In Alaska

Last week the grey silence of northern Alaska was ruptured by an occasional rifle crack. Furtive eyes of the wild hiding in snow-hung tamarack tangles would see a fur-muffled Eskimo dragging his quarry to a camp fire, where seven other humans busied themselves preparing sledges and sleeping bags for another night in the wilderness, and 58 tawny-and-grey husky dogs nuzzled down to rest or sat on their haunches growling for supper.

Two of the humans--an Alaskan "sourdough"* called Waskey and Earl Rossman, a U. S. newspaper reporter--would be occupied with a slim skein of wires, a box and two silvery bulbs that occasionally glowed a chilly yellow against the trampled snow. In his head phones, Waskey could distinguish a thin piping note above the crackling static--a note that said another wireless operator back in Fairbanks had heard the preliminary signals of Waskey's small portable radio, was ready to receive and relay to the outer world news of the advance party of the aerial polar expedition financed by the Detroit Chamber of Commerce and commanded by Captain George H. Wilkins, Australian-born soldier of fortune.

Waskey and Reporter Rossman told how their sledging party had mushed upland for days into a trackless country of rivers and snow-buried canons, climbing to the top of the mountain range that slopes off north again to the Polar Sea. Well within the Arctic Circle, they had encountered weather severe enough at times to deaden their radio equipment. The going was heavy. Their orders were to set up a more powerful radio sending set when they topped the divide, flash a signal for Captain Wilkins and his aides to twirl their Fokker propellers in Fairbanks and take the air. The sledgers would then mush swiftly across the barren "benchlands" to meet them at the advance air base, Point Barrow.

But back in Fairbanks, misfortune, which the week before had reached out with a grip more icy than the winter winds, maintained its hold upon the main expedition. Originally, Captain Wilkins had planned to lead three monoplanes into the north--two triple-engined Fokkers and a single-motored Liberty. One of the Fokkers was burned up in January during its final tests at the Ford experimental field near Detroit. The other Fokker (the Detroiter) and the Liberty plane--dubbed Alaskan--had reached Fairbanks safely. Snowplows and road-rollers had labored for days ironing out a take-off and landing field in the wrinkled snow-carpet covering Fairbanks. But the day of the first attempted flights, Reporter Hutchinson of the North American Newspaper Alliance was killed by a whirling propeller (TIME, March 22, THE PRESS).

Next, when Chief Pilot Carl Ben Eielson stepped into the Alaskan's cockpit and signaled "Contact!" for a test flight, the craft bucked and plunged, struggled amain with roaring cylinders, but could not rise from the clinging snowfield. Overhead there was perfect flying weather, bright and clear. Eielson ripped the throttle wide open. The Alaskan roared forward, kicking up a small blizzard, and at last crept clear and aloft--only, when she landed after a brisk spin, to crash into a buried wire fence at the end of the field, smashing her propeller, landing gear and fuselage. No Pole flight for her for many weeks.

Next day, the great Detroiter (Hutchinson killer) was turned up, a monstrous craft capable of supporting twoscore men on her outstretched wings. Charging forward thunderously, she soon leapt up from the snow and swung about the sky. But she too, when she alighted, plowed through the snow so heavily that her landing gear crumpled; she stumbled forward on her nose, twisted a propeller and wrenched one powerful engine out of its moorings. No Pole flight for her either, for many weeks, and she was the plane that was to freight food and gasoline over the wastes to Point Barrow.

Knowing Capt. Wilkins for a persistent and resourceful man (he plans to live in the polar regions largely on what game can be shot), and knowing Chief Pilot Eielson for an indefatigable flyer (singlehanded he overcame a hundred vicissitudes of the North, flew 60,000 unaccompanied miles in the Alaskan air mail service), U. S. airmen had no doubt that the expedition would be pushed ahead notwithstanding.

*A "sourdough" is an old-stager who knows enough to use yeast in making his bread and not to live on bread stirred up impromptu.