Observations placeholder

Thoughts through Space – Sir Hubert Wilkins and Harold M Sherman

The tanks were filled, and we took off on our second search flight over the Alaskan mountains. That day, we flew a distance of more than eighteen hundred miles, hawking back and forth along the Endicott Range, peeking into every draw and valley, looking for the wreckage of the Russian plane, or for evidence of men who might be stranded there. But we saw no trace of plane or men. The weather had been clear on both days of the search. We had flown, in all, three thousand miles over the mountains, and we felt sure that, if the plane had crashed there, we would have seen some trace of it.

We continued our search until darkness set in, and then set out to find our way back to Old Crow. Following the river, which stood out like a broad white band between the dusky willow-covered banks, we came to Old Crow, and landed with the aid of flares which had been set out by Corporal Kirk of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. The Corporal had been of great assistance to us, both in reporting to us the weather conditions with the aid of his short-wave radio, and in making ready our gasoline supply. Together with others at the Post, he entertained us royally that night, and we slept comfortably in the police headquarters.

Sherman, on the night of the third, recorded:

"several times I had strange sensation of feeling myself in the air with you-passing quite low over shaggy white and shadowy peaks-below me gleaming stretches and large dark patches where the sun’s rays are cut off-at other times the shadow of the plane passing over the snow -crew pointing out several herds of wild animals – several flocks of birds taking flight--you have map on knees or chart of some kind which you checked and made markings upon - you out to dinner again tonight-telling of a few of the observations made several places where prospectors have cabins."

All of this, of course, could have been imagined by anyone familiar with the country, and knowing that we had been flying over the Endicott Range, but Sherman did not know that we had been flying over the mountains that day, and he had never seen or heard of the conditions to be found there.

He describes exactly the conditions and much of what was in my thoughts-the sights I saw, and even the action of recording, on a chart held on my knees, the flight courses which I had to keep carefully in case we might see the plane, and have to mark its locality in order that we might return to it later on foot. He spoke of the herds of caribou, and of the cabins of the prospectors-in fact we circled steeply in a tight spin, almost down to the level of one cabin in a narrow valley, just to see if there were any men in it alive, but there was no movement about the cabin, and we could not see any tracks in the snow. The cabin was probably used only during the summer months.