yet have my commercial license.
I did not know my passenger but we took off and I flew around Fairbanks showing him the sights. When we landed, I found out that he was Jerry Merrill, the brother of Russell Merrill, my father’s good friend who had disappeared in 1929. The airport in Anchorage was named Merrill Field after him. Sometimes I am asked what the relationship is between me and Merrill Field. I would like to say that it was named after me but I don’t think that would fly. Every year after our flight, Jerry Merrill sent me a telegram wishing me happy birthday. When he died he willed me $500.
While the rest of the family remained in Seattle, I spent the summer with Sig in Fairbanks working odd jobs for Wien Airlines and getting as much flying time as possible. In July, I passed my commercial check ride with Hawley Evans, founder of Fairbanks Air Service, and a highly respected Alaska pilot.
About the time that I was going to go back home to Seattle to start another year at the University of Washington, I received an offer to fly a North American Navion to Sun Valley, Idaho. Apparently the airplane had been flown up to Alaska by a pilot who thought the route was too sparse and treacherous so he left it with Bob Rice in hopes that he could find someone to fly it back to Sun Valley for him. Bob, who had previously flown for Wien Airlines as chief pilot and had since left to start his own charter service, had two Navions of his own that he was using for charter work so he checked me out in his. My high school friend George Morton flew to Seattle with me and then I delivered the plane to Sun Valley.
That winter, I aborted my college year after completing the first quarter in 1949 to get to work on my instrument rating with Harry Cramer on a Link Trainer he kept in the terminal building at Boeing Field. After I completed my required twenty hours of Link, Harry talked me into working on my Link instructors rating. As part of my training I operated the Link under Harry’s supervision, teaching primary instrument students and operating the Link for Boeing pilots and nonscheduled pilots flying to and from Alaska. In March of 1950 I earned my instrument rating, followed a month later by my Link instructors rating. Every time I qualified for a new rating, it was a great feeling, a sense of another stepping stone completed. Then I would focus on the next one.
THE DAY AFTER I PASSED MY INSTRUMENT FLIGHT check, my dad and I flew to Wichita to pick up a brand-new 1949 Cessna 170A that the family had purchased for personal use. While there, we visited the Mooney factory. The Mooney Mite single seat airplane had recently been introduced and they were very anxious for my dad to fly it. He told them he would take a pass but that his son would like to fly it. They didn’t seem to be very enthusiastic about that idea but they reluctantly gave me a cockpit check and turned me loose. I flew it for about thirty minutes and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Even though it only had 65 hp, it felt like a little fighter. On landing, it didn’t touch the ground when I thought it would and as it continued to settle lower, the thought came to me that maybe I forgot to lower the landing gear. When it did touch down it felt like my butt was sliding on the grass. Two days later we flew to Seattle and a few days after that we left for Fairbanks.
Shortly after arriving in Fairbanks with my dad and the new Cessna 170, I returned to my usual summer job at Wien. My mother, brother, and sister drove a new Ford back up the highway as our family returned to Fairbanks to live.
My father, Noel Wien, created history in 1925 by making the first flight north of the Arctic Circle anywhere in the world. He is seen here hand cranking the Standard J-1 at Wiseman, Alaska, for the return trip to Fairbanks.
Famous early Alaska pilot Joe Crosson looking at me in the sled when I was a baby.
This was taken in 1927 in Nome, Alaska, when my dad started Wien Alaska Airways. Note the spare prop tied to the side of the fuselage.
Here I am getting some pretend flying time in the Bull Pup.
In 1938, Howard Hughes stops in Fairbanks flying a Lockheed Model 14 on a record-breaking around the world flight of just under four days. P341-Cann-7, Alaska State Library, Photographers in Alaska Photo Collection.
Photo of the Japanese Mitsubishi G3M visit to Fairbanks in 1937, supposedly on a goodwill tour of Alaska.
Wiley Post lands in Fairbanks in 1933 on his around-the-world record flight of just under eight days.
This is the Avro Avian airplane that ended up in our backyard for us kids to play in, and eventually demolish. It originally belonged to Robert Crawford, composer of the Army Air Corp song who also grew up in Alaska.
Hap Arnold arrived in Alaska with ten Martin B-10s in 1934 to prove the capabilities of the Army Air Service. Arnold later became commanding general of the US Army Air Forces during World War II.
When I was five years old, in 1935, we greeted Wiley Post and Will Rogers arriving on the Chena River near Fairbanks. They were on their way to Point Barrow and points west. They were killed near Point Barrow a few days later. Wiley is getting out of the cockpit and Will Rogers is standing on the right wing. Joe Crosson, famous Alaska aviator, and mechanic, Warren Tillman, are on the dock.
Solo day, April 4, 1946, Boeing Field, with my instructor, Sherry Phelps.
My dad, Noel Wien, and Bob Sholton, 1949, Fairbanks, by the tail of the Wien Fairchild Pilgrim. Bob took me with him on several mail runs in the Stinson AT-19.
One of my first bush flights in the spring of 1950 at the village of Beaver on the Yukon River ice.
The crew I first flew with most frequently the summer of 1950. I’m on the left with Captain Fred Goodwin standing between Wien Airlines’ first stewardesses, Betty Windler and Patsy Hornbeck.
I was hired by Pan American in the summer of 1951, and this photo was taken at Juneau, Alaska.
3
Paid to Fly
On June 1, 1950, I was back at my summer job, working on the hangar floor at Wien when our chief pilot,
