| Summary: | Alaskan Plane Wrecks, Landing: Forced Down Into Snow When Engine Fails And Undercarriage Smashed. / Capable Of Great Speed. / Monoplane For Polar Flight Shows 130-Mile An Hour Gait In Test Flight. ALASKAN PLANE WRECKS, LANDING Forced Down Into Snow When Engine Fails and Under carriage Smashed. CAPABLE OF GREAT SPEED Monoplane for Polar Flight Shows 130-Mile an Hour Gait in Test Flight. Special correspondent of The Spokesman-Review and the North American Newspaper Alliance. (Copyright. 1926, by North American Newspaper Alliance.) Fairbanks, Alaska. March 18. -- Falling to respond to the controls, the single-motored monoplane of the Detroit arctic expedition fell 100 feet to the landing field here today while in flight and wiped off the undercarriage. Neither Captain George H. Wilkins, commander of the expedition, nor Ben Eielson, pilot of the plane, was injured, but a new undercarriage must be built for the ship. The plane, the Alaskan, had been in the air for half an hour on its initial flight and Eielson was attempting to land when the engine developed trouble. Previously the flyers, who are to explore the unknown polar sea by airplane, had flown back and forth above the landing field. The Destroiter, the larger three-motored plane of the expedition, is still awaiting its trial flights. Three tractors, pulling snowplows, dragged the landing field today to restore it to condition after the snowfall of Monday and Tuesday night and at 5 o'clock this afternoon the Alaskan was hauled from the hangar by one of the expedition snow motors. She took the air a few moments later, with Eielson at the controls, and Captain Wilkins in the cockpit. During the half-hour flight the monoplane reached a speed of 130 miles an hour. Eielson flew cautiously the length of the field in preparing to land and at the end of the field turned low to fly in the opposite direction when the engine failed. The machine fell into the snow a few feet from the runway and slid along on the fuselage. Captain Wilkins and Eielson were out of the machine and inspecting the damaged landing-gear before the crowd that had been watching the flight reached the scene from the edge of the field.
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