Carl Ben Eielson

Carl Ben Eielson

Carl Ben Eielson (left) with Hubert Wilkins and Arthur Berson (1928)

Carl Benjamin Eielson (born January 20, 1897 in Hatton , North Dakota , † November 9, 1929 at the North Cape , Chukotka ) was an American bush pilot . With Hubert Wilkins he undertook the first powered flight in the Antarctic in 1928 .

Life

Eielson was born in 1897 as one of eight children of Norwegian immigrant Ole Eielson in the small town of Hatton, North Dakota. He was only 14 years old when his mother died in 1911. He started at the University of North Dakota and the University of Wisconsin Law to study, but discovered that his real passion was in powered flight. He enlisted in the US Army in 1917 to become an aviator. The First World War ended before he had completed his training. In early 1919 he returned to civilian life and bought a Curtiss JN-4 Jenny from army stocks, with which he made demonstrations. He resumed his studies at Georgetown University and in 1922 went to teach at a high school in Fairbanks , Alaska .

Eielson recognized the potential of powered flight in this country and, with the help of local business people, founded Alaska's first airline , of which he was the only pilot. He transported passengers and freight and in 1924 took over the mail traffic between Fairbanks and McGrath , which until then had been carried out with dog sleds . After a crash landing in May, he lost the license again. In 1926 he came into contact with the Australian polar explorer Hubert Wilkins, who hired him for an expedition whose goal was the search for unknown land north of Alaska, which, however, achieved little due to technical problems. 1927 had Eielson and Wilkins on the sea ice 120 kilometers north of the coast make an emergency landing . After the two-week march south, Eielson had to have a frozen finger amputated. He was only able to fly again in 1928 when he and Wilkins made a legendary 20-hour non-stop flight from Point Barrow , the northern cape of Alaska, across the Arctic Ocean to Svalbard . In the same year they carried out the first powered flight in Antarctica with their Lockheed Vega . Eielson had a fatal accident on November 9, 1929 during a rescue mission for the ship Nanuk, which was stuck in the ice off Siberia .

The Eielson Air Force Base , the Mount Eielson in Alaska and the headland Eielsonodden on Spitsbergen are named after him. In the Antarctic, the Eielson Peninsula bears his name. In 1985 he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame at Dayton . In 1976 the Hatton Eielson Museum was opened in his birthplace.

literature

• Dorothy G. Page: Polar Pilot: The Carl Ben Eielson Story. Vero Media, Moorhead, Minnesota 1992.
• Kenneth Pletcher: Carl Ben Eielson in Encyclopædia Britannica , 2015

Web links

Commons : Carl Ben Eielson  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Carl Ben Eielson: The Father of Alaskan Aviation - 1897–1929 on LitSite Alaska
• Hatton-Eielson Museum