| Summary: | Silence Closes In On Wilkins: No Word From Arctic Air Leader Since Flight To Point Barrow Last Thursday./Big Plane Takes Air./Three-Motored Ship Will Fly To North Tip Of Alaska In Week Unless Leader Returns. SILENCE CLOSES IN ON WILKINS No Word From Arctic Air Leader Since Flight to Point Barrow. Last Thursday. BIG PLANE TAKES AIR Three-Motored Ship Will Fly to North Tip of Alaska, In Week Unless Leader Returns. By Frederic Lewis Earp. Special Correspondent of The Spokesman-Review and the North American Newspaper Alliance with the Detroit Arctic Expedition. (Copyright, 1926.) FAIRBANKS, Alaska. April 19. -- Out of the silence of the Arctic no word had come this morning from Captain George H. Wilkins and his pilot, Carl Ben Eielson, since they hopped off here last Thursday morning on their third trip to Point Barrow with gasoline for the Detroit Arctic expedition's advance base. Besides Chief Radio Man Howard F. Mason, who has kept a vigil at his radio set listening for a call from KDA, the plane's signal, Lieutenant H. G. Messer and Technical Sergeant C. G. Clark of the military telegraph office here have been listening in on their private sets, so there is little likelihood of a message from the ship being unheard. Members of the expedition here refuse to worry over the absence of their leader, holding that the is safe at Barrow awaiting a favorable opportunity to return. On his first trip he was away a week, a blizzard being responsible for most of the delay. Mayor Thomas G. Lanphier does not plan flying the three-motored monoplane of the expedition to Point Barrow until Robert Waskey, radio man with the expedition's overland party, sets up a station on the Arctic coast to furnish weather reports, he said today. Mayor Lanphier, in command in the absence of Captain Wilkins, added that he is also waiting for a compass for the Detroiter and is not likely to get away before the end of the week. If by that time no word has been received from Captain Wilkins the mayor intends to fly to Barrow first and then, if the commander is not there, to return here for fuel and conduct a systematic search, also carrying out exploration work over the ice. Charles Wiseley and Andrew Hufford, mechanics of the expedition, took the Detroiter on a one-hour trial flight just before noon today, attaining an elevation of 10,000 feet in half an hour.
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