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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 1020.PDF
A: MAY IST, I94X THE TERRITORY OF ALASKA DEFENCE RCWTES MAIN AIR ROUTES SUBSIDIARY ROUTES This map shows the main and some of the subsidiary airways in the Territory of Alaska. /4LASKA—a snow-covered country of gambling hells, /-\ huskies and ptarmigans, away up at the far end of •*• •*• Canada. So thinks many a Londoner. But whether you wear the ptarmigans to prevent frostbite or use them for pulling your sledge, he has not the faintest idea. Nor is he sure who owns Alaska and is not aware that the United States bought it from Russia in 1867 for a few million pounds. For the territory of Alaska, after its gold rush days, disappeared from the headlines, and so far has not been involved in any happenings sufficiently sensational to put it back there. The great value of Alaska lies in its mineral wealth and its fur and fishing industries. It has an area of 586,000 square miles which is something over ten times the area of England, but its population is only 60,000, half of which is white. The capital is Juneau, a town of 4,000 people • in the southern part but Fairbanks, right in the heart of the Territory, is regarded as the capital of the " interior." Alaska is not well provided with roads or railways and in the old days the dog team and sledge was the most exten- sively used means of transport. Now air transport is well established because of the great speed which it has when compared to the slow ground travel. In parts a very mountainous country. Alaska's highest peak, Mt. McKinley, rises to 20,000ft. Considerably more thought is being given to Alaska by both Canada and the United States, largely because of the necessity to arrange for its defence. Its need for air trans- port too, has brought it to the attention of the Civil Aero- nautics Board and one oi the Board's economic examiners recently made a complete survey of all the airlines in the Territory, recommending the award of certificates of con- venience and necessity to 23 air carriers and the denial of 13 applications. This total of 36 companies in a country with such a small population indicates how widespread air travel is here. But it also indicates that each com- pany is very small—there are only 93 aircraft owned by all 36 of them, less than an average of three each—and conse- quently there is much more of competition than co-opera- tipn With air transport organised in such a manner, it will not achieve its best results, for small companies cannot afford the ground organisation which is essential for effi- cient working. There has been, however, a certain amount of" co-ordination of radio organisation among the small air- line companies, several of which own and operate their own communication stations. Wings on Wheels, Skis and Floats : Pefence by Air of U.S. and Canacjh. The radio situation in Alaska has now been improved considerably. During 1940 six new combined radio range and communication stations and two point-to-point com-v munication stations were completed along an airway ex-., tending from Ketchikan to Nome, by way of Juneau,. Anchorage and Fairbanks The 1941 programme provides for at least four other such stations, and some intermediate landing fields near Bethel, McGrath and elsewhere. Mirow Air Service, operating from Nome, has a fleet <^jj seven aircraft, all of which are radio-equipped. There are two Stinson 10-place Trimotors, and one each Lockheed Vega, Sikorsky S39B, Fairchild 24, Travelair S6000B and Stinson SR7B. The routes run from Nome to Gamble, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Unalakleet, Haycock, St. MichaeL Shishmaref and Kotzbue It is strange to find an airline with a woman president, but such is the case, for Mrs. Mirow, the widow of a pioneer airman who was killed while attempting to take supplies to a marooned party, is the head. Mrs. Mirow is not worried by her task, despite its many difficulties, for she was reared in Nome and knows Alaska and its problems. She holds a radio operator's- licence and runs her own ground station. Climatic Troubles Though Alaska has a total of 129 landing fields, standing third on the numerical list for all the United States, with California, 174, first, flying is not always an easy matter. During August, with its 24-hour summer day, conditions are almost ideal and wheels and floats are the usual equip- ment. But temperatures are low in winter and wheels or skis are necessary as landing gear for the snow and ice. Temperatures are so low, in fact, that at the Pacific Alaska Airways hangar at Fairbanks, a "de-freezing" room has been built so that' the aeroplane may be brought slowly up to hangar temperature after coming in from a flight in air very much below freezing. It is at Fairbanks, too, that the U.S. Army Air Corps has practically completed a cold weather testing station for its aircraft. The change of the seasons is a difficult time, for in spring and autumn some of the fields freeze up or lose their snow before others and it is almost necessary to have both types of undercarriage. But one operator, Hakon Chris- tensen, gets over his troubles by using skis for landing on what, in winter, was a snow aerodrome but in the spri has become a mud flat. But despite all the difficulties of flying in a land where conditions vary so much, civil aviation has gone ahead wonderfully. The earliest statistics available show that for the two years ending March, 1929, only 273,000 pas- senger-miles were flown, whereas for the year ending June, 1940, the passenger mileage is 5,745,000 with an air- craft mileage of 3,598,000 Passengers carried for the same period totalled 31,435, and 4,315,000 1b. of freight and 520,000 1b. of mail were also carried In order to get some idea of what these figures mean it is necessary to compare them with corresponding figures for other countries. In Australia the passenger-mileage for the same year was 49,000,000, over eight times as great, but the population of Australia (7 million) is over one hundred times as great So it is evident that each person in Alaska uses air transport much more than each person in Australia, the average mileage per person per year being 95 for Alaska and 7 for Australia. Air transport is very important to all Alaskan life, par- ticularly so in winter, for if the services fail there are hundreds of prospectors, miners and trappers scattered in tiny communities on the Alaskan tundra north of Nome
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