Alaska by Walter R. Borneman

Author:Walter R. Borneman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-05-11T10:00:20+00:00

In the summer of 1935, another major event occurred in Alaska that set the aviation world buzzing and left all of the country mourning. Wiley Post was thought by some to be America’s best pilot—or at least its most famous—after Charles Lindbergh. Will Rogers was thought to be, well, America’s best friend. Post, a diminutive five-foot-five roustabout who had lost his left eye in an Oklahoma drilling-rig accident, flew into fame by setting two round-the-world flight records.

On June 23, 1931, Post and Australian Harold Gatty left venerable Roosevelt Field in New York in a Lockheed Vega, a high-wing, single-engine monoplane that was painted white with blue trim and christened the Winnie Mae. Eight days, fifteen hours, fifty-one minutes later they were back. The only major mishap of their global flight was a bent propeller suffered while attempting to take off from a beach near Solomon, Alaska, just east of Cape Nome. Temporary repairs got them as far as Fairbanks, where local pilot Joe Crosson, who was a good friend of Post’s, came to their aid with a new prop. Post and Gatty flew on to New York, where the world record and a ticker-tape parade were theirs.

But Post thought that he could make the trip faster—and alone. On July 15, 1933, again in the Winnie Mae, he left Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field, flew nonstop to Berlin, and then across Russia to Alaska. He was ahead of his record time when he got lost in bad weather and landed at Flat, one of a cluster of old mining camps around Iditarod. Flat might have been the town’s name, but the field wasn’t, and upon touching down the Winnie Mae broke a landing gear strut. Once again, Joe Crosson came to Post’s aid and helped him make the necessary repairs. Even with this second Alaskan mishap, by the time Post landed back in New York, he had shaved twenty-one hours off his old record.

As the old saying goes, however, all glory is fleeting, and Post needed something to keep his name in the headlines. In February 1935, he retired the trusty Winnie Mae and bought a new airplane. By all accounts, it was a hodgepodge of mixed components. Joe Crosson was more succinct. He later termed it “the Bastard.” The main airframe was a Lockheed Orion modified with a stouter low wing from a defunct Lockheed Explorer. Post outfitted it with an overpowered, 600-horsepower Pratt & Whitney engine—in later automobile terms, something akin to putting a Ford 390 V-8 into a ’64 Falcon. Then he changed out the landing gear for pontoons. At best, the plane was nose-heavy. At worst—well, who was going to argue with Wiley Post? In later years, he would never have gotten the certification to take it off the ground.

Will Rogers, actor, author, humorist, and in the depths of the Great Depression America’s diversion as well as its conscience, was always intrigued by aviation. A 1925 flight with General Billy Mitchell made him an advocate. Later, Rogers reported

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.