Alaska's First Bush Pilots, 1923-30. Jim Rearden
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in Alaska.”
So ended the first real attempt to haul mail by airplane in Alaska.
After his last mail flight, for a time that spring and early summer of 1924, Eielson flew the Jenny briefly at Fairbanks for Jimmy Rodebaugh, an Alaska Railroad conductor who was gearing up to get into the airplane business. On September 19, 1924, for a $200 charter, his passenger was miner Jack Tobin, whose destination was near Copper Mountain in Mount McKinley National Park. Copper Mountain was later renamed Mount Eielson in honor of Ben, who was the first to land an airplane near it.
In his first two years (1922–24) at Fairbanks, Ben Eielson became Alaska’s first airmail pilot, as well as the first pilot ever to be based at Fairbanks with a commercial flying operation.
That June, Eielson traveled to the states. On the way, while in Anchorage, he was attracted to a newly arrived Standard biplane being flown by Noel Wien from a new airstrip. The two pilots met and talked, and Eielson encouraged Wien, new to Alaska, to pursue flying in Alaska. There was a strong mutual attraction. They were both products of the rural Midwest. Both were aviation enthusiasts. Both would become famous for their flying exploits. Eventually they became fast friends.
Ben again made the rounds of officials in Washington D.C. in attempting to persuade the government to establish air mail in Alaska. It was like catching water in a sieve; most officials had unchangeable views on Alaska. To these bureaucrats, the old Eskimo and snow igloo fable and impossibly cold winters were established facts despite Eielson’s assuring them otherwise, and his proven flying experience in the Territory.
He returned home to Hatton, briefly returned to Georgetown University law school, then dropped out to join the Army Air Service to participate in a cold weather flying study which was finished by the end of 1924, along with his contract with the Army.
Back at Hatton, Ben became a bond salesman, which bored him. In early 1926, a telegram from explorer George Hubert Wilkins rescued him. Wilkins was looking for a pilot to fly for him on an arctic expedition. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, famous as an arctic explorer, who had followed newspaper accounts of Ben’s airmail flights, had told Wilkins that Ben was the American pilot with the most experience in arctic flying.
Ben met Wilkins in New York. They were both adventure-minded and both were pilots and aviation enthusiasts. They enjoyed each other’s company, and quickly came to agreement. For a nominal salary, Ben agreed to accompany Wilkins as a pilot on the proposed arctic expedition.
Ben Eielson’s life was about to change; as an Alaskan pilot who first flew airmail in the Territory he had gained moderate fame; as a pilot for Hubert Wilkins, he was to become internationally famous.
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1. The book Modern Aircraft, by Major Victor W. Page, Air Corps Reserve, U.S.A.,1930, by The Norman W. Henley Publishing Company, New York, in my library, printed thirty-five pages of directions for uncrating, setting up, and aligning a Curtiss JN-4 biplane. —JR.
2. Exposition Park, at the edge of town, was used as a race track for cars, and for baseball. Eventually it became a landing runway for planes and named Weeks Field in honor of Secretary of War, John Weeks.
Adjacent land, owned by Paul Rickerts, was called Rickerts Field and used for a time as an airplane landing field. It was 1,500 feet long, as compared to the early Weeks Field of 900 feet. The first hangar built at Fairbanks was on Rickerts Field, in 1924, and was used by the DH-4 mail plane flown by Eielson.
3. In 1918, a trial airmail run was made between New York and Washington D.C., using Army pilots. The Post Office Department followed up using Standard biplanes, and later, with modified War Surplus DeHavilland DH-4 biplanes. By 1920, daylight mail flights extended from New York to San Francisco; railroads took the mail over at night. Next came night flights on which mail plane pilots followed revolving beacons. By mid-1924 revolving beacons flashed into the night sky from New York to San Francisco, with lighted emergency landing runways every thirty miles or so. Night and day airmail flights, weather permitting, were well established.
4. About 300 DH-4 light bomber and observation planes were sent overseas during World War I, but none were used in combat. At war’s end there were many surplus DH-4s,and the Postal Service started using them in the States for hauling mail. Before such use each plane had an engine, propeller and instrument overhaul, had the cockpits realigned, with the front cockpit with a hinged cover. The airmail pilot’s name was printed on the fuselage.
Army pilots referred to the DH-4s as “flaming coffins.” The fuel tank was placed low between engine and cockpit. Air pressure in the tank was used to force fuel to the carburetor. A punctured fuel tank or fuel line sprayed fuel. When that happened, a fire often resulted.
Ignition for the 440-hp Liberty engine was provided by a hot battery. A dead battery meant a stopped engine, and that meant the airplane had to immediately land.
5. Many of the colorful characters of the time had equally colorful nicknames, a custom that, sadly, has mostly disappeared in Alaska.
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Noel Wien Arrives at Fairbanks
Noel Wien, born June 8, 1899, was one of five children born to immigrant parents—his father was from Norway, his mother from Sweden. He grew up in a log cabin on the family homestead at Cook, in northeastern Minnesota where the Wiens lived largely from the land.
Fascinated by mechanical things, cars were his first love. He was 10 when he first had a brief turn at steering a car—a four-cylinder Elcar. His father bought a used Model T Ford when he was 17, but, for a time, Noel was considered too young to be allowed to drive it.
He was a teenager during World War I, when he read about Mannock, Rickenbacker, Fonck, Guynemer, Nungesser, and other famous military fighter plane pilots on the Western Front. He soon became knowledgeable about the Curtiss JN4 “Jenny,” the main training plane for Americans at the time, as well as WWI fighter planes, the Spad XIII, the British S.E.5, the Sopwith Pup, the Nieuport 17 and others. He learned about airplane motors, (now called “engines”) used in various planes - the Hispano-Suiza (Hisso), Gnome, LeRhone, Liberty, and OX-5. In later years he wryly commented that it would probably have been better had he paid as much attention to his schooling as he had to cars and airplanes. His school attendance ended when he was 18, after he had completed eighth grade for the second time.
While still a teenager, he decided he wanted to spend his life flying, although he had never been near an airplane.
The summer he was 17, while continuing to live at home, he raked rocks on county roads at fifteen cents an hour; $1.50 for a ten-hour day. Next, for $2.50 a day he drove a two-ton GMC dump truck, hauling, instead of raking, rocks.
On his 21st birthday Noel bought a 1920 Overland touring car with the nearly $800 he had saved from his two jobs. He lost his truck-driving job and went to Duluth and worked at a harness factory riveting buckles on and oiling harness for $1.50 a day. Horses were still an important means of transportation and farming power. He lived at the YMCA, and ate one meal a day.
He sold the Overland and went to Minneapolis and Saint Paul and used the money to sign up at the William Hood Dunwoodie Institute, hoping to learn about airplanes. There was no airplane course, so he signed up for the auto mechanics course.
FINDING AN AIRPORT
He soon discovered the nearby Curtiss Northwest Airplane Company’s flying school which had a landing area that resembled a forty-acre hayfield. After that his life centered on airplanes and landing fields; he never returned to the Dunwoodie Institute.
In May, 1921, at the flying school, he finally laid his hands on