Some nuts and bolts writing news today. My agent is getting ready to send The Map of My Dead Pilots back out again to a new round of editors. She waited through the holidays for obvious reasons (both celebratory and Black Wednesdayish) and now that the dust has settled a bit she thinks it is ready for another go. She remains steadfastly supportive which makes me think there must be something to it so we plug away.

I am working on a bridge chapter in the flying novel right now which forced me to go back to Maps to make sure I hadn't duplicated something already written there. I wanted to mention Ben Eielson and Russ Merrill in passing - just as references - but I knew I had written about Eielson at length in the memoir (a chapter called "Looking for Ben Eielson") and there is only so much to say about him (and his death) so I need to do a few cross checks. As always I was surprised again by how much better the memoir is than the novel - the second book was vastly improved over the first for sure. (I am steadily improving the novel though so it will be quite fine in the end.) A lot of my heart is in the memoir though - it is written as a much more personal reflection of the Company so I can't really help that - but even in writing about Eielson I was more empathetic, or even sad, then I am when writing about him in this book. There is a different tone in some ways (although other chapters like "Our Missing Airman" are quite tender) and I think that is good. When I wrote about Eielson in class I always felt a bit bad for him and how all of his hopes and dreams had gotten away from him. In the novel the narrator is talking to a pilot about Eielson and the exchange reflects the other odd truth about flying Alaska - that even though the past affected contemporary aviation in the state in dozens of different ways, most pilots did not know anything about Eielson (or Merrill for that matter) other than the fact that they were dead and had places named for them. Clearly they were somewhat famous but why was never a question that anyone asked. This is all just more proof that history both escapes us and lives with us (as we endlessly repeat it). Pilots still die exactly the same way that Eielson did 80 years ago; if it wasn't so tragic I would write it as comedy.

On the death of Ben Eielson, from Map:

The delays from damaged aircraft and horrible weather dragged on though, and as one month and then a second went by everyone began to accept there was no miracle big enough for Eielson and Borland. When Joe Crosson saw that piece of metal sticking out of the snow on January 19th, he and Harold Gillam landed and even without the bodies they knew; they knew that any faint and foolish hope was wasted. The aircraft, ninety miles southeast of the Nanuk, was broken in two; the right wing 200 feet from the cabin and the engine torn loose and more than 100 feet away. Crosson determined they hit the ground at what he later termed “flying speed”. No one could have survived. Because of the heavy snow that had fallen since the accident, it was over three more weeks of steady digging until Eielson and Borland’s bodies were recovered. Then there was a further delay until the weather was good enough to fly them back to Alaska. Finally they arrived in Fairbanks, where Ole Eielson was waiting to take his son home.

Why do we all go away?

As recently as July of 2007 five people were killed because a pilot flew into similar conditions as Eielson - and crashed into terrain he could not see. Interestingly in that case there is this addendum to the Probable Cause report:

"According to the FSDO [Flight Standards District Office] manager, the local FSDO had lost inspectors due to downsizing. He reported they had not attempted to observe operators' adherence to weather minimums via ground-based viewing locations along the heavily traveled tour routes, and noted that FAA inspectors used to purchase air tour tickets to provide en route, on-board surveillance, but had not done so for approximately the last 10 years. He noted that additional inspector assistance from other FAA offices was not requested."

In case you missed it, the July accident in which the pilot apparently flew into what another pilot described as a "wall of weather" was a flight seeing flight. He flew into terrain he could not see on a tour flight. Eielson would shake his head at this one - and how commonplace it remains to try and beat the weather. It always wins in the end of course. But that doesn't change the number of pilots willing to play the game, or determined to prove they can somehow outsmart what God and the Devil proved long ago is nobody's plaything but their own.

The bridge chapter is going well.

[Post title is a quote from the pilot who made it through alive - but reported the weather was rapidly deteriorating behind him. The accident pilot was five minutes later and missed the window of visibility. The third pilot in the group took an alternate route and also survived. Post pic of the fog in Glacier Bay - this is a wall of weather coming down.]