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[[image No. 139 - black & white photograph of a Wright J-5 engine]]

[[image No. 140 - black & white photograph of Noel Wien and his Stinson biplane]]

[[caption]]After a six-day Alaskan storm, Wien removed the canvas motor covering from his Stinson to find the Wright J-5 engine an icicled mess. The J-5 (139) won fame as the superb powerplant for many Stinson models.[[/caption]]

Noel Wein

His honorary Doctor of Science degree, awarded by the University of Alaska, in May, 1962, tells the story: "In recognition of his pioneer contributions to the development of aviation in the Far North and his distinguished career as an Alaskan."

When Noel Wien became an Alaskan in 1924, after learning to fly in Minneapolis, early in 1921, a series of hectic and heroic events began to change the history of the territory a conniving Secretary of State, William H. Seward, purchased from the Russians in 1867. The year he arrived, Noel became the territory's first man to fly north of the Arctic Circle.

The following year, in June, 1925, he began the first commercial air service between Fairbanks and Nome, and the following month began the first commercial service between Fairbanks and Anchorage. As he developed his business during the next few years founding Wien Alaska Airlines (1927), Noel began to feel the pioneer itch that compelled his family to move from Wisconsin to their Minnesota homestead, earlier in the century. There was this thing about the Bering Sea, and the Bering Strait: the Danish explorer Vitus Bering had crossed the waterway of his discovery in the 1730s and now - nearly 200 years later, maybe by air. On a frozen day in March, 1929, with more guts than good sense, Noel Wien became the first man to complete an Asian-North American roundtrip by air.

[[image - small drawing of a propeller]]

Noel Wien: born Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin, June 8, 1899.