1924.” Fastened to the watch was a gold chain that included a gold nugget; a diamond-studded knife was attached to one end of the chain.
He was made an honorary member of the Fairbanks Igloo of Pioneers. He gave a talk about aviation and his airmail contract to the faculty and students at the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines (today the University of Alaska Fairbanks).
MORE MAIL FLIGHTS TO McGRATH
The compass in the DeHavilland was repaired, and the airspeed indicator fixed for the second mail flight on March 1, on which he carried 252 pounds of McGrath-bound mail. It went off without a hitch.
The third flight, on March 12, also went well. He hauled little mail, but he took thirty-five pounds of wire for the government radio station at Takotna, twenty miles from McGrath, and landed there to deliver it.
In powdery snow the narrow tail ski sent with the DeHavilland created drag in the snow on takeoff. It was replaced by a six-inchwide, shorter ski which worked better.
Eielson flew his fourth mail flight on March 26, and had a minor problem on landing on the Takotna river when he ran into an overflow which had been covered by snow. The ice six inches beneath was solid, and the only damage was a cracked ski, which was temporarily repaired for the return flight.
The fifth trip, on April 9, with 300 pounds of mail, on a blue sky day, went without a hitch.
On his sixth trip, April 23, he landed at Nenana to take on 365 pounds of mail that had arrived there by train the previous day. The last dog team over the route had left for McGrath April 5, and surface travel had ended because of breakup. The first upriver boat on the Kuskokwim River to McGrath wasn’t expected until about June 20. Eielson pointed out that breakup didn’t stop his airplane from flying.
At McGrath, William “Hosie” Hummel, the “High-powered Swede,”5 extremely ill, had been hauled by dog team from Takotna. There was no doctor within hundreds of miles. Ben loaded him into the DeHavilland with the mail and flew him to Fairbanks for medical care. He charged nothing.
After landing at Fairbanks, Ben attempted a fast turn on the ground and broke the pedestal on one ski as well as the airplane’s wood propeller. In addition, the radiator was damaged when the nose of the plane hit the ground. Repairs were made.
As Ben helped Hosie out of the cockeyed plane, the ill man reportedly said, “Yeezus, Ben! You always land like dat?”
Snow was gone and the skis were replaced by wheels for the seventh flight on May 7, which went well.
Flight number eight, on May 28, ended after Ben landed the DeHavilland on return to Fairbanks. He taxied the DeHavilland into a boggy spot (later spoken of as “Eielson’s soft spot”) near the center of the airfield, where the wheels sank deeply in mud. The plane flipped onto its back. Propeller, rudder and two wing struts broke.
In the mail cockpit, passenger Charles Nystrom, of McGrath, who was making a hurried trip to the Mayo Brothers Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for an unknown health problem, hung by his safety belt. Ben released it and his passenger promptly landed on his head. Except for a goose egg, Nystrom was all right.
Ben broke the DeHavilland three times on eight flights. In fairness, it must be said that the big, awkward airplane was not well suited to the extreme winter conditions, or to the available landing places.
All the spare parts needed for repairs that had been sent with the DeHavilland had been used. Local mechanics couldn’t repair it this time without sending Outside for parts.
The Post Office Department was notified of the accident, and refused to send or finance replacement wing struts. The Assistant Postmaster General wrote, “Your experiment has been successful to a marked degree...(but) there are many things which must be done before we can continue on a permanent basis our use of airplanes in mail-carrying 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.
