The Nome nugget., 1930-03-08
TRIBUTARY ADDRESS OF
 TKOS. 3. JENSEN UPON
 ARRIVAL DEAD AWAIT 0RS

| forced landing on the rough, brok- en ice. They were unable to take off again and had to abandon the plane and mush back to the main land of Alaska.
 Nineteen days of fighting the toughest kind of ice, leads of op- en water, sleeping on the ice in the day time and traveling at night, snowblind and frost-bitten, they finally made it to an Eski- mo Igloo on the northern coast of Alaska. The spring of 1923, just two years past, brought Eiel- son and Wilkins to Barrow for the third time. They still had faith in their undertaking. With very little publicity they took of from Barrow one April morning and pointed their plane for Spitzber- gen, Eielson at the controls and Wilkins, the scientist, observing and calculating For six days nothing was heard of them; then one fine day q small wireless sta ton at q coal mine on the coast of Spitzbergen broadcasted the good news that they had arrived safe and sound. The delay having been caused by forced landing on Dead Mans Island, short |
 distance from their destination. This flight of Eielson's established his reputation as one of the great flyers of the day and gave him world wide recognition. Wilkins, in writing about the flight, tells how at one time, when they were part way across. the weat ther look ed most forbidding, he turned to Eielson and asked whether they lshould turn back. Eielson shook his head, and with unerring skill and dauntl4ss courage, kept straight on his course. Captain Roald Amundson said of this flight that it was the most .rhazardous un- dertaking in the history of avia- tion; much geographical and scientific knowledge was gained by their observations. The much discussed and mythical Polar con itinent was proven to be myth While Wilkins and Eielson were waiting at Spitzbergen for a boat to take them to Norway they made for the same fall Like Ulysses ,they were, "Yearning in desire to follow knowledge like sinking star beyond the utmost bound of human thought On the trip to ,the Antarctic they took with them lanother Alaskan pilot, Joe Crosson, who is now soaring above us with the remains of Eielsou and Bor- land Many flights were made ov- CT the South Polar continent and la number of scientific and geograph ical questions that had been in dispute for a century or more, were definitely settled.
 Taken together, the flight from Barrow to Spitzbergen and flights into the Antarctic brought Eiel- son the much prized Harmon Medal for the greatest contribu- Ition to aviation for the year 1928, lthe same honor which has been iconferred on Colonel Chas. Lind lbergh the previous year for his lfiight across the Atlantic Ocean. Il When Eielson's polar flights Iwere over the most flattering of lfers were made to him to engage lin the aviation business in the Limited States proper; he could write his own figures and name his own conditions, but he chose to come back here to Alaska. He organized and was made manager of the Alaskan Airways Inc. When lthis Siberian business was offered he realized that it was full of dan ger and that the flight across Der ling Straits was hazardous, that there were hundreds of miles across the wastes of Siberia where there was not a landing field and that there was only fraction of daylight He could have sent other pilots across and remained safely on this side; he was not that kind of a man: he would not ask others to go where he. himself would not lead the way. To link the East