane was the type to use in Alaska, even though we could not use it through the winter of 1925-26 because it had no brakes except for a tail skid, which helped to stop it. It had a rather streamlined monoplane wing, and took a minimum of 1,000 feet to stop after the three points [two wheels and tail skid] were firmly on the ground.

During the summers of 1925 and 1926 we (meaning Noel; no other pilot would fly the Fokker until Joe Crosson arrived, and he apparently flew it as a challenge—not for commercial flights). We [Noel] had some close shaves with the Fokker on sand bars and fields 1,000 feet or under. At the time, our flying out of Fairbanks was the only cross-country flying in the Territory. There was one earlier airline at Ketchikan in southeastern Alaska where for a time Roy Jones commercially flew a two-place Navy training flying boat.²

FIRST FLIGHT TO NOME

We were successful with the Fokker F-111, and with it made the first commercial flight ever to Nome from Fairbanks, carrying four passengers and 500 pounds of baggage, a 1,200-pound load. We flew non-stop back to Fairbanks in six hours fifty-five minutes.

[Author] On June 7, 1926, mining engineer Norman C. Stines, with two women, Midge Downer, and a Mrs. Dayo, climbed aboard the Fokker at Fairbanks with Noel and Noel’s brother Ralph (who flew as a mechanic) for the 579-mile flight to Nome. The charter price was $1500.

Noel ran into bad weather along the Yukon River, reversed course and, low on fuel, landed on a steep roughed-out baseball field at the Yukon River village of Ruby. In the brakeless rollout, the airplane hit a soft spot and turned upside down, splintering the wooden propeller, damaging the rudder and a wing tip. Miraculously, there was no other damage, and no one was hurt.

Noel Wien with the 1921 Fokker F. III which he flew on the first commercial flight from Fairbanks to Nome. This ship was built in 1921 in Amsterdam, Holland. It had no brakes, and carried five passengers.

With help from villagers, the airplane was righted and Ralph Wien repaired the damaged rudder and wing tip. A new prop was hurriedly boated to Ruby from Fairbanks, and the Fokker was ready to fly again. In the meantime, to reach Nome, the passengers embarked on boats.

Noel completed the flight to Nome with the Fokker. It was the first-ever commercial flight between Fairbanks and Nome. The passengers who had fled the upside-down airplane at Ruby arrived at Nome a day after Noel landed the Fokker there.

He flew out of Fairbanks until mid-November, 1926, putting about 100 hours in the air on the two Standard biplanes, and 157 hours on the huge Fokker. He thought A.A. Bennett, the newly-hired company pilot/mechanic, to be so incompetent that he felt endangered whenever he flew planes maintained by him. Bennett apparently convinced owners of the company (Rodebaugh now had partners who had invested in the company) that Noel didn’t fly enough. As a result, Noel and his brother Ralph, who worked for them as a mechanic, resigned from the Fairbanks Airplane Corporation. Noel never spoke publicly of Bennett until decades had passed, when the man was long-gone from Alaska.3

With Noel gone, Bennett, remembering mechanically-talented 23-year-old Joe Crosson from his time in San Diego, and needing a pilot/mechanic offered him a job. Joe, who had barnstormed in California with his own Jenny, arrived in Fairbanks in March, 1926 and immediately went to work as a mechanic, and soon, as a pilot. (For more on Crosson see Chapter 15).

Crosson, fresh from California, had little idea of Alaska. An advertisement of the time in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner might have given him a clue. It read, “Dog team for hire, to go to Chena Hot Springs or any other place in Alaska. Frank L. Tondro (the Malemute Kid).”

Joe Crosson with the Super Swallow biplane NC2375. He arrived in Alaska in 1926 to work as an aviation mechanic, soon became a full time pilot.

Tondro, a Fairbanks resident, was the genuine Malemute Kid, a relic of the Klondike Gold Rush of ’98, made famous by the writings of Jack London.

Pilots accustomed to surveyed and settled country in the states, with roads, railroads, farms and farm fences that helped them to navigate, were sometimes bewildered when they first flew in Alaska where there were no such amenities. Not Joe Crosson. He quickly learned the routes to nearby mining communities and mines. He repeatedly flew to Wiseman, a mining village in the southern foothills of the arctic Brooks Range, a 360-mile round-trip.

In addition to learning the lay of the land by flying over it, Crosson gave flying lessons to Ralph Wien, Ernie Franzen, a mechanic for Fairbanks Airplane Corporation, Cecil Crawford who became a pilot for Arctic Prospecting and Development Corporation, and Andy Hufford, a mechanic for Hubert Wilkins who was then in Fairbanks with his Detroit Arctic Expedition.

With a handful of other pilots, Crosson pioneered aviation in Alaska. He did it the tough way—by flying across a broad swath of the Territory before there were runways, weather forecasts, or radios in airplanes.

Noel Wien traveled to the states by rail and ship, and spent much of the winter of 1925-26 hired but not paid by R. A. Pope, of automobile manufacturing fame, who enthusiastically planned a flight over the North Pole with Noel as pilot. Noel paid his own expenses as he waited for this planned-for but eventually nonexistent event.

Nearly broke, he abandoned the Pope pie-in-the-sky plan, and flew four months with a flying circus in the Midwest, during which time he logged his 1,000th hour in the air. That same year, 1926, he was issued Federation Aeronautique International United States of America pilot’s license No. 39, signed by Orville Wright.

STARTING OVER AT NOME

By Noel Wien

[AUTHOR] Following is another “looking back” penned by Noel for the Wien Arctic Liner inhouse publication.

My brother Ralph had been our mechanic (for the Rodebaugh Fairbanks Airplane company) since the spring of 1925, and had helped keep in good flying shape the two Hisso Standards, the OX-5 Jenny that had belonged to Ben Eielson, and the large modern Fokker.

In May, 1927, Ralph and I started a new venture. For $750 we bought from the Fairbanks Airplane Corporation one of the two Hisso Standards that had arrived in Alaska with me in 1924. It was in bad shape. The Hisso engine needed a top overhaul, and the radiator needed replacing. We bought an oversize oval radiator from FAC, and worked hard for about a month on the engine and piecing other parts together. Finally in June, it was ready to fly.

After flight testing for a day or two, I flew it to Nome, arriving June 21. There was no air service at Nome, and after a month or so we found that miners, trappers, and businessmen liked the idea of air service as well as did Fairbanksans. We were a little worried about the engine though, because it was not considered good to have only twenty pounds of oil pressure instead of the normal sixty pounds. Nevertheless, in June, July and August we flew 140 hours, and the engine was still running good.

Noel Wien at Fairbanks with his Hisso Standard in July, 1927, just before flying it to Nome where he flew it until fall cold weather. He carried an extra prop on it at all times.

Miners, traders, salesmen, and missionaries were eager to fly. We provided passenger and freight service to Seward Peninsula mining camps, including Candle, Point Hope, Kotzebue, Deering, and a few isolated mines. Freight had to fit into the tiny front cockpit of the Standard, so most of it was groceries, machine parts, mail, boots, clothing, and the like. We also assisted reindeer herders by searching for strayed animals, saving weeks and dozens of miles of foot travel.

During that time we had some hair-raising flights. We were short on gas in heavy weather, as could be expected from a biplane that cruised at sixty miles per hour. Among our successful flights was one from Nome direct to Anchorage in pouring rain with a low ceiling and no compass, carrying as a passenger George Treacy, a bookkeeper for the Lomen Brothers of Nome. He had gangrene in a leg that needed surgery.

By late August we had netted approximately $4,000 with the Standard. With cold weather near, we knew we had to stop flying soon because of the water-cooled Hisso, and the open cockpits.

THE TWO STINSON DETROITERS

Early that spring (March, 1927) explorer Hubert Wilkins shipped two Stinson Detroiter biplane cabin planes with modern air-cooled Wright Whirlwind 220-horsepower engines to Fairbanks for an attempt at an arctic exploration flight. During a long flight he and Ben Eielson had been forced down on the polar ice, 125 miles north of Barrow in one of these Stinsons [Stinson Detroiter No. 1]. In one of the great feats of Arctic exploration, they left it there to walk over treacherous moving ice to Beachy Point at the mouth of the Colville River.

Wilkins disassembled and stored Stinson Detroiter No. 2 at Fairbanks, and late in the summer offered it for sale for $10,000. He needed the money to purchase a Lockheed Vega, an improved and faster plane for a 1928 expedition.

Ralph and I felt the Stinson Detroiter was the perfect ship for our try at a winter operation. It was the first ship of its kind to be produced in the United States, and the fifth production Stinson built. Its 220-horsepower Wright Whirlwind was the same type of engine Lindbergh had in his Ryan monoplane on his thirty-three-hour flight New York-to-Paris in May, 1927.⁴

Instruments on this ship were modern for their day, with two Pioneer compasses, rate of climb indicator, an airspeed indicator and a turn and bank indicator. Perhaps the most progressive innovations were the inclusion of brakes and a self-starter, which, until then, were unheard of in an airplane.

A total of forty-one of these Stinson Standards were manufactured between 1926 and 1927.

The Detroiter’s interior was Spartan. The pilot sat on cushions atop the fuel tank. Passengers sat on their luggage, or whatever was handy. These accommodations, however, beat the interminable Nome/Fairbanks dogsled ride which was the main winter mode of travel before the advent of our scheduled flights.

We purchased Wilkins’ Stinson Detroiter in August, 1927, with the profit from the summer’s work of the Standard, and a $6,000 loan collected from Nome businessmen in one afternoon.

[Author: The deal included a not-in-writing gentleman’s “Alaska style” agreement. Noel and Ralph had only $9,500, and Wilkins wanted $10,000 for the plane. He agreed to accept the $9,500; but if the Wiens succeeded with the plane, they were to pay him the additional $500. The following spring, when Wilkins arrived in Alaska with a new Lockheed Vega, the Wiens handed him $500. The brothers also repaid the $6,000 Nome businessmen’s loan.]

This cabin plane with its air-cooled engine was the forerunner of dependable through-the-winter flying in Alaska. We had just the one Detroiter which could operate through the cold months. Beside our flights out of Fairbanks and Nome, we started making flights between Fairbanks and Nome. We had bases in both towns, and more and more business developed because of our new plane.

The people of Nome had never had winter service to the Outside (the states) via Fairbanks and Nenana faster than the average time of thirty days by dog team at a cost of upwards of a thousand dollars, plus having to walk, push or run behind a dog sled at least part of the way.

FIRST ALASKA SCHEDULED FLIGHTS

Because of the interest shown in air travel between Nome and Fairbanks, we established a schedule. We found we could just about make one round-trip a week, what with the other flying we had in both Nome and Fairbanks. Sometimes it took five or six days to make it one-way due to bad weather, but we managed to average about one flight a week throughout the winter of 1927-28.

One problem we often encountered in Nome was deciding how many passengers could go on a particular flight, and who should wait a week or ten days for the next flight. Sometimes the decision was made by the flip of a coin.

We had a stiff competitor in Fairbanks, [now Bennett-Rodebaugh] but they didn’t like the blizzards and the uncertain weather common along the Bering Sea coast and the Seward Peninsula; beside, they had all they could do in the Fairbanks area.

Our weekly flights to Nome from Fairbanks and return were the first scheduled airplane flights between two points in Alaska.

There was a great difference in the weather conditions along the 579-mile route. Fairbanks is in the central interior of Alaska, where calm air is dominant. Nome is on the rough weather, windy coast. The snow at Fairbanks melted two to three weeks earlier than it did in Nome, so take-off from Fairbanks in the spring had to be made from a dry runway. Finding a wheel-landing place in snowy Nome became a real problem during those several weeks.

With the great interest in flying between Fairbanks and Nome, the people in both towns prevailed on the Alaska legislature to appropriate money for three special mail flights, Fairbanks to Nome. Dog team mail could not travel at breakup time, and because of sea ice it was six weeks after breakup before sea-going ships could reach Nome.

We made the first of these three flights during spring breakup, 1928, and we made special air mail flights during spring and fall for the next couple of years. These emergency contracts were the first commercially operated air mail contracts in Alaska, and we made all of them on schedule. Next, came more permanent mail contracts, called Star Route Air Mail Contracts.

LOST DETROITER AT LAKE MINCHUMINA

For two years, 1927–28, 1928–29, using the one Stinson Detroiter and the same engine, we were able to average a schedule of weekly flights between Nome and Fairbanks, plus many charter flights from both bases. This remarkable performance of one engine might be explained in part by our operating procedure at that time.

We changed oil after every five or ten hours of flying time, thus being able to get just under 1,200 hours on an engine without a major overhaul.⁵ An experience I had on Lake Minchumina, near Mount McKinley [Denali], in December, 1927, illustrates the rugged dependability of the old Detroiter.

I was returning from a flight to McGrath on the Kuskokwim River just before Christmas that year. It was important that I get back to Fairbanks in order to make the weekly flight to Nome. Meeting our schedule meant much to us; but to the people of Nome this particular flight was of vital importance, since we would be carrying their Christmas mail, first-class packages and fresh produce. Nome had never had any air service before we started flying from there, but the residents had quickly learned to depend on this modern means of transportation.

I had flown about half the distance to Fairbanks when darkness began to close in; there are, of course, only a few hours of daylight in Alaska’s Interior in December. I decided to land on nine-milelong Lake Minchumina and spend the night at Kamasgaard’s Roadhouse. The plane was on skis, and I landed with no trouble and taxied to shore. There I parked the plane in the deep snow of the frozen lake and in the shelter of the trees at the lake’s edge.

After a fine meal of roast moose, Kamasgaard and I sat near the fire telling tall tales when I noticed the wind had come up. It was whistling through the trees outside. I didn’t worry about the plane immediately because I was sure it was safe in the lee of the big timber, and pretty well settled in the foot and a half of snow. Later, as the wind became stronger, I decided to go out and tie the plane to one of the trees.

It was about eight in the evening when I got to the lake, which was about 300 feet from the roadhouse. I found the snow all blown from the lake’s surface, and to my horror, the Stinson was gone. It had been blown completely from sight across the lake.

I started across the ice in the dark to look for it, but the forty-mile-an-hour wind on the glare ice made walking next to impossible. I was forced to give up, and had to crawl on my hands and knees most of the way back to the roadhouse.

Kamasgaard tried to console me by telling me this was the first northeaster to hit the lake that winter, and that they blow up without warning. But I was pretty much disgusted with myself for not having taken the proper precautions with the plane. My only consolation was that I had received another valuable lesson in North-country flying. Neither my host nor I could think of anything we could do that night to retrieve the plane, so we turned in, hoping the storm would abate by morning.

When it became light enough to see next morning, between blasts of blowing snow I was able to see the plane, still upright, about a mile out on the lake. I bundled up in parka and mukluks and headed across the lake. By sliding across the bare ice, and breaking my speed on patches of hard snow, I was able to reach the plane. She was anchored up to the lower wing in the hard-packed, drifted snow. The only apparent damage was a slight buckling on the tips of the lower wing ailerons.

It was obvious the plane would have to be shoveled out, and this could not be done until the wind died down. So, once more, I fought my way through the howling, bitter-cold wind, to the roadhouse.

Later in the day, as I sat at a window watching helplessly, the wind changed direction slightly, and increased in velocity. It undermined snow from the plane and sent that little biplane scurrying off out of sight.

The wind continued to blow at near-hurricane speed throughout that night, and the next day, which was Christmas. What a way to spend my first Christmas in Alaska, I thought, wondering if we still had an airplane, and how we were going to pay the considerable balance still owed on its purchase price.

The runaway Stinson Detroiter in December, 1927, on Lake Minchumina as it appeared when found nine miles from the Kammisgaard Roadhouse where a storm had blown it. Despite the drooping elevators and other damage, Noel Wien managed to make repairs enough in the field so he could fly it to Fairbanks for proper repair.

It was two more days before that northeaster finally weakened and died, and we were able to venture onto the ice in search of the plane. We found it in the brush on the other side of the lake, deep in snow again, but still intact, and still on its skis.

REPAIRS IN THE BUSH

It took Kamasgaard and me all day to dig it out, and when we had finished I made a closer inspection for damages. The ailerons on the lower wing were bent a little more, one ski was turned up slightly, and the elevators on the tail were pretty badly crumpled. However, the wings on that sturdy old Stinson had stood up under the terrific buffeting it had taken, and the propeller had suffered no damage. By bracing up the metal ribs I was able to straighten the elevators and the ailerons. The main control rod to the elevators had parted, and I managed a temporary repair. Before I turned in that night I had her ready to fly. And tied down.

Kamasgaard had developed a bad cold while helping me, so he decided to fly to Fairbanks with me. The day was calm and clear. The engine was turning over smoothly when we started our takeoff run. We kept hitting bad drifts, but I figured with the light load I could bounce the plane into the air quickly. But before we got off, the worst happened; one of the skis snapped off just ahead of the pedestal, dug into a hard drift, and nosed us up. Both blades of the prop struck the ice and bent to almost a three-quarter turn before we settled on our ski-and-a-half.

Talk about being discouraged! I was about ready to give up. It was now well after Christmas, and I figured that at this rate I would be lucky to get to Nome before New Year’s day.

We spent all that day and the next in getting the plane in shape to fly. Ordinarily, I would have waited for search parties to find me and bring new parts. But it would still be another three or four days before I could expect search parties from Anchorage or Fairbanks.

Kamasgaard and I set about straightening the prop blades by heating them with a blow torch and prying with a monkey wrench. It was a slow and tedious job because the steel blades were tough, and there was the danger of cracking them. With the slightest crack, it would have been extremely dangerous to fly. We spliced the broken ski with a sturdy board, and on the sixth day after I landed at Lake Minchumnina, we were on our way to Fairbanks.

The repaired ski held up for the take-off, and the prop ran fairly smooth, although the engine gained 200 rpm. It seems we had taken some pitch out in the straightening process. This cut our cruising speed considerably, but we finally arrived in Fairbanks, although I was exhausted from fighting the still-bent control surfaces.

It’s a wonder that my hair didn’t turn gray on that trip. I think I aged ten years. I had made temporary repairs to the main control rod to the elevators by clamping the broken ends together with two pieces of metal secured by an ordinary stove bolt. So long as I maintained forward pressure on the controls I was able to hold the plane’s nose down and the rod together. If at any time I had found it necessary to exert strong back pressure, the rod probably would have separated and we’d have plunged to earth. Is it any wonder I was exhausted?

Within two days we had a new ski, and a new propeller installed (it turned out there was a crack in one of the blades of the old prop). We made permanent repairs to the damaged controls, and were on our way to Nome. We arrived there after New Year’s day, about two weeks behind schedule, but the rousing welcome we received when we landed more than made up for the anxiety and hardships involved in getting there.

[Author] The Stinson Detroiter #2 C5262 with which Noel and Ralph Wien flew between Fairbanks and Nome through the winters of 1927-28 and 1928-29, was a key airplane in Alaska’s aviation history. That ancient-appearing cabin biplane made possible for the first time year-round commercial aviation for mainland Alaska. During those two winters, the two Wien brothers learned how to keep an airplane flying in deep cold, and many techniques of winter flying—information shared with others in Alaska’s infant aviation industry. This experience proved invaluable during the brutal winter of 1929-30 when Alaskan and Canadian pilots flew across the Bering Sea to search the desolate shores of Siberia for the lost plane of Ben Eielson.

On December 22, 1929, at Fairbanks, while Alaskan Airways mechanic Ed Moore was cleaning the engine of the Stinson Detroiter C5262 with gasoline, a spark set the gasoline and the plane afire. The fire spread. Three other planes in the hangar were yanked to safety, but the Stinson Detroiter #2 and the hangar were both lost to the flames.

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1 The United States lagged behind Europe in the production of cabin passenger airplanes. From 1920 to about 1925, Anthony Fokker, a Dutch builder, produced several models of large cabin planes. The German Dornier and Junker factories also produced multiple-passenger cabin planes; so did the French companies of Caudron and Bleriot; in England Handley Page and De Havilland cabin passenger planes were also being produced.

Scheduled passenger flights by KLM and other early companies with these various makes were common in Europe well before such flights were available in the U.S.

2 Roy F. Jones, a World War I military pilot, was the first to bring to Alaska an airplane with the intention of starting a commercial airline. His airplane, the Northbird, was a four-place open-cockpit Curtiss MF Seagull flying boat powered with a 180-horsepower Hisso engine. In July, 1922, Jones flew this plane from Seattle to Ketchikan, and during the summers of 1922 and 1923, based in Ketchikan, he hauled passengers on joy rides, and mine and cannery owners, fishermen, and others on business trips. The Northbird was wrecked beyond repair at Heckman Lake, north of Ketchikan in the fall of 1923. Jones and his passenger, George King, surfaced unharmed. During WWII, Jones flew for the U.S. Army Air Corps from Fairbanks’ Ladd Field. He died in 1974.

3. In May, 1928, Noel Wien and Russell Merrill with two planes on charter to Barrow ran into difficulties. The two pilots and three other men were missing, and an aerial search was needed. Bennett seemed pleased, even gleeful, that two of his competitors were missing. He demanded $5,000 to fly a search, and then found multiple excuses to postpone the needed flight. Merrill and two passengers nearly died before being found by locals. In the end, all survived, but Bennett lost the respect of many Alaskans.

Later, in Montana, Bennett entered into a business relationship with Bob Johnson, of the famous and highly respected Johnson Flying Service at Missoula. Johnson pulled out after three years, saying, “I couldn’t pay Bennett’s bills any longer.”

4. In 1927, the nine-cylinder radial Wright Whirlwind was one of the most reliable aircraft engines in the world, thanks to seven years of testing for millions of miles of flight by its designer, former racing-car engineer Charles L. Lawrance.

Liquid-cooled engines dominated aviation for years, but they were heavy, bulky, and often cranky. About one-third of forced landings of planes equipped with liquid-cooled engines could be attributed to the engine.

Air-cooled engines eliminated complex liquid cooling systems, which included a pump, pipe-and-hose water connections (as many as ninety on the OX-5), and a radiator to cool the liquid. Elimination of such a system made the Whirlwind at least one fourth lighter, and much less bulky, than a liquid-cooled engine of comparable power.

Early air-cooled engines were inefficiently cooled, and needed a rich (more gasoline) and cool-burning air-fuel mixture to reduce engine temperature. The J-5C Whirlwind’s nine cylinders efficiently dissipated heat, allowing use of a lean, and more economical, mixture. This gave an airplane many more miles to the gallon, to use an automobile simile for comparison.

Thus the Whirlwind changed the aviation world with its reliability, efficiency, and lightness. For these reasons, its designer, Charles L. Lawrance, was awarded the 1927 Collier Trophy, at the time America’s most respected aviation award.

5. Even into the 1930s it was common for aircraft engines to need overhauling after 300 or 400 hours of running time.