to follow in our father’s footsteps. We shared our love of flying throughout our lives. In addition to being an exceptional pilot, Richard’s vision and analytical talent have always amazed me.
FLYING IN ALASKA WAS ALWAYS A DANGEROUS AND difficult business. My father had left Alaska in the fall of 1924 because winter operations were not possible with the airplanes available at that time. When he returned for the summer season in 1925, he brought his brother Ralph with him. He taught Ralph to fly and they worked closely together for the next several years. In 1929, Ben Eielson, a pilot who had gained fame when he flew Sir Hubert Wilkins across the Arctic from Point Barrow to Spitsbergen, Norway, offered to buy Wien Alaska Airways. He represented a company that planned to create an air transportation system throughout Alaska. My father saw a chance to explore other opportunities so he accepted the offer and he and my mother headed for Minnesota for my birth. En route to Minnesota, they heard that my father’s dear friend and fellow Alaskan pilot Russell Merrill, for whom I am named, had disappeared flying out of Anchorage. Not long after that, Ben Eielson died when his plane crashed on a flight to Siberia. This was in the same Hamilton airplane that my dad flew on a similar mission earlier in the spring to retrieve furs from a different icebound vessel. Then an even bigger blow: While in Minnesota, they received word that his brother Ralph had died in a crash of an experimental diesel-powered Bellanca in Kotzebue.
When we returned to Fairbanks, my father’s younger brother, Sig, came with us. Sig and my dad flew home in my dad’s new Stinson while my mother and I took the train to Seattle, the Alaska Steamship to Seward, and then the train to Fairbanks.
My uncle Sig learned to fly in Alaska. He built up his time for his commercial license in a Buhl “Bull” Pup, which was powered by a three-cylinder Szekely engine of 45 hp. He became known for his pioneering flights in the Alaskan Arctic and was revered by the Native people there for his dependability, work ethic, and the services he provided to them. He was responsible for convincing the nomadic Eskimos who followed the caribou herds for food on the North Slope to settle in Anaktuvuk Pass so he could better serve them and keep them supplied. Some Native babies were even named Sigwien, as the people there had always treated his name as one word.
During the 1930s my dad worked to build his new company, Wien Alaska Airlines. By 1936, he had three other pilots and five airplanes: a Bellanca CH300, a 1933 Stinson, a 5AT Ford Tri-Motor, a Fokker Universal, and a Cessna C-34 Airmaster. By that time there was a lot of competition and it had become a cutthroat business to be in. It also was very hard to keep pilots. As soon as they gained experience, they would quit and start their own airline, creating more competition. In the late 1930s Wien Alaska Airlines lost five pilots in crashes. Those were tough times, yet my parents persevered.
In the early 1940s, my mother became very ill. The hospital bills drained my parents’ resources so they sold the airline to my uncle Sig to help pay expenses. All the airplanes were paid for and in good shape and my parents were proud of what they had been able to accomplish through sacrifice and hard work. Eventually my mother recovered but my dad grew less and less involved with the airline over time. He continued as a pilot for a time and was on the board of directors until he passed away in 1977, but he was no longer involved in the day-to-day management. After Sig took over, the management philosophy changed. Sig spent most of his time flying in the northern part of Alaska; however, the airline continued to grow because my father was loved throughout Alaska and the airline remained associated with his good reputation. Even though my parents sold it, the airline that my father started was destined to be a big part of my life.
On the morning of December 7, 1941, the phone rang. I could tell that it was something serious by the look on my dad’s face. Pearl Harbor had been bombed by the Japanese. No one knew what the future would bring. The only news that we received came from the delayed newsreels at the local theater and limited news from the local newspaper, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.
In June 1942, the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands. I couldn’t help but remember the comment that was made by that bystander during the Japanese visit in 1937 with the Mitsubishi G3M bomber. Alaska was totally unprepared to defend itself. No one knew how far inland the Japanese would advance. All houses were required to black out all windows and no lights could be seen at night. Blackout wardens patrolled the streets. We anticipated air raids at any time.
There was a tremendous patriotic spirit. Schoolchildren brought their allowances and paper route earnings to school to buy savings bond stamps, 25 cents per stamp, and when a book of stamps was filled, for a total of $17.50, $25.00 could be claimed when the war was over. We drew war bond posters at school and they ended up in the windows of local stores. Collection drives began for aluminum, steel, copper, and rubber tires. Soon military airplanes were coming and going at Ladd Air Force Base on their way to Russia, as part of the Lend-Lease program, to fight on the eastern front against Germany.
I saw the planes coming and going at Ladd Field and I recognized each type from all the pictures and models I collected. I saw Bell P-39s and P-63s, North American B-25s, and Douglas C-47s and A-20s, along with others. I caught glimpses of Russian pilots in downtown Fairbanks. As part of an aviation family, and surrounded by all this activity, all I knew was that I just wanted to be a pilot.
2
Young Pilot
Although I was getting closer to my dream of flying, my teen years were a period in my life when time seemed to stand still. Eventually I was able to work at Wien, cleaning the bellies of airplanes, gassing airplanes, changing oil, and doing whatever nontechnical jobs that needed to be done. In time, one of the mechanics, C. K. Harvey, taught me how to set the valve clearances, like those on a Pratt & Whitney Hornet engine on the Fairchild Pilgrim. By the time I was about fifteen, I was allowed to sit in the airplanes that had newly overhauled engines to run them at different power settings for the eight hour break-in period. It was the closest thing to actually flying at the time and I loved it. I graduated to being able to taxi the airplanes to the gas pit for refueling.
I was soon joined on the flight line by Douglas Millard. Doug started working for Wien Airlines in Nome under the supervision of my uncle Sig and when his mother moved to Fairbanks for a teaching job, he transferred to a flight line job there. We became good friends and as time went on, he was like a brother to Richard and me. We competed for the easy and fun jobs, such as taking garbage to the dump, breaking in overhauled engines, and taxiing airplanes to the gas pit, to avoid the jobs we didn’t like, such as cleaning the oil off the bellies of airplanes. Doug eventually went on to a flying career, retiring as a Boeing captain for Wien Air Alaska.
My big opportunity came when Bob Sholton, one of the Wien pilots, took an interest in me. Bob flew the Wien Stinson AT-19 and sometimes he would say to me, “Jump in” when he was on his way to the Yukon River villages. The Stinson was a surplus single engine military version of the civilian Gull Wing Stinson SR Reliants and sometimes it was so full that I just lay on top of the mail sacks. On the return he would let me fly the airplane back to Fairbanks. I was sixteen years old by this time and had already soloed but this was an opportunity to fly the big stuff. The Gull Wing Stinsons were widely used in the Alaska bush at that time because the plane carried a good load and had very strong landing gear. I loved flying the Stinson. Those planes did have one problem, however; the flaps could be positioned only in the full up or full down position. It would have been nice to be able to use partial flaps for takeoff so as to attain additional lift with heavy loads without creating so much drag that climb airspeed could not be reached. I remember seeing pilots try to set the vacuum-actuated flaps to an intermediate position on takeoff by metering the vacuum valve but getting full flap instead. They were able to get off the ground but ended up in the trees off the end of the runway.
A year after my first flights with him, Bob Sholton bought his own AT-19 and let me fly it quite a bit. My dad also bought one, which he later turned over to Wien Airlines. Bob eventually left Wien Airlines and flew DC-3s for Alaska Airlines. In time he and a
