1940s, I was in the kitchen when the phone rang. My dad answered and it was Leon Vincent at the KAZW aeronautical radio station. He said that Sam White had called in advising of an emergency situation. Sam was flying a Gull Wing Stinson through some turbulence when one of his skis became detached from the forward shock cord and the cable that held the ski in position. The front of the ski went down and the rear of the ski hung up on the bracket on the landing gear where the wheel pant normally is attached, holding the ski in the straight down position. This put the airplane into a spiral that Sam could not control. Then the other ski did the same thing. This allowed him to stop the spiral but he had to use full throttle and hold the control wheel all the way back in his stomach. He was descending but thought he could make it to Circle City. He barely managed to make it and flew at full throttle onto the snow-covered runway. The landing gear broke away and when he came to a stop, he was trapped in the pilot seat. He had onboard 110 gallons of case gas in five-gallon tin cans and some had broken open. Gas was dripping everywhere. He was pulled from the airplane by the local people and fortunately the airplane did not catch fire. Sam was diligent about tying down his loads and this probably saved his life. Sam and my dad constantly stressed the importance of tying down the cargo. Sam was in the hospital for quite a while but eventually made a full recovery.
During the latter part of Sam’s flying career, he was based at Hughes on the Koyukuk River. Around 1960, Sam asked me to bring his float-equipped L-5 to Hughes for the summer and then to bring it back to Fairbanks in the fall. I did this several times but once when I was getting the plane ready to depart from Fairbanks, I made a big mistake. My friend Doug Millard and I were putting the battery in the airplane on the floor under the instrument panel. The fuel line from the overhead fuselage tank passed by just above the battery. I mistakenly hooked up the negative terminal first and then when I attached the positive lead to the battery, the handles of the water pump pliers clipped the fuel line and caused a flaming stream of gas to pour into the fabric-covered belly. I tried to stop the stream of gas but every time I did it I burned my hand. Doug was pouring buckets of water in the belly but the flaming gas continued to float on top of the water. Finally, a Wien mechanic saw our predicament, grabbed a towel from his pickup, dunked it in the water, and told us to wrap it around the gas line. That stopped the source and we were able to put out the fire. Miraculously, the only damage was a small hole in the belly fabric and a ruined cylinder head gauge under the panel. We easily patched the hole and replaced the gauge with one that I happened to have. When I arrived at Hughes and Sam saw the bandages on my hands covering my burns, he said, “You should have let it burn.” He was upset about my burns, not about his plane. That captures perfectly who Sam White was. When Sam sold the L-5 years later, the new owner burned up the airplane, like I almost did, the same way.
That fall, when I brought Sam’s airplane back to Fairbanks, I had another adventure. As always during the preflight at Hughes, I religiously drained the gas tanks and the fuel strainer to remove the water that often leaked though the gas caps when it rained. I got some water out of both tanks and the strainer and I thought I was all set. On the way to Fairbanks the gas was getting low in the right tank and I thought that it might be a good idea to switch tanks before it was completely empty. Shortly after switching tanks, the engine quit. That was a big surprise. I knew there was still fuel in the first tank but didn’t immediately switch back to it. Instead I wasted time trying to get the full tank to feed. Finally, I switched back to the low-fuel tank expecting it to come to life. It did not. I tried everything to get it to start. There was no time to even be scared. My only thought was, Another fine fix I’ve got myself into. I looked for a place to land and the only spot was in the Melozitna River, which was more like a creek than a river. I figured I could touch down in the water and slide up on a gravel bar. As I was setting up for the approach, the engine started to bark but it would run only at idle then would quit when I advanced the throttle. I figured out that I could gradually increase the throttle settings before it would quit and it became apparent that eventually I could get full power back. The question was, would it happen before I ran out of airspace? I had to decide whether to keep messing with the throttle or commit to the river. Having recovered some power caused me to overshoot the river but I got the engine to come back to life just over the trees.
The next year, Sam brought the airplane back from Hughes himself but he did not switch tanks until the tank ran out. By that time he was over the Yukon River and he was able to dead stick it into the river. After that we figured out that even though we were draining all the tanks and the fuel strainer, we were not switching to the other wing tank and draining that line between tank and engine. Another lesson learned.
Sam White was like a second father to me and Richard. In the way he displayed a very high standard of conduct and integrity, he reinforced the guidance we received from our dad and became another important role model for us. When my son Kurt was born, my wife and I asked Sam if he would be Kurt’s godfather. He was glad to do it and took his role very seriously.
WE SOLD QUITE A FEW CESSNA 140S BUT when the sales started to decline, my parents turned the distributorship over to Uncle Sig and he formed a new company called Alaska Aeronautical Industries.
In the spring of 1948 my parents decided to move back to Seattle. We drove the same 1941 DeSoto back down the Alaska Highway accompanied by our good friends Doug Millard and his mother, Clara Millard, who were on their way to Iowa. The gumbo mud was as bad as ever and on some stretches we had to be towed through it by D-8 Caterpillars that were stationed along the highway.
The first time we encountered a bad gumbo mud area, the D-8 Caterpillar was idling along the side of the road but the drivers had gone to lunch. Doug, who had just turned sixteen, jumped out of their 1942 Ford and ran over to the tractor. His mother gasped, “Douglas, what do you think you are doing?” He jumped up into the cab and the next thing we saw was a big puff of black smoke blow out of the exhaust. The D-8 spun around and headed for our cars. After we helped him hitch up the cars, he towed them through the mud. When the drivers returned from lunch they were amazed to see a kid doing the driving. We thought that we would be in a lot of trouble but the only thing the driver said was, “Are you making any money?” More cars had gathered behind by then so the drivers took over the duty.
My parents bought a house in the Seattle suburb of Lake Forest Park and I enrolled at the University of Washington to start classes in the fall in aeronautical engineering. I got a job for the summer as gas boy at the nearby Kenmore Air Harbor, a flying service and flight school at the north end of Lake Washington. Most of my pay went to working toward my float rating and commercial license.
My main flight instructor there was Bill Fisk. He was a World War II–B-24 pilot and Kenmore Air’s main pilot and instructor for many years. I learned much from Bill. He taught me how to loop and barrel roll the Taylorcraft on floats, along with night takeoffs and landings in that plane. I learned that when the altimeter gets close to what it was reading when the plane was on the water, I should set up a 200- to 300-feet-per-minute rate of descent at an airspeed that sets the touchdown attitude for landing. This is the same procedure that is used for landing on glassy water. That training served me well in later years during my many glassy water landings in Alaska.
When anyone got their float rating it was customary to throw them into the lake. When I got mine, four Kenmore employees dragged me toward the water. I acted limp and lifeless until we got to the T in the dock when I suddenly straightened out, causing the two guys holding my feet to go flying into the lake. I was then able to drag one of the two holding my arms into the lake with me, which was probably not the most sportsmanlike thing to do. Tom Wardly and Ted Huntley, two of the guys who went into the water with me, went on to have very distinguished flying careers.
In June 1949 I traveled from Seattle to Wichita, Kansas, with Uncle Sig to pick up two new planes for Wien Airlines. I flew a new Cessna 140A back to Alaska and Uncle Sig flew a Cessna 170. Shortly after arriving in Fairbanks with the new Cessna 140 and returning to my usual summer job at Wien, one of our operations people came to me when I was sweeping floors and said that I had a charter flight. Whaaaaaaat? I thought. I am going to fly a charter? I had not been hired as a
