Thanks for doing this, professor Ringsmuth! I'm working my way through the book right now and had a few questions:

• The book focuses on the Wrangell-St. Elias area: How typical was that area in terms of Alaska aviation?
• Was aviation much more popular in Alaska than the rest of the nation in the 1920s and 1930s? What sorts of statistics are out there?
• Is it fair to say that you think the FAA and the organization of flight had more to do with the success of Alaska aviation than individual "Skyboys"?
• There's been a lot written about Noel Wien, Carl Ben Eielson, Bob Reeve, Russel Merrill and folks like them ─ what are the unanswered questions about Alaska aviation?

How did Alaskans navigate when it was snowing? If they had compasses, did being so far north interfere with the magnetism? Also, did pilots have to put all their food in their planes and take it with them, or was it possible to have pit stops to pick up extra rations while flying across Alaska?

Two questions:

1. As someone who studies how viking shipbuilding transformed networks of early medieval trade, I'm very interested in the relationship between flight technology and Alaskan networks. Perhaps you could touch on a few of the following: What were the early hubs of flight? Who organized them? When did they come about? What factors influenced their locations (e.g. telegraph, alternate road, rail, or sea connections, etc.)? And did the location of flight hubs reshape settlement or industry patterns in Alaska?

2. The frontier à la Frederick Jackson Turner (the argument that American democracy depended on having a frontier to help refine the character of individual Americans) has always seemed a rather male-dominated paradigm to me, but the Alaskan women I've known (and I've been fortunate to know a few!) have tended to be rugged and independent individuals as well. Did you find that early-20c notions of gender and the frontier limited the participation of women in early Alaskan aviation, or did you turn up any exciting stories of early "Skygirls"?

Good Morning! Thanks for the great questions!

Skyboys does, in fact, focus entirely on the Wrangell-St. Elias area. Admittedly, it was the publisher who insisted that "Alaska" be in the title to ensure reader familiarity with the book's setting.

This book is not a comprehensive history of Alaska aviation. Alaska is continental in scale and contains diverse environments. Consequently, each region developed it own unique flying industry and culture, made up of varied individual pilots, planes specific to the climate conditions and land/coastal formations, different purposes for flying--ie southeast is seaplane country, planes in Bristol Bay and Western Alaska were built for windy/foggy conditions and in the Wrangells aviators flew in mountain country. The reason why aviators took flight above the Wrangells was the copper and gold deep within the ground. Mining then, at least in the beginning, made flying in the Wrangells an important aviation region.

Aviation, however, took time to develop in the Wrangells. The first mechanical flight in Alaska took place in Fairbanks on July 4, 1913. There was talk in local newspapers about using planes to fly miners from Cordova and Copper Center over the Wrangells to Chisana, where the last of the Alaska gold rushes has just commenced. This never happened. Likely because the Wrangells lacked aviation infrastructure--landing strips, hangers, etc. Moreover, when the Chisana gold rush fizzled out, so when the market. According to the pilots themselves, the average Alaskan rarely flew. Fear of flying remained strong until after WWII. (The highly publicized crash of Will Rogers and Wiley Post certainly didn't ease that fear) The public looked at aviation similarly to how we view NASCAR today--they watched and waited for the crash.

Individual pilots like Bob Reeve, Harold Gillam, Merle Smith were incredibly good pilots and each made extraordinary contributions to Alaska aviation. But these pilot never would have taken flight in the early 1930s had it not been for the federal government. The government (the ARC) built many of the strips, while New Deal legislation passed in the early 1930s nearly doubled the price gold, making it lucrative for the far more expensive lode mining to develop in the Wrangells. To reach those high mountains deposits miners employed the Wrangell Mountain aviators. And finally, the CAA (predecessor to the FAA) brought regulation to the aviation industry in the late 1930s. Although most aviators at the time disliked regulation, it did make flying economically sustainable and the industry safer in the eyes of the consumer.

Finally, to answer your last question, after surveying the literature, I found a great deal of aviation biographies focusing on the flying feats of individual pilots but rarely did I come across a narrative that applied historical analysis. What I found interesting is that all these books used "westernized" language that talked about Alaska bush pilots like cowboys. My question was if pilots were flying around on 20th century technology why did we continue to talk about them as if they were 19th century figures? So I looked to history to answer that question.

Thanks for doing this AMA! What was the role of U.S. military aviation in Alaska during the Cold War, given it's proximity to the Soviet Union?

Not gonna lie, just put that book on a Christmas wish list. Question for you: when talking about frontiers like this, I usually envision iconic characters that represent that particular daring and zeitgeist. Hiram Bingham, Lewis & Clark, and David Livingstone come to mind. Who is the legend/mythic figure of Alaskan aviation?

Hi, Professor! Thank you for participating in this AMA!

According to the blurb on the publisher's website:

Alaska's aviation growth was downplayed in order to perpetuate the myth of the cowboy spirit and the desire to tame what many considered to be the last frontier

During this era, why was there a cultural or political need to portray Alaska as a frontier to be tamed? Is it significant that it was a "final" frontier to conquer?

What do you know about Ladd Field, near Fairbanks ? During World War II, the Soviets would send pilots there to pick up Lend Lease aircraft. In 1942, the Soviet pilots would spend up to five days training on the new Lend lease planes, before flying them across Siberia towards the Eastern Front.
Do you have any information on what the Soviet pilots were doing in Ladd Field, during the process of receiving these Lend Lease planes. Did the USO ever entertain these Russian pilots ? Did they ever get in trouble, or were they kept at Ladd Field, with no chance to go to Fairbanks ? Some 8,000 aircraft were turned over to the Soviets at Ladd field. It was the shortest route to Moscow.

How does Alaska's flying culture differ from the Lower 48 states? Is there anything specific to Alaska that makes it different from aviation in the rest of the country?

did any modifications have to be made to aircraft to make them flight worthy in alaska, particularly during the winter?

i'm from oklahoma and the most well known bit of alaskan aviation history i know is that wiley post and will rogers died in a crash in alaska due to incompatible mixing of airplane parts

It's 5 pm Alaska time, so I'm going to sign out. Thanks to everyone who asked such great questions and took an interests in "Alaska's Skyboys."

Katie Ringsmuth