Joe did not much feel like recording an interview today but we visited anyway and he shared a couple more stories that some have heard or read before but were again new to me. He keeps saying he’s told me everything, but I know better. You can’t live as long as Joe has without collecting more stories than will fill even the many hours of tape I’ve captured.

Many thanks to Jim Anderson who pointed me toward Joe’s write-up of some of his wintertime flying adventures in North Dakota as appeared in the Northwest Airlines History Centre newsletter (March 2008 – “Promotion”). Below is a lightly edited version of that write-up of Joe’s, with additional information he shared with me today in italics.

Wintertime Flying in North Dakota

The question of where to live was promptly settled for me by the two young children of my friends Clarence and Janeau Bates. Clarence was managing the station at Fargo and was well settled with his family in a home not far from the airport. Bob and Betty, the two young’uns, immediately upon hearing of my coming, had scoured the neighborhood and found a room for me to rent with their next-door neighbor. This proved to be a very good thing for me, as it was convenient to spend a lot of time with my friends next door.

Under the arrangement for the Company, Clarence and I were to share the flying, and the station managing, alternating between flight one day, station managing the next for each of us. One of Clarence’s talents was a love for ‘ham’ (Amateur) radio. He had a station in his basement where we all spent long hours each evening talking with other ‘hams’ all over the world.

Because of his equipment, and the fact that our airplane had radio installed, we were able to communicate with each other on bad weather days, giving reports on weather conditions at Fargo for the returning pilot. I became very comfortable using his ‘ham’ equipment from his home to advise him about conditions at Fargo. This arrangement proved very beneficial on many occasions as weather reports were usually very scarce, hard to come by, and limited in content.

The route we covered was a branch route to the normal main line which ran between the Twin Cities and Seattle, Washington. There were rarely any passengers desiring to fly between Fargo, Grand Forks, and Pembina but it was an important mail run giving airmail service from Winnipeg, Canada to the United States.

View Wintertime Flying in North Dakota in a larger map

During the winter of  1934-1935, we flew only as far as Pembina where we transferred our mail to Canadian Airways which serviced the route from Winnipeg south to Pembina. Our airplane was the Hamilton, powered with one engine, seats for 5 passengers, and was crewed by one pilot only. It was a wonderful opportunity to gather experience and confidence for a newly updated Captain.

I truly loved the independence of being by myself, making all the decisions and coping with the numerous problems of flight in the winter months. There was little in the way of flight assistance on this route. The CAA, a government agency for servicing airways, was in the process of building a radio range at Pembina, this to provide electronic guidance along the route for the pilot. Without such help, we were confined to navigating by resorting to map reading and dead reckoning (a nice term for guessing your way around). Fargo and Great Falls already had such radio ranges, and the addition of one at Pembina would prove to be most helpful. As a matter of fact, early Spring found the Department of Commerce beginning the process of building a radio range at Pembina. A nice young fellow, John Street, was the engineer in charge of this operation–he and I often shared lunch in town together and grew to be close friends.

And so I developed my skills, and confidence through those winter months, most often flying low to the ground, generally along the highway that served the route. In that desolate part of the country there was never much activity. The few farmers along the route were snowed in and didn’t move about much. Their only activities were taking care of their livestock and awaiting the Spring thaws to begin planting of their crops. With no passengers aboard, we then had no concerns other than to get our flight through and keep from getting into too much trouble.

While the cities of Fargo and Grand Forks had machinery and crews to keep runways open, Pembina had nothing of the sort. Our station manager, Charles Beauvette, had sole responsibility to do whatever he could to keep us operational. In times of deep snow, Charlie would get a team of horses and a disc harrow to drag through the snow, creating a runway of sorts, breaking it up so that it would be possible to land an airplane in it.

We would load several sand bags in the rear baggage bin, behind the passenger door, and this would give additional weight at the rear to keep our plane from nosing over with the heavy drag on the wheels from the snow on landing. Whenever this became difficult, we could then resort to putting the airplane into skis, which was done by taxiing the wheels into buckets built upon the the skis. Straps over the wheels kept them in place in the buckets on the skis and bungee cords attached to the wing struts and tail kept the skis from flopping around. A very poor arrangement at best, but an indication of the attempt by maintenance to provide solutions to some of our flight problems, even though this solution was later abandoned as impractical.

The skis were cumbersome and difficult to maneuver. In fact, with heavy winds on the ground they made it almost impossible to turn the aircraft around. On one flight, 30 mph cross-winds in Fargo kept forcing the Hamilton to weathervane, and the only way to proceed was to keep taxiing across a ditch, into a bordering farmer’s field, finally get turned around and taxi back across the ditch again onto the runway for take-off.

Similar winds in Pembina made it necessary for Charlie to get his team of horses to drag the airplane back to the ramp. [Joe says the skis were in response to concerns raised over wintertime operations the previous winter; with at least one other earlier interview setting the photograph at 1936, it may be that he began operations as a Captain in North Dakota in the winter of 1934-35 and then continued through the winter of 1935-36]

And so, I battled my way through the Winter, enduring ice and blizzards, enjoying the clear days, gaining experience, building my confidence. Of course not everything went smoothly all the time but I was able to cope with the frustrations, particularly those on ‘my’ day of management, when I was cooped up inside doing the motley chores of keeping the office open. This I didn’t care for too much. That wasn’t the best part of my job.

With a bare minimum of flight instruments on the panel, flight was accomplished mostly using ‘seat of the pants’ instincts. We could operate under these circumstances down to weather ceilings of about 200 feet with visibilities as low as ¼ mile, using ground references. Because of the flat terrain on this route we could use these limits throughout the entire length.

On one occasion, I had landed at Pembina after an unusual steady snowfall. With the runway disced and a very strong wind blowing I had difficulty turning my aircraft around. However, I managed, and was able to taxi to the ramp and swivel around. Snow, melting as it was sucked around the engine by the propeller, plastered the windows of the cockpit; my heavy breathing on the inside caused frost to build upon the glass. I thought of having Charlie clean up the windows but it didn’t seem necessary as I believed all of this would evaporate before my departure.

When it came time to leave, I took my seat in the cockpit, all alone of course – no hardy passengers expectantly waiting for a cruise to Fargo. The wind blowing quite strong, and the glass in the cockpit still frosted up, all except for a streak in the right window that was wide open. I could see the bright orange doors of the hangar gleaming through and determined that this would give me enough visibility.

The wind was blowing directly to me as I faced the taxiway to the runway. Because it was so strong, I made the decision to take off from the ramp, knowing that the aircraft would become airborne long before reaching the runway area. Being especially sure to warm up the engine and testing both magnetos and plugs, I applied full power, then unlocked the brakes and began my takeoff run. All went well till I left the area of the orange doors. Then the whiteness of the snow blended in with the frost on the windows-all became white, I was rolling blind, too fast to attempt to stop now.

I looked to my Turn and Bank, an instrument which had a pointer to indicate turning right or left, and a ball in a curved tube to tell whether the wings were level in “coordinated flight”, or dipped in either direction without coordinated yaw (rudder) control [ed. note - quite possibly, it was this difference between "straight and level flight" and "coordinated turn" that caused the issues described further ahead if there was insufficient attention paid to the pointer indicating whether wings were level or not AND coordinated]. I had never before been in such a situation but now had no choice but to glue my eyes to these indicators.

I was airborne almost immediately, carefully flying out. As the flight progressed, the frost on the windows cleared up and, again all was well. I was pleased to find I was able to fly under those circumstances, until my return to Pembina on my next flight. Charlie, at the first opportunity, quizzed me on my takeoff the previous trip.

“Joe, you took off from the ramp didn’t you?”

“Yep,” I said.

Charlie-“What were you trying to do, give us a thrill? I watched you leave the ground and then your left wing dropped down and you made a long slow turn with your left wing tip just off the ground, I thought the wingtip was going to catch the wire on the fence at the south end of the field; boy, was I glad to see you start climbing out of there!”

End of conversation. Can there be any question of a Divine Providence sometimes protecting us from our own stupidities. Not in my mind, at least!

It was inevitable that Spring would come at last, leaving behind the chills of ice and snow, of gale force winds and difficult flights. It is hard to describe the pleasures of flying on a warm Spring day feasting ones eyes on the turf below, blossoming out in all its greenness as the land comes alive once more.

Now, there was more activity. Farmers in the fields, plowing and discing, planting to ensure the coming crops; cars on the highway, people moving about – so much to see. Soon, the melting snows and ice had been absorbed by the thirsty earth, and dry airports were a pleasure of the transient pilot. I had served my apprenticeship, survived and was ready to move on. With the advent of summer came an increase in passenger loads and it was inevitable that I would be moving back to Minneapolis before June to fly on the main line.