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COM STOCK THE STORY OF BOB REEVE AND THE FLYERS WHO PIONEERED ALASKA'S SKIES IN SINGLEENGINE PLANES BETH DAY In 1932, when Bob Reeve climbed off a freighter at Val dez, Alaska, he was broke, sick, and without a plane to fly. From those grim beginnings, he built up a successful com mercial airline operating in "the worst weather in the world"—along the fogshrouded chain of Aleutian Islands —and became known throughout the territory by many names: "Half-Bird," the greatest rough terrain pilot of our continent and "MR. ALASKA." Comstock Editions ISBN 0891740090 GLACIER PILOT The Story of Bob Reeve and the Flyers Who Pushed Back Alaska's Air Frontiers Beth Day A COMSTOCK EDITION Copyright © 1957 by Beth Day All rights reserved. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 576761 ISBN: 0891740090 This edition published by arrangement with Holt, Rinehart and Winston Third Printing: May 1981 Fourth Printing: October 1986 Printed in the United States of America Additional copies of this book may be obtained by send ing a check or money order for the price of the book plus a dollar for the first copy and 75$ for each addi tional copy ordered. A free catalog of books published by Comstock is also available. COMSTOCK EDITIONS, INC. 3030 Bridgeway, Sausalito, CA 94965 To Tillie Reeve and Donald Day, who stood by with Jovian patience, high good humor, and lively encouragement while this book was being put together Contents Preface ix 1. He looked like a tramp 1 2. It didn't hurt to be a little crazy 12 3. Getting a stake 37 4. Making the headlines 57 5. First glacier landing 67 6. Airdrops, mud flats, and romance 76 7. "I was pushing my luck" 94 8. "Anywhere youH fly, I'll ride" 116 9. "I ran out of planes—and luck" 129 10. "He who holds Alaska will hold the world" 144 11. The Northern air route 159 12. Remember Dutch Harbor! 171 13. Ice, scud, and williwaw 185 14. I lay in bed and marveled Iw as still alive 204 15. Wanta ticket to Alaska? 223 16. Air line headaches 231 17. Fight for the chain 242 18. Big Brownie 254 19. The air route nobody wanted 261 Preface If you look down upon a world globe, you will see that Alaska and the Arctic compose the most centrally located area on earth. From the North Pole it is only 2950 miles to New York; 2300 to London; 2050 to Moscow. "If World War II should come," predicted General H. H. "Hap" Arnold, "the strategic center will be the North Pole." A natural air theater, its cities divided by virtually insur mountable terrain, Alaska was using airpower as its means of transportation, its supply line, and its source of emergency aid, long before the rest of America was even taking aviation seriously. Today, Alaskans fly thirty times more per capita than other U.S. citizens. The growth of Alaskan aviation is without parallel; its development is the story of the courage and initiative of its individual citizens and pilots. When you first board one of the big, comfortable North west Airlines Stratocruisers, out at Idlewild Airport in New York, you get your initial taste of frontier Alaska in the friendly informality of the plane's personnel. At the bustling Seattle airport, as you listen to schedules being announced in Japanese and Hawaiian, you begin to realize just how far west—as well as north—the Territory really is, but a hand spring from the Orient. Flying Northwest's northbound flight to Alaska, over a wilderness of open water and forest slashed by firlined fjords that cut inland from the open sea, you are aware of how awesomely impenetrable much of our Far North is. But the man beside you points to those unin habited landmarks as old friends. He is Alaskan, with the frontiersman's identity with space. As you circle over Cook Inlet approaching the city of Anchorage, he tells you proudly n, that Anchorage was, during World War the fastestgrow ing city in the world, its population leaping from 12,000 to ix X Preface 60,000 within a few hectic years; that it is the purest trans portation town in America, with 98 per cent of its business in transportation, and that predominantly by air. There is little doubt that Alaska, at long last, is on the march—its isolated, mountainous terrain connected by a net work of modern airways, its skies filled with planes. It is our jumpingoff point to the Orient by way of the Aleutian Islands, and to Europe by way of the North Pole. But, until a few short years ago, Alaska was ignored both strategically and in the development of commercial aviation. Without federal aid or modern navigational equipment, Alas kan bush flyers pioneered the skies of the Far North and prepared the way for both the commercial and military fly ing of the future. This is the story of one of those aerial pioneers, glacier pilot Bob Reeve. It is also the story of Alaska's coming of age, and of the other daring flyers who, along with Reeve, con verted its vast wastelands into the busy air center of today. If at times it seems to be a record of forced landings, near disasters, and crackups, it is because the thousands of suc cessful, uneventful flights made by Reeve and the other pilots do not reveal the drama of their story. Those were the "routine" that they were striving to establish against tre mendous physical odds. Many of those early flyers have crashed to their deaths. Fortunately, a number are left who are able to tell not only their own stories but those of the men who are gone. I wish to thank those men who cooperated so unstintingly in the creation of this book: flyers Ray Petersen, Merle Smith, Noel and Sig Wien, and Jack Jefford; mechanic Tom Apple ton; Reeve Airways Captains Borland, Kelly, and Forsythe; Wien Airline Captains Hulshizer and Friericks; and Wien's Point Barrow station manager, Forrest Solomon. Special thanks are due to the personnel of Northwest Air lines, both at Saint Paul, Minnesota, and at Anchorage, who contributed so generously to this book: Chairman of the Board Croil Hunter; President Donald Nyrop; Vice Presi dent Frank Judd; Anchorage Manager A. B. "Cot" Hayes; George Masters and Jerry Anderson of the Public Relations office; and Northwest Captains Fairbrother and O'Neill. I wish also to express my appreciation to the Civil Aero Preface xi nautics Administration's Chief of Public Information, Mr. Charles Planck, and the other CAA and CAB personnel in Washington who took the time and had the patience to ex plain the various facets of aviation legislation. Thanks, too, for their fine Alaskan hospitality, to Mr. and Mrs. Thornton Wheaton, Artists Sara and Fred Machetanz, Ellen and Harvey Goodale, Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Rasmuson, Mr. and Mrs. Noel Wien, Mrs. Helen Buckingham, and Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Cernick of the Anchorage News. I am also grateful to Alaskans Admiral C. E. "Squeaky" Anderson, Mr. Henry W. Clark, Bill Egan, and Owen Meals, who all pro vided invaluable sources of information. Mr. Bradford Washburn, director of the Boston Museum of Science, was kind enough to give of his time, as well as the permission to use material from his private journals of the Lucania expedition. Mr. D. W. H. MacKinnon, Vice Presi dent of Northeast Airlines, was helpful in filling in back ground on Reeve's early life. Finally, thanks go to the Reeve family—Richard, Ro berta, Janice, David, and Whitham Reeve, and "Grandma" Morisette—as well as the Reeve Airways office personnel, who all put up so graciously with the confusion while this book was being assembled; to Clara Kent Pearce, without whose expert help this manuscript could not have been read; and to Howard Cady, for enthusiastic encouragement Beth Day Chappaqua, New York March 15,1957 1. He looked like a tramp As the weekly summer freighter whistled up to the wooden dock of Valdez, Alaska, one brisk, sunny day in 1932, a man dipped quietly from under a covering of tarpaulin on one side of the deck, jumped ashore, then elbowed through the mixed throng of whites, Indians, Old Russians,* and bearded sourdoughs who lined die pier, watching the boat unload. As he strode down the board walkway toward the center of town, the stranger's footsteps echoed hollowly on the planks that crossed the tidewater flats on a trestle and led to the main street, parallel to the sea and one block north of the dock. Main Street, the stranger found, was an empty slash of muddy road, lined on both sides by unpainted falsefront buildings. There were two hotels, a grocery, a Chinese restau rant At the northeast corner of the main intersection, the Pinzon opened hospitable doors to any man interested in a game of billiards, bar service, a hand of cards, or a place to sit down. But even the Pinzon appeared momentarily desert ed. Valdez' four hundredodd citizens had apparently all gone down to the dock to watch the steamer unload. The newcomer hesitated, then walked on to the edge of town, where he spied a knot of workmen mending the dike that cir cled the back of the little village. Beyond it a mighty range of mountains jutted from sea level up to snowcovered peaks ten thousand feet high. Each spring, at breakup time, the ring of glaciers back of Valdez, drain lines of the giant ice cap, sent down torrential streams that but for the dike, would have inundated the town. The rutted road that led north of the village to connect with the Richardson Highway, which bisects the Alaskan interior, crossed twentynine glacial streams before it attained solid ground. * Descendants of Russian colonists who came to Alaska in the eighteenth century. 1
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