In the spring of 1928 two experienced flyers, Bert R. J. Hassell and Parker Cramer, planned a flight from Rockford, Illinois, across Greenland to Stockholm. This was to include a hop of 4,200 miles without refueling. I was at the time preparing the Third University of Michigan Greenland Expedition, to be based near the head of the great Söndre Stromfjord which is under the Arctic Circle in West Greenland.
When Hassell consulted with me, I strongly advised that he change his objective to Copenhagen, refuel at the Rekjavik airport in Iceland, and also, if at all possible, at some landing place in West Greenland. Potential landing places, if they existed anywhere in Greenland, would be found on the elevated sand and clay plains at the heads of the larger fjords.
Hassell at once accepted my suggestions and, on my part, I agreed to cooperate in every way possible. I was anxious to attach to his plane for the Greenland crossing a selfregistering meteorograph to secure a cross section of the wind structure of Greenland, the glacial anticyclone. I considered the chance a good one that a suitable landing field might be located near the Michigan base, and I offered, if Hassell would name an aviator competent to judge the adequacy of any landing field which was found, I would take him on as a full-fledged member of the expedition. He selected his close friend, Elmer G. Etes, who joined the expedition as carpenter. A report on the field we could send Hassell by our short-wave radio.
It was of course necessary to provide fuel and motor oil, and these I purchased for Hassell through the Danish Director for Greenland, and had them shipped in to Holstensborg, the nearest port in west Greenland.
Hassell met with difficulties when he applied for permission to land in Greenland. When my expedition had arrived at Copenhagen enroute to Greenland, I was called to the American Legation and shown a voluminous correspondence by cable between Secretary of State Kellogg and Count Reventlow, the Danish Foreign Minister. Hassell in his application had mentioned that the Michigan Expedition would cooperate, and though there had already been two expeditions (in 1926 and 1927), Reventlow had replied that he had never heard of them. Later, however, he communicated with the Director for Greenland and discovered that everything had already been covered by correspondence. I was then told that the flight would be permitted, provided it could be connected with the Michigan Expedition. After making sure that no financial responsibilities would be fastened upon the expedition, this was agreed to, and a despatch was sent off which granted the desired permission.
Almost immediately after arrival at our base, a landing place was found at the head of the Söndre-Stromfjord which Etes deemed to be adequate. It was an elevated clay plain twenty feet above the highest tides, on which we were able to lay out an airstrip 1,500 feet in length. If we could have removed some large boulders, we could have made it much longer, for the plain was some miles in length, at least three quarters of a mile in width, and as level and almost as hard as a concrete floor. Since the strong winds always blow off the ice and lengthwise of the fjord, a single airstrip would suffice.
There was still the arduous task of transferring the gasoline to the field. I had had it transported by motorsloop to our base of Camp Lloyd, but this was still eight miles from the landing field. Two miles of this we could cover by dory transport, which left six miles over a rough trail on which the fuel could only be carried on the backs of men. Two hundred and fifty gallons and the mobile oil eventually went in in five-gallon tanks on the backs of our four Greenland Eskimo helpers and those of the members of the expedition. The wind direction was clearly marked on the field by a long arrow, and a secondary pilot-balloon station was set up there for weather indication and a small radio station also for communication with our main observatory and radio station on Mount Evans.
During the Greenland summer, short-wave reception is usually possible only during the dark period around midnight. Our communications with Hassell were made through the short-wave station of the New York Times, and they, unaware of these limitations, sent us many messages which never came through. On Tuesday, July 24, however, two messages were received, one of which read:
Hassell ready to start. Ask if landing field is ready now or how soon. Are trying nightly to communicate with you directly.
(Signed) Birchall
To this I replied:
Amazed by report that Hassell is planning flight tomorrow without advice from us that we are ready or weather conditions favorable. Etes on eighteenth sent Hassell by radio via Godhavn report on landing possibilities, but has received no reply. Pending reply we have suspended transport of gasoline.
On receipt your message we have taken steps to mark landing place to set Hassell down on terrace at head of fjord, north side, but hope he will await our further advice before starting. Two hundred gallons gasoline and ten gallons mobile oil now within two miles of landing field and our four Eskimos have started packing today. When our direct radio fails you can reach us by commercial radio via Godhavn.
(Signed) Hobbs.
Later radio messages advised us that Hassell would start Wednesday, still later corrected to Thursday because of bad weather. By that day 250 gallons of fuel was on the landing field, and most of our party was keeping vigil nearby. On Friday a message came through that Hassell had taken off as planned, but had been forced down and the plane badly damaged five miles from the start. The regular work of our expedition was then resumed, and the party became scattered over a wide area engaged on surveys which had already been much delayed.
On August 14 our radio operator at Mount Evans was startled to receive a message that Hassell would take off again that morning. Carlson, a Michigan crack cross-country runner, was fortunately at the observatory, and at once he started off to round up the scattered members of the expedition. By great good luck Belknap and Stewart were soon found, and with our Eskimo kayaker in advance, Belknap came speeding down the fjord in a motor boat to collect Potter and myself. Within twelve hours we were on our way to the landing field. Now a message arrived from Birchall, and was relayed to the field, that “Hassell should be expected in Greenland about midnight Friday,” or a little before the message arrived. This was the worst possible time, for objects would not be made out in the darkness, but we set lanterns on the field and prepared to set fire to a brush-pile as soon as the sound of the plane should be detected at Mount Evans.
Hassell, unknown to us, had landed at Cochrane in Canada, and had waited there four days for suitable weather, we in our ignorance keeping vigil at the landing field. Late in the evening of August 18, Baer, our radio operator, relayed to us a message just received that Hassell had taken off from Cochrane some time after noon of that day. The long hours of the night wore away as we huddled about a small fire under a rock near the landing place. Shortly after dawn a pilot balloon was sent up and the weather found most favorable. Still no plane appeared, and we began to fear the worst, but remained on the field until four in the afternoon.
A much delayed message later informed us over the Greenland radio at Godhavn that on Sunday morning, August 10, while we waited on the landing field, Hassell’s plane, the Greater Rockford, had appeared flying low over Fiskenaesset, about three hundred miles to the south, just as the Greenland people there were on their way to church. The flyers could be seen scanning the place through their binoculars as they circled over and passed up the little fjord toward the inland ice.
We, learned later, after their rescue, that as the plane had left Cape Chidley in Labrador to cross Davis Strait, dense clouds had been ahead and Cramer as navigator had dropped a flare which disclosed a wind light from the southeast, for which he corrected the course; but in the clouds they ran into strong winds from the opposite direction. They came out of the clouds over Fiskenaesset situated on a fjord which they supposed to be the Söndre Stromfjord, their immediate objective. However, they found its length not 120 miles, but about 20, and so learned they were off their course. Hassell then got out the map I had given him, and from it discovered his position. But fuel was already low because of the extra mileage, and it was necessary to proceed in a direct line to our landing field. As the plane flew over ice tongues, steep-walled valleys and high rock ridges athwart its course, the air was so “bumpy” that they could hardly keep their seats. At one place they dropped suddenly about 1000 feet.
Coming over the inland-ice, the broad inner portion of the Knud Rasmussen Ice Arm, they found a wind of 60 miles an hour blowing down the ice slope. Favorable as was this tailwind, it did not quite compensate for the fuel lost on the wide detour, and with only five gallons remaining they decided to attempt a landing on the inland ice. In this, they succeeded. The place was probably less than seventy-five miles from our landing field, and as we were at the moment awaiting them there, if they had kept on they would probably have arrived safely.
After the appearance of the Greater Rockford over Fiskenaesset, nothing more had been heard from it, and not only we at Camp Lloyd, but the Danish Government went to much pains to try to find the flyers. Dr. Knud Rasmussen, famous part-Eskimo explorer, was on his ship, Seekoning, coming down Davis Strait en route to Copenhagen. A great hero of the Eskimo people, he made port at many colonies along the coast and at his suggestion Eskimos in their little kayaks penetrated deep into the fjords, where, portaging the kayaks, they trekked over the ridges of the hinterland wilderness in search of the missing men. From Camp Lloyd members of our expedition scouted the country to the south of us, but all in vain. Throughout the world the search in progress was reported daily.
A report sent by the New York Times stated that Hassell’s plane had been seen over Julianehaab in extreme south Greenland, which, had it been true, made any further search in more northern areas quite futile. It was later learned, however, that the report of the arrival at Fiskenaesset had been sent out from Julianehaab, the chief commercial radio station of Greenland, which had given rise to the statement.
Deceived by this erroneous report, we at the Michigan base suspended our search operations, and I ordered the motor sloop Nakuak of Holstensborg to come in and take out all expedition members except those who were to man the aerological observatory of Mount Evans during the winter. We now removed from the south side of the fjord a boat with food, lantern, and instructions for communicating with us, in the event that the lost flyers should arrive there.
On the afternoon of September 2, a full fortnight after the flyers had last been seen, an umiak filled with Greenland Eskimos from the coast arrived at Camp Lloyd. A very strong wind was blowing from the inland ice and it had made high storm waves on the fjord, which was six miles in width. In rowing upwind, the Eskimos had been forced to hug the opposite shore until above our base. When they had reached us, they reported having seen a faint smoke column rising on the shore ahead of them just before making the crossing. It could only have been from a fire kindled by the lost flyers, and Etes and Stewart at once started out in the heavy seas to reach them.
Under a heavy pack I was then a mile away when I heard the motor and saw our steel Mullins motor-boat, a mere cockle shell, alternately appearing and disappearing in the heavy seas. Throwing down the pack, I rushed down to the base and learned what had happened. It was then too late to recall the craft until the seas had quieted, and we watched it with ever increasing anxiety until at long last the flash from a Very signalling pistol, at the point where we had cached the boat and food, told us that the flyers had been found. As it was now dark, we set up a lantern on a mast to guide the boat on the return, and an Eskimo was dispatched to our radio station with a note to Baer to call the New York Times and have them standing by. An hour later we could hear our outboard motor in ever increasing volume, until, wading into the water, we pulled two men, tired and half-starved but game, out of the boat.
While they were being regaled on a rich soup, I managed to get from Hassell the outlines of his narrative, and with a lantern made good time over the three-mile trail up to the observatory. The New York Times Radio Station was already standing by for the story. Next morning it was on the front page of newspapers throughout the world. The next night Hassell himself sent a fuller account for another front-page story.
After making a good landing on the inland ice, the flyers had taken a small amount only of pemmican, and a Mannlicher rifle, and had started out to reach our base, which they thought much nearer than it was. They had no bedding or extra clothing, though Cramer wore the beautiful caribou-skin coat in which Eileson had flown with Byrd to the North Pole. During their fourteen days of wandering, first on the ice cap, then by mountain cliff, deep-walled lake, rushing river and treacherous quicksand, they had doggedly kept on, lying down at night in their wet parkas, huddling together for warmth.
Two days after their rescue, the Nakuak arrived at our base. She was hastily loaded, and at nightfall we started down the fjord bound for Holstensborg; Belknap, Stewart, and I in the little cabin, Hassell and Cramer on the stores in the hold, and Potter with the Eskimo skipper and his crew in the engine room. All were very tired and were soon sleeping soundly.
The Söndre Stromfjord has a very wide and deep channel lined by lofty cliffs, though with many rocky islets; but it is quite necessary that the skipper at the helm keep awake if it is to be navigated safely. Ours fell asleep, and toward morning I was awakened by the shock as the Nakuak struck on a reef, a moment later slipped off, and again gathered headway. It was pitch dark, but water was welling into the cabin. I rushed on deck shouting, “I’m afraid we’re wrecked!” From the deck I made out a black wall of rock towering above us and perhaps a hundred feet away. Hassell and Cramer now emerged from the hold, which was fast filling with water. I dove into the cabin, fished out my boots, and all now began passing the most essential things onto the deck. The skipper, fully awakened, now drove the sloop straight for the shore, but soon we struck a second time, and this time remained fast on a ledge between two rocks. We began hastily filling the dinghy with some of the stores which we had piled on deck; and with an anchor on top, Etes took off for the shore, where he was able to gain a foothold and then wedge an anchor fluke into a crack, where it held firmly. We at the winch now drew the anchor- chain taut, for, as the little craft filled, it was already starting to slide off the ledge into deep water. We now landed from the dinghy and secured a precarious hold on the rocks at the foot of the high cliff. Here we waited for the dawn.
With daylight we were able to take stock of our situation. Everything that had not been salvaged from the wreck was now under water. We had struck at extreme low tide, and our first action was now to get such stores as we had saved above high-tide level. We had provisions for perhaps a week: tents and sleeping bags, a primus stove, a rifle and some fishing tackle. As it got lighter, I climbed to a higher level and could make out down the fjord the wedge-shaped island- mountain of Simiatuk (“The Stopper”), which partly closes the mouth of the Söndre Stromfjord . We were about twenty miles up the fjord from the sea. Less than two hundred feet away was a brook, which assured us of drinking water. About fifty miles down the Greenland coast was, we knew, a little Eskimo fishing village called Kangamiut, where there was pretty sure to be a Danish manager and a motor sloop. Along the coast were the inevitable skerries, or rocky islets, which act as breakwaters, and the Eskimo skipper with one of his crew volunteered to go in the twelve-foot dinghy and carry a note from me to the Danish manager, requesting him to come in and take us out. The skipper’s offer was accepted, but as the wind was strong and high waves were rolling in, we felt somewhat concerned lest he should not win through.
A few hundred yards away I was able to find a level place where we could erect our tents in a position which gave a clear view down the fjord. As day after day wore slowly away, we began to fear that our dinghy had not succeeded in making the settlement. I now arranged to put our party on half rations, and our hunters and the fisherman redoubled their efforts to secure hares on the cliffs or fish from the fjord.
On the afternoon of the third day since the wreck, our lookout made out a motor- sloop coming up the fjord. Our Eskimo skipper had made it, but we should have been relieved the day after they left. The Danish manager had thought he lacked the necessary authority to come to our rescue. He had, therefore, first made a journey of sixty miles down the coast to consult his superior. At Kangamiuk we were hospitably received and feasted at the home of the manager, after arrangements had been made to have the rescue-sloop Nipisak start down the coast with us at dawn the next morning. We greatly hoped that we could reach Godthaab in time to intercept the motorship Disko and secure passage out to Denmark.
Little did we then realize the thrilling experience which lay before us, one far more trying to go through than the late shipwreck. When about forty miles down the coast we tied up for the night, but slept on board, starting again at dawn. Our troubles now began with a temperamental motor, which at frequent intervals ceased to function; but after taking an outside passage in a heavy sea, we anchored behind some reefs and our competent Eskimo skipper took the motor apart and repaired it. It was, however, already late in the afternoon before we again started. By pantomine the skipper then informed me that he would have to go out in the open sea, but would later tie up for the night behind one of the rocky islets.
This we attempted, but the wind increased and the seas were so heavy that we could not get back. Throughout the long, dark night the six-ton sloop thrashed about in a heavy sea, running out to sea, turning and setting a course toward the reefs, then, just off the white surf, again turning out to sea. These outer reefs were eight to ten miles off the Greenland coast, and had the motor again failed, we could not have escaped destruction. But the repairs had apparently been well made, and we never for a moment lost steerage-way. Just as dawn was breaking the sloop passed over a reef and the white water showed beneath us, but most fortunately a heavy sea carried us over without striking. Had we struck, nothing could have saved us, for we were ten miles off the coast.
As dawn came we were able to make out the lofty Hjorletakken or the “Saddle,” a snow-capped peak which betrays the position of Godthaab, the Greenland capital; and we were now able to thread our way up to the harbor. For us it had been a 200-mile voyage, though only 120 miles by direct route. Our luck had been with us, we thought, for we saw the Disko at anchor in the harbor, and it was scheduled to sail in three hours. But no, there was not a place where our party could be berthed.
Luckily the tramp-steamer Fulton of 800 tons was also in port bound for Ivigtut in South Greenland to take on a cargo of cryo-lite for Copenhagen. Her captain, as soon as he learned my difficulties, offered to take us on as guests if we would sleep on the saloon floor and could find the means to feed ourselves. These necessities I was fortunately able to purchase from the Danish manager at Godthaab, and thus we were saved from spending the winter in Greenland. After taking on cargo at Ivigtut we ran into a heavy storm which shifted our cargo and shot great hunks of heavy cryolite against the ship’s plates. Our people rolled about on the saloon deck like peas, but beyond this temporary discomfort all went well. Hassell and Cramer were feted in Copenhagen before sailing for America.
So ended the first attempt to fly to Europe across Greenland. In addition to the more or less unpleasant incidents recounted here, there had been five others. This Cramer had explained to me when we were marooned together on the Söndre Stromfjord . First, there had been a crack-up of the Greater Rockford when it was first tried out in Iowa; a second crash had taken place at Clarion, Pennsylvania; there followed the crack-up at the first take-off in Rockford; next came the abandonment of the plane on the inland ice; and, fifth, the shipwreck of the Nakuak.
The Nakuak was later salvaged, but attempts to retrieve the Greater Rockford have so far been futile. Carlson, making use of such advice as Hassell could give, carried out a dogsled expedition for the purpose from Mount Evans in the winter of 1928-29, but was unable to locate it. The abandoned plane was, however, seen and photographed from the air by aviators during World War II.
Cramer with Robert Wood and Bob Gast made a second attempt to fly across Greenland in the summer of 1929. The flight was sponsored by the Chicago Tribune and started from Chicago, but the plane came down near Cape Chidley, where it was blown from its moorings and sunk in Hudson Strait.
Cramer made a third attempt in 1931 with Oliver L. Paquette of the Canadian Government Radio Service. The flight was sponsored by Transamerican Airlines and started (secretly) from Detroit in a Bellanca monoplane. It landed at Cochrane, as Hassell and Cramer had done in 1928, and took off from there for the same crossing. Now, however, it was planned to make a first landing after the crossing at the Danish colony of Angmagssalik on the Greenland east coast, then cross the Greenland Sea to Rekjavik in Iceland, with a last stop at Lerwick in the Orkneys, before going on to Copenhagen. They left Detroit July 28, carried out their schedule and arrived at Lerwick on August 8, after having twice been forced down on the open sea. From Lerwick they took off on the 9th, ran into a bad storm, and both perished in the North Sea, where parts of the plane were afterward found.
This was the first crossing of Greenland by air. But very shortly after, the German flyer von Gronau, after secret flights from Scoresby Sound on the east coast, flew from there and arrived at Sukkertoppen on the west coast.
The discovery of the Camp Lloyd landing field, which had resulted from Hassell and Cramer’s unsuccessful first attempt, was to prove heavy with consequence. In April of 1941, eight months only before Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt went on the air to warn the people how serious it would be if Germany should succeed in acquiring a foothold in Greenland and use it as a springboard against the United States. A few days later a prominent American aviator replied in a hook-up of three networks, and asserted that topographical and climatic conditions in Greenland were such as to preclude its use by aircraft, and that it would be impossible to land an airplane anywhere in Greenland.
On April 14 in an Associated Press interview I replied to this broadcast and showed how much the aviator was in error. Not satisfied with this, I personally put the facts before the officials of the War Plans Divisions of the State, War, and Navy Departments. When I brought them to the attention of Commander, now Vice Admiral Forrest Sherman, he replied, “But we have been given to understand that it is impossible to land a plane anywhere in Greenland.” When I then showed him the view of the Camp Lloyd airfield, he became almost excited, and there was much the same reaction when I spoke with General L. T. Gerow, the Chief of the War Plans Division of the Army, and with Mr. Cumming of the State Department. From that time, events followed in rapid succession to secure air and naval bases in Greenland. Camp Lloyd airfield, under the name of “Söndre Stromfjord ” or “Bluei W. 8,” became the main naval and air base in Greenland, though Bluei W. 1 in extreme south Greenland served the fighters and fighter bombers and transports on the Great Circle Ferry route.