ALASKA’S LEGENDARY BUSH PILOTS
LEGENDS ARE SPARKED BY UNBELIEVABLE DEEDS. SO IT WAS FOR ALASKAN BUSH PILOT BOB REEVE WHEN HE ASKED A GROUP OF MOUNTAINEERS TO PUSH HIS AIRPLANE INTO POSITION SO HE COULD TAKE OFF FROM A CLIFF.
In 1937 Reeve had landed famed mountain climber Henry Bradford Washburn and his team on the slopes of 17,146-foot Mount Lucania near the Canadian border with Alaska. Reeve quickly discovered the air was too thin and snow too slushy for his ski-equipped Fairchild 51 to take off. He tried three times. Then he had a crazy idea. Reeve figured if he launched off the cliff the rush of air as he plunged downward would provide the lift he needed.
Washburn vehemently protested, saying it was sure death. “I’m a pilot,” Reeve replied. “You skin your skunk and I’ll skin mine.”
Washburn’s party then pushed the Fairchild into position for Reeve to make a takeoff run off the cliff and were shocked when he actually did just that. The bush pilot went over the cliff and out of view. That was the last Washburn saw of Reeve until a press conference months later when the pilot walked in. Stunned, Washburn stood up, pointed at Reeve and declared he was “the greatest pilot who ever lived!”
Reeve was one of only 50 pilots who flew in the Territory of Alaska before World War II. The period from 1924, when Carl Ben Eielson first took off into the Alaska sky, to the war is considered
