A few months ago my family and I visited the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. I’ve been there a few times now since my husband, Chris, loves airplanes. But this trip was different. First, our eldest daughter is now old enough to learn about the planes, and she was excited to do so. In fact, I’d been telling her stories about bi-planes and the Memphis Belle for a couple months, and she couldn’t wait to see the real Memphis Belle. Second, I was there to look for other stories; to make those dusty relics come to life. I had already started to get Memphis Belle’s tale down on paper, and wanted more inspiration.
Much to our daughter’s dismay, we did not immediately go to the Memphis Belle exhibit. Instead, we started off at the beginning of aviation history with hot air balloons and the Wright Brothers, and worked our way up to WWII. Between her questions and incessant pulling me along, I got to read a few plaque cards and get a few ideas for books: a WWII romance about WASPs (Women Air Service Pilots), bios of Katherine Stinson and/or Bessie Coleman, and an ABCs of aviation terminology.
One of the exhibits I got a few minutes to read about (while the daughter was swinging on the railing…) was about a rather insignificant looking bi-plane called the DH-4. I knew nothing about it, and didn’t care about the engine specs, but one sentence caught my attention: the DH-4 was used by the Black Wolf Squadron for the 1920 Alaska Flying Expedition from New York to Nome, Alaska. “Black Wolf Squadron” sounded so mysterious and romantic, and my notions of Alaska so exotic, I wanted to learn more.
Don’t bother trying to Google “Black Wolf Squadron” or “Alaska Flying Expedition,” because you will be disappointed. The event seems to be, more or less, correctly or not, a footnote of aviation history. The most frequent Google result is for Stan Cohen’s book, “The Alaska Flying Expedition: The U.S Army’s 1920 New York to Nome Flight.” So naturally, I bought it.
Stan Cohen’s work in this book is amazing. It has design schematics of the DH-4, the main players and situation that prompted the expedition, mini-bios of the pilots, a chart listing each arrival and departure of the expedition, summaries of each flight hop, and seemingly a hundred different newspaper articles (in their original formatting, often with the surrounding articles and advertisements too!) from each city they visited. Because of his work, I am able to read about the first flight to Alaska from primary sources.
Originally I wanted to make my stories about the planes, but I’ve shifted course. There is a poem hanging on our daughter’s wall that gave me the idea:
The Little Aviator
Boys had boats
their favored toy-
Not I
when I
was just a boy.
I dreamt of wings
for soaring high
and cutting wakes
in yonder sky.
And where my hero’s
footsteps went-
I’d follow in the firmament.
So I’m going to write the story from a child’s perspective; a young girl, about 10 years old, living in Nome, Alaska. She gets caught up in the excitement of airplanes coming to her town, and tries to learn everything about them. But, this is Alaska in the 1920s, so information is not readily available. I hope the story will follow her life for a few months as she waits for the planes to arrive, giving the reader a glimpse of that moment in time, at that unique place, and learn something about planes at the same time.
Fingers crossed as I jump down this rabbit hole….
Northern Skies Publishing 