Carl Ben Eielson, the Hamilton Metalplane, and the Siberian Ice That Swallowed Alaska's Greatest Bush Pilot

Carl Ben Eielson transformed Alaska aviation from a seasonal impossibility into a year-round lifeline - and died doing it. On November 9, 1929, Eielson and his mechanic Earl Borland disappeared over the Bering Sea while evacuating furs and passengers from an icebound ship. What followed was the longest aerial search in Alaska history, and the wreck told a story the weather had been threatening to write for years.

Who Was Carl Ben Eielson?

Eielson grew up on a farm in Hatton, North Dakota. He studied law at the University of North Dakota, served in the Army Air Service during the First World War, and came home with a pilot’s certificate and a legal career that never competed with flying. In 1922, he took a teaching job in Fairbanks.

Standing in Alaska, he saw a territory the size of Texas and California combined - hundreds of scattered communities connected by dog sleds that took weeks or months to arrive. He decided an airplane changed the math entirely.

Alaska’s First Airmail Flight

Eielson lobbied the postal service persistently enough that the Post Office awarded him a trial airmail contract. On February 21, 1924, he took off from Fairbanks in a de Havilland DH-4 and flew 280 miles to McGrath. The temperature was approximately minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit. The cockpit was open. The heater was largely decorative.

He made it. He made the return. He kept showing up. The federal funding was inconsistent and the politics of Alaska aviation in the 1920s were grinding - but every successful flight built the case that the territory could be connected by air, year-round, permanently.

The First Flight Across the Arctic Ocean

By 1928, British explorer George Hubert Wilkins had spent two expeditions failing to fly across the Arctic Ocean. For his third attempt, he had a Lockheed Vega and Ben Eielson in the left seat.

On April 15, 1928, the two departed from Point Barrow - the northernmost point of Alaska - and turned northeast toward Spitsbergen. The route covered roughly 2,200 miles over the Arctic Ocean. Charts for most of the route were unreliable. There was no meaningful radio contact and no alternate landing site anywhere beneath them.

Twenty hours and twenty minutes later, they touched down on a frozen beach at Green Harbour, Spitsbergen - the first flight across the Arctic Ocean in history. King George V knighted Wilkins. Eielson returned to Fairbanks and went back to flying.

The Nanuk and the Siberian Ice

By 1929, Eielson was a central figure in Alaska Airways, one of the territory’s first serious commercial operations. That November, a fur trading ship called the Nanuk - owned by trader Olaf Swenson - was locked in Bering Sea pack ice roughly 25 miles off the Siberian coast. Her cargo of silver fox and sable pelts was worth a significant fortune. Passengers needed evacuation. Spring was months away.

Alaska Airways held the contract. Eielson had the aircraft: a Hamilton Metalplane, all-metal construction, powered by a Wright Cyclone radial producing approximately 500 horsepower. It was among the best cargo haulers available for remote Arctic work - a solid airframe with real load capacity.

He flew several successful runs, loading furs at the Nanuk and returning to the coast. The Bering Sea in November builds weather fast. Visibility can fall from workable to zero before any useful warning arrives. Ice fog rolls off the pack with no reliable onset signal. Eielson had been operating in these conditions for years and understood the risks as clearly as any pilot then alive.

The Disappearance: November 9, 1929

On November 9, 1929, Eielson and mechanic Earl Borland departed the Nanuk in the Hamilton with a load of furs, headed for the coast. A storm was moving through. The flight was short by any reasonable measure.

The crew of the Nanuk watched the Hamilton vanish into the overcast. No radio contact. No flare. No engine sound returning through the gray sky.

The Search: American and Soviet Pilots Together

Alaska Airways committed every available pilot. Joe Crosson flew up from Fairbanks, joined by the best bush pilots the territory could put in the air - men with thousands of hours of Alaska weather behind them. The search area ran across hundreds of square miles of Arctic ice and frozen coastline. Usable daylight ran four to five hours. Temperatures were deep in the negative numbers, causing oil to congeal and fuel systems to fail in ways engineers in the lower 48 had not fully anticipated.

The Soviet Union sent pilots as well. American and Soviet aviators worked the same search simultaneously, sharing weather observations and covering ground neither country could reach alone. In 1929, with the political climate of that era, both sides stopped what they were doing because Eielson was down somewhere in the ice.

The search ran through December and into January. Eight weeks. The dark season sat over the Bering Sea without relenting.

What Joe Crosson Found

Crosson located the wreck in late January 1930. The Hamilton had gone down on the ice approximately one mile from the Siberian coast. The evidence indicated Eielson had descended through cloud and ice fog, attempting to acquire a visual on the surface, and had flown into the terrain. At those speeds, in those conditions, it would have been instantaneous.

Neither Eielson nor Borland survived.

Crosson flew the bodies home to Fairbanks. Joe Crosson was one of the finest pilots Alaska produced - a man who flew things other men declined to attempt. He later said that bringing Ben Eielson back was the hardest thing he ever did in an airplane.

Thousands of people came into the streets of Fairbanks in February cold to mark the loss. The entire Territory of Alaska held fewer than 60,000 people at the time, scattered across one of the largest landmasses on earth.

Carl Ben Eielson was 32 years old.

Eielson’s Legacy in Alaska Aviation

Eielson Air Force Base, outside Fairbanks, carries his name. The aviation network he helped build now moves tens of millions of pounds of cargo and hundreds of thousands of passengers annually into communities that would otherwise wait for spring to see the outside world. The routes those pilots fly trace back through a long chain of bush pilots to a battered DH-4 departing Fairbanks on a February morning in 1924.

For deeper reading on this period, James Greiner’s Wager with the Wind remains the definitive account of what those early Alaska pilots actually faced.

Key Takeaways

Eielson flew Alaska’s first airmail route on February 21, 1924 - a 280-mile open-cockpit flight to McGrath at approximately minus 30°F
On April 15, 1928, Eielson and Wilkins completed the first-ever flight across the Arctic Ocean - 2,200 miles in 20 hours and 20 minutes
Eielson disappeared on November 9, 1929, while evacuating cargo from the icebound fur ship Nanuk, 25 miles off the Siberian coast
The eight-week search involved both American and Soviet aviators working in cooperation - an extraordinary circumstance given the era’s political climate
Eielson was 32 years old when he died; Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks bears his name today