ARCTIC AEROPLANE

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 96, 20 October 1936, Page 18

ARCTIC AEROPLANE

WONDERFUL MACHINE

LIFE OF PERFECT SERVICE

(From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, September 23.

"SK," an aeroplane without ( a peer in the annals of aviation in Canada, is about to be retired from the airways. When she left the Fokker factory in 1929, she came west to Winnipeg, and before her motor had a chance to cool she was off on a chartered flight to Eskimo Point, on the bleak western shore of Hudson Bay. Captain "Punch" Dickins, D.5.0., M.8.E., then flew her straight across the dreaded Barren Lands, graveyard of many explorers, by land and air. "SK" was the first aeroplane in history to accomplish this flight. On her second single flight she covered 9000 miles, with no other attention than gas and oil renewal. Following this, she made a long survey of the Prairie air-mail routes. When Pilot Walter Gilbert, F.8.G.5., was commissioned to fly to the Magnetic Pole, and to take Burwash of the Arctic on the journey that was to reveal important relics of the expedition of Sir John Franklin, he looked longingly towards the north, where "SK" had been lying, grounded at Cambridge Gulf for eleven months, since the MacAlpjne expedition was lost in the Arctic. A million dollars was spent in locating Mac Alpine; "SK" was left behind. Gilbert set off, heading for Coppermine, on the shore of the Polar Sea. Over the Bear River, near Great Bear Lake, he passed another famous flyer, Captain May, D.5.0., whose aeroplane Richtofen was chasing when he was brought down in France.

On the bleak shores of Dease Point, he set his machine down beside "SK." She was just clear of the water, and had been washed with salt spray arid seared by the extremely hot sun of the endless Arctic summer daylight. Gilbert put five gallons of oil and ten gallons of gasoline into "SK." Her engine started at the first attempt. Next morning, he and another pilot, Buchanan, flew both ships to Coppermine, where Buchanan refuelled the veteran and took off with her, heading for Edmonton, 2000 miles south, where she was to.be overhauled. RELIANCE ON THE FOKKE.R Gilbert blew a piston in taking off. The Baychimo, the Ghost Ship of the Arctic, arrived with Burwash. Her radio flashed a message to Winnipeg, whence it was'relayed north again to Great Bear, where MacMillan, now chief of the MacKenzie Airways, hopped off with a spare cylinder. Disaster dogged Gilbert. Another piston cracked. On greased skids, he got his. ship ashore, and stood by to await another machine. Dickins instructed Buchanan, at Edmonton, to take "SK" back to Gilbert. After a quick overhaul, the veteran was brought out. At Coppermine Gilbert waited only long enough to load her. The Baychimo sailed on her last voyage to be caught in the ice, and appear and reappear many times as the Arctic current moved the pack here and there. Gilbert's flight over the Magnetic Pole is already history.

Gilbert's log, describing discovery of relics at the last camp pitched by Franklin's party, says:—

"Evidences of camp discovered, with several cairns, all opened and empty, except for mouldering bones, badly battered about, apparently by bears. Country very hard-travelling owing to frost-shattered limestone rock which spelled death to mukluks (Eskimo boots, made of sealskin). Whole areas a series of sand and shingle ridges, rising to 100 feet. Almost no vegetation except 'some little grass on shores of scattered pot-hole lakes and some clumps of moss in hollows. Signs of lemming (Arctic rat) holes in banks. One fox seen—remarkably curious and unafraid for a fox. Several Arctic sparrows and one seagull. Three miles north-west discovered much-weathered relics including iron, navy blue serge, hardwood, and tarpaulin, with rope attached."

The log'of Canada's most silent airment went further than Burwash chose to disclose, in reporting the discovery of human bones mauled by bears. This was the last official expedition to search for relics of Franklin's illfated, mission.