Carl Ben Eielson was born in Hatton, North Dakota to Norwegian immigrant parents. His interest in aviation went back to his childhood. Following America's entry into World War I, Eielson found his chance to become an aviator. Eielson learned to fly in the U.S. Army Air Service in 1917. In January 1918 he enlisted in the newly formed aviation section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. World War I ended while Eielson was in flight training. Eielson returned to North Dakota to help in his father's store and finish his degree at the University of North Dakota. During the winter of 1919-20, he and others founded the Hatton Aero Club, the first flying club in North Dakota. After graduating from the university in 1921, he enrolled at Georgetown Law School in Washington, D.C. Working part-time as a police officer at the Capitol, he met the Alaska Territory's delegate to the Congress, Daniel Sutherland, who persuaded Ben to go to Alaska to teach secondary school.
Career
Eielson soon became the sole pilot for the Farthest North Aviation Company which was formed in 1923. In 1924, he flew the first air mail in Alaska from Fairbanks to McGrath, Alaska in under 3 hours, a distance dog sleds took up to 30 days to cover. He also flew the first air mail fromAtlanta to Jacksonville, Florida in 1926. In March 1927, Australian polar explorer George Hubert Wilkins and Eielson explored the drift ice north of Alaska. They touched down in Eielson's airplane in the first land-plane descent onto drift ice. In April 1928, Eielson and Wilkins flew across the Arctic Ocean in the first flight from North America over the North Pole to Europe. The flight, from Point Barrow to Spitsbergen, covered and took 20 hours. When Eielson accompanied Wilkins on an Antarctic expedition later in 1928, they became the first men to fly over both polar regions of the world in the same year. During the Antarctic summer of 1928-1929, Eielson and Wilkins made air explorations of the Antarctic, charting several islands which were previously unknown. After his return from the Arctic flight, Eielson was asked to establish Alaskan Airways, a subsidiary of the Aviation Corporation of America. In 1929, Eielson died alongside his mechanic Earl Borland in an air crash in Siberia while attempting to evacuate furs and personnel from the Nanuk, a cargo vessel trapped in the ice at North Cape. Their bodies were discovered on February 18th, 1930.
