Northwest History. Aviation 8. Wilkins' Expedition, United States.

• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1934
• Subjects: third attempt; aviator-explorer; Point Barrow; Seward; Alaska; George H. Wilkins; top of the world; Fairbanks; aviator; arctic explorer; Carl Ben Eielson; Spitzbergen; atmospheric conditions; machine troubles; Mr. Roosevelt; interior country; aurora; Northwest; Pacific > History > 20th century; Aviation; Arctic; Eielson; North Pole; Pacific; Wilkins; Barrow
• Online Access: http://content.libraries.wsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/clipping/id/86117

Third Attempt To Cross Pole: Aviator-Explorer Gets To Point Barrow On First Leg. THIRD ATTEMPT TO CROSS POLE Aviator-Explorer Gets to Point Barrow on First Leg. By Associated Press. SEWARD, Alaska, March 19.--Flashing a dramatic radio me: "Going to land, going to land," Captain George F. Wilkins told of the completion at 4:30 p. m. today of hit hazardous 500-mile hop from Fairbanks to Point Barrow, Alaska, the first leg of a projected flight across the "top of the world." His Third Attempt. FAIRBANKS, Alaska, March 19. (/P) -- In their third attempt to explore the "blind spot" of the polar sea, Captain George II. Wilkins, Australian aviator and arctic explorer, and Lieutenant Carl Ben Eielson, sourdough pilot, today hopped off from the Fairbanks airport for Point Barrow, as the first leg of their projected flight to Spitzbergen. Make Exploratory Flights. Upon completion of the 500-mile flight to Point Barrow, the aviators planned, after a few flights, to make the 2100-mile span from Barrow By heading in a great circle, the northernmost point of which was to be about 300 miles south of the north pole. They would fly literally over the top of the world, and Spitzbergen lies on the opposite side of the pole. The flyers' two previous attempts to explore this unvisited region, in 1926 and 1927, were thwarted by atmospheric conditions and machine trouble. In this, their most ambitious effort, they have prepared to combat the forces that defeated them before stationed there, and some folks will come by air from the interior country." At lonely outposts, up toward top of the world, where It's been night for almost six months, where malamutes yowl at the aurora borealis, they put red-white-and-blue bunting around pictures of the president, turned on the phonograph and let it go at that. Even the mining camps want to celebrate, for Mr. Roosevelt has done much for them.