| Summary: | Repair Damaged Planes: Test Flights To Be Made With Temporary Landing Gear. REPAIR DAMAGED PLANES Test Flights to Be Made With Temporary Landing Gear. Special to the North American Newspaper Alliance and The Spokesman-Review (Copyright, 1926, by North American Newspaper Alliance.) FAIRBANKS, Alaska, March 20.— Progress in repairing the damaged landing gear of the two airplanes of the Detroit arctic expedition today showed that the Alaskan probably will be ready to fly by Wednesday, while the Detroiter, the larger ship, will be In condition In a few days to carry out test flights while waiting for new and stronger landing gear to arrive from the state. The Alaskan was damaged in landing after a test Thursday, and the Detroiter In a similar mishap Friday. The Detroiter was set on a traveling carriage immediately after her spill and rolled to the hangar. The mechanics of the Samson Engineering company here were already at work welding the undercarriage of the Alaskan at the time. These repairs should be completed tomorrow and then a few tests over the landing field Wednesday will prove whether the repaired job Is safe for landing with a small load, Captain Wilkins said. If it proves safe, freighting of gasoline supplies to Point Barrow for the expedition's polar flights will commence, he added. Parts forwarded from New York will be necessary to put the Detroiter in condition to take off with 1000 gallons of gasoline. It is the Detroiter which will be used to explore the unknown region about the north pole. All available facilities at Fairbanks have been placed at the disposal of the Wilkins party. Crowds which visited today the scene of yesterday's accident marveled that the Destroiter did not turn over completely. This would have happened had not a bank of snow, heaped up when the landing field was cleared, held up the nose of the machine. As it was, the tail stuck high in the air, and Captain Wilkins and Major Thomas G. Lanphier, the army aviator, narrowly escaped injury.
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