Who Was Carl Ben Eielson?
Contributed by Suellyn Wright Novak
Carl Benjamin Eielson (1897-1929) was an aviator, bush pilot, and explorer born in Hatton, North Dakota to Norwegian immigrants. Showing an early interest in flight, he took advantage of America entering World War One and learned to fly in 1917.
In January 1918, he enlisted in the newly formed aviation section of the US Army Signal Corps. WW I ended while Eielson was still in-flight training. The US felt they had no more need for pilots, so Eielson and friends created the Hatton Aero Club to barnstorm the area and drum up funds from selling rides. In 1921 he enrolled at Georgetown Law School (now Georgetown University) in Washington DC. Working part time as a Capitol police officer, he met the Alaska Territory’s representative to Congress, Daniel Sutherland, who persuaded Eielson to go to Fairbanks, Alaska to teach secondary school general science, English, and physical education.
Falling in love with Alaska’s beauty, and seeing its potential aviation needs, he left the classroom, convincing several prominent businessmen that aviation was a feasible business in interior Alaska. Eielson became the sole pilot for the Farthest North Aviation Company, formed in 1922. He procured a surplus Army plane and began regular commercial flights from Fairbanks to the Alaskan interior, supplying mining camps and communities. He flew supplies, mail, and passengers. Successful and popular with his growing customers, he was awarded the postal contract in 1924.
Carl flew the first air mail in Alaska from Fairbanks to McGrath in only four hours, a distance dog sleds required 20 days to cover. He also flew the first air mail from Atlanta to Jacksonville, FL in 1926. After two unsuccessful attempts, the world applauded his greatest accomplishment of the first airplane flight across the Arctic Ocean, with Australian explorer Hubert Wilkins in April 1928. This flight, from Point Barrow to Spitsbergen, Greenland, covered 2,200 miles and required 20 hours. The main purpose of this epic flight was to establish whether or not any island (Graham Land) lay between Alaska and the North Pole. The North Pole flight brought everlasting fame for Eielson. He and Wilkins were the first to fly over both polar regions in the same year.
In the Antarctic summer of 1928-1929, Eielson and Wilkins were the first humans to make air explorations of the Antarctic, charting several previously unknown islands. After returning from the Arctic flight, Eielson was asked to create Alaskan Airways, a subsidiary of the Aviation Corporation of America.
His renown as the best Arctic flier of his time, coupled with his humanitarian nature, put him into position to attempt the rescue of 15 passengers of the Nanuk, a cargo vessel trapped in the ice at North Cape (today’s Mys Schmidt). The cargo ship also had a cargo of furs valued at a million dollars. On a November night Eielson and his mechanic, Earl Borland, lifted off from a small airstrip on the northeastern coast of Alaska in a ferocious blizzard, but they never reached the Nanuk. A multi-national aerial and ground search began, lasting 79 days. The wreckage was located on a small island off the Siberian coast; both bodies were recovered in February 1930 and returned to the US for burial.
Alaska later memorialized its famous aviator by naming a mountain peak near Denali after him. In 1948, the US Air Force renamed its Mile 26 airfield, located 26 miles southeast of Fairbanks, after Eielson. And in July 1985, he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame for bringing aviation to the sparsely populated regions of the world to better serve the needs of his fellow man.