to Fairbanks via the Panama Canal.
This ship proved conclusively that a cabin airplane was the type to use in Alaska, even though we could not use it through the winter of 1925-26 because it had no brakes except for a tail skid, which helped to stop it. It had a rather streamlined monoplane wing, and took a minimum of 1,000 feet to stop after the three points [two wheels and tail skid] were firmly on the ground.
During the summers of 1925 and 1926 we (meaning Noel; no other pilot would fly the Fokker until Joe Crosson arrived, and he apparently flew it as a challenge—not for commercial flights). We [Noel] had some close shaves with the Fokker on sand bars and fields 1,000 feet or under. At the time, our flying out of Fairbanks was the only cross-country flying in the Territory. There was one earlier airline at Ketchikan in southeastern Alaska where for a time Roy Jones commercially flew a two-place Navy training flying boat.2
FIRST FLIGHT TO NOME
We were successful with the Fokker F-111, and with it made the first commercial flight ever to Nome from Fairbanks, carrying four passengers and 500 pounds of baggage, a 1,200-pound load. We flew non-stop back to Fairbanks in six hours fifty-five minutes.
[Author] On June 7, 1926, mining engineer Norman C. Stines, with two women, Midge Downer, and a Mrs. Dayo, climbed aboard the Fokker at Fairbanks with Noel and Noel’s brother Ralph (who flew as a mechanic) for the 579-mile flight to Nome. The charter price was $1500.
Noel ran into bad weather along the Yukon River, reversed course and, low on fuel, landed on a steep roughed-out baseball field at the Yukon River village of Ruby. In the brakeless rollout, the airplane hit a soft spot and turned upside down, splintering the wooden propeller, damaging the rudder and a wing tip. Miraculously, there was no other damage, and no one was hurt.
Noel Wien with the 1921 Fokker F. III which he flew on the first commercial flight from Fairbanks to Nome. This ship was built in 1921 in Amsterdam, Holland. It had no brakes, and carried five passengers.
With help from villagers, the airplane was righted and Ralph Wien repaired the damaged rudder and wing tip. A new prop was hurriedly boated to Ruby from Fairbanks, and the Fokker was ready to fly again. In the meantime, to reach Nome, the passengers embarked on boats.
Noel completed the flight to Nome with the Fokker. It was the first-ever commercial flight between Fairbanks and Nome. The passengers who had fled the upside-down airplane at Ruby arrived at Nome a day after Noel landed the Fokker there.
He flew out of Fairbanks until mid-November, 1926, putting about 100 hours in the air on the two Standard biplanes, and 157 hours on the huge Fokker. He thought A.A. Bennett, the newly-hired company pilot/mechanic, to be so incompetent that he felt endangered whenever he flew planes maintained by him. Bennett apparently convinced owners of the company (Rodebaugh now had partners who had invested in the company) that Noel didn’t fly enough. As a result, Noel and his brother Ralph, who worked for them as a mechanic, resigned from the Fairbanks Airplane Corporation. Noel never spoke publicly of Bennett until decades had passed, when the man was long-gone from Alaska.3
With Noel gone, Bennett, remembering mechanically-talented 23-year-old Joe Crosson from his time in San Diego, and needing a pilot/mechanic offered him a job. Joe, who had barnstormed in California with his own Jenny, arrived in Fairbanks in March, 1926 and immediately went to work as a mechanic, and soon, as a pilot. (For more on Crosson see Chapter 15).
Crosson, fresh from California, had little idea of Alaska. An advertisement of the time in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner might have given him a clue. It read, “Dog team for hire, to go to Chena Hot Springs or any other place in Alaska. Frank L. Tondro (the Malemute Kid).”
Joe Crosson with the Super Swallow biplane NC2375. He arrived in Alaska in 1926 to work as an aviation mechanic, soon became a full time pilot.
Tondro, a Fairbanks resident, was the genuine Malemute Kid, a relic of the Klondike Gold Rush of ’98, made famous by the writings of Jack London.
Pilots accustomed to surveyed and settled country in the states, with roads, railroads, farms and farm fences that helped them to navigate, were sometimes bewildered when they first flew in Alaska where there were no such amenities. Not Joe Crosson. He quickly learned the routes to nearby mining communities and mines. He repeatedly flew to Wiseman, a mining village in the southern foothills of the arctic Brooks Range, a 360-mile round-trip.
In addition to learning the lay of the land by flying over it, Crosson gave flying lessons to Ralph Wien, Ernie Franzen, a mechanic for Fairbanks Airplane Corporation, Cecil Crawford who became a pilot for Arctic Prospecting and Development Corporation, and Andy Hufford, a mechanic for Hubert Wilkins who was then in Fairbanks with his Detroit Arctic Expedition.
With a handful of other pilots, Crosson pioneered aviation in Alaska. He did it the tough way—by flying across a broad swath of the Territory before there were runways, weather forecasts, or radios in airplanes.
Noel Wien traveled to the states by rail and ship, and spent much of the winter of 1925-26 hired but not paid by R. A. Pope, of automobile manufacturing fame, who enthusiastically planned a flight over the North Pole with Noel as pilot. Noel paid his own expenses as he waited for this planned-for but eventually nonexistent event.
Nearly broke, he abandoned the Pope pie-in-the-sky plan, and flew four months with a flying circus in the Midwest, during which time he logged his 1,000th hour in the air. That same year, 1926, he was issued Federation Aeronautique International United States of America pilot’s license No. 39, signed by Orville Wright.
STARTING OVER AT NOME
By Noel Wien
[AUTHOR] Following is another “looking back” penned by Noel for the Wien Arctic Liner inhouse publication.
My brother Ralph had been our mechanic (for the Rodebaugh Fairbanks Airplane company) since the spring of 1925, and had helped keep in good flying shape the two Hisso Standards, the OX-5 Jenny that had belonged to Ben Eielson, and the large modern Fokker.
In May, 1927, Ralph and I started a new venture. For $750 we bought from the Fairbanks Airplane Corporation one of the two Hisso Standards that had arrived in Alaska with me in 1924. It was in bad shape. The Hisso engine needed a top overhaul, and the radiator needed replacing. We bought an oversize oval radiator from FAC, and worked hard for about a month on the engine and piecing other parts together. Finally in June, it was ready to fly.
After flight testing for a day or two, I flew it to Nome, arriving June 21. There was no air service at Nome, and after a month or so we found that miners, trappers, and businessmen liked the idea of air service as well as did Fairbanksans. We were a little worried about the engine though, because it was not considered good to have only twenty pounds of oil pressure instead of the normal sixty pounds. Nevertheless, in June, July and August we flew 140 hours, and the engine was still running good.
Noel Wien at Fairbanks with his Hisso Standard in July, 1927, just before flying it to Nome where he flew it until fall cold weather. He carried an extra prop on it at all times.
Miners, traders, salesmen, and missionaries were eager to fly. We provided passenger and freight service to Seward Peninsula mining camps, including Candle, Point Hope, Kotzebue, Deering, and a few isolated mines. Freight had to fit into the tiny front cockpit of the Standard, so most of it was groceries, machine parts, mail, boots, clothing, and the like. We also assisted reindeer herders by searching for strayed animals, saving weeks and dozens of miles of foot travel.
During that time we had some hair-raising flights. We were short