Alaska's First Bush Pilots, 1923-30 - Jim Rearden

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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.

      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.

      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

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