(Note: This is Alfred Lomen's story of how he flew from Nome to the scene of the Post-Rogers tragedy at Point Barrow to get pictures of the tragedy. He tells of how he raced opposition news planes back toward the States in a death-defying race with pilots Noel Wien, Chester Brown and Victor Ross at the controls in what was a unique joumalistic feat and one of the greatest picture scoops of all times.)
At 9 a.m. on August 16 I received word from a Seattle newspaper to get to the scene of the Post-Rogers crash with all possible speed. I immediately got in touch with pilot Chester Brown, Jacob Curtiss, photographer, and Hank Miller, mechanic, We got everything in shape to leave in two hours. We were in the air at 11 a.m.
The weather was thick on the northem part of Seward Peninsula, We climbed to about 9000 feet to get above the fog and clouds. We knew that unless we found a hole in
the clouds we would never be able to locate Barrow.
Our gas was about half gone at this time. It was either a case of turning back or getting our bearings, Pilot Brown sighted a small hole in the great grey stretch of clouds. By a beautiful bit of flying he dropped down into it and came out below the bank. We saw that we were between Point Lay and Point Hope. It was easy from there on to follow the Arctic Coast up to Barrow.
When we reached the scene of the wreck we could see about 150 natives there but no white men. We landed on the soft sand at a place called Walapi. It was a bad place to land but we had to do it. We worried about the possibility of taking off again. The sand on the Arctic beaches is treacherous.
The fog was coming in rapidly and we knew we would have to get the pictures in a hurry. We ran to the scene of the wreck and Curtiss began taking shots of the wrecked plane. The plane was terribly crushed.
When we had the pictures we took off for Barrow. The plane left the sand with greater ease than we had anticipated. At Barrow they had the bodies loaded into Joe Crossan's ship. We took some pictures there, and then headed back to Ruby by way of Kotzebue.
We arrived at Fairbanks where pilots Noel Wien and Victor Ross relieved Brown at the controls. I think Wien and Ross can tell the rest of the story better than I can.
AIRMEN TELL STORY OF
RISKY FLIGHT
We left Fairbanks at 1:15 p.m. carrying Alfred Lomen as a passenger. He had the pictures of the wreck and he told us we had to beat all the news services into Seattle with them. Everything went smoothly and we dropped down at Whitehorse while it was still daylight.
At Whitehorse we learned that planes with pictures for opposition services were ahead of us. Lomen asked us:
"Can you fly tonight in the dark?"
We debated a little while. We did not have the navigation instruments the planes ahead of us had. They had radios too for weather reports.
We knew we would have to fly practically blind and without reports. But we knew our Bellanca ship was in good shape and that the Wasp motor was turning over perfectly. We decided to try it.
We grabbed a bite to eat and took on gasoline. Daylight was gone and the moon was up when we took off from Whitehorse.
We climbed to about 8000 feet. We knew there were mountains under us but we could not see them. It was too dark to see anything. We knew it was bad flying country and if our motor ever cut out there would be three more of us for them to write about. We just set our course by the compass and hoped.
We had maps, but they did not do much good. We had to hold a handkerchief over the flashlight when we examined the maps because the light from the flash blinded us when it was on full and we would lose sight of the horizon.
We worried all night about the motor but she just kept roaring away. We alternated at the controls. One of us would handle the ship while the other tried to check up on the map.
Toward morning we knew we should be somewhere near the Stikine River. We zig-zagged around trying to locate it in the darkness. Just when we began to think we were off our course we saw the river shining silvery below us. It was easy from then on. Daylight came soon. When it was light enough to check on the map we found we were right on our course.
After the night flight the rest of the trip into Seattle was smooth going, except for some fog south of Vancouver. We landed in Seattle 21 hours after
leaving Fairbanks. Our flying time was 16 hours. We beat the opposition by three or four
hours. None of us slept any on the way down. We were too worried.
