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| Lieutenant Donaldson with one of his rescuers, Corp. Prince, 1942. |
SNOWY
MOUNTAIN RESCUE
DECEMBER
2010
Note: Most of the
information for this story comes a 1943 Saturday Evening Post article written by one of the
rescuers—Anchor Point’s Milo Fritz, who later gained renown for his medical
work throughout the state and for his three terms in the State House of
Representatives.
When U.S. Army Air Forces sergeants Don Harris and Charles
Michaelis arrived in a fishing boat in the port of Anchorage at two o’clock in
the morning on June 17, 1942, their appearance created an immediate stir among
the military.
The two enlisted men, comprising half of the crew of a
bomber bound for Anchorage, had been missing for more than two weeks. The
aircraft’s last known location had been in a mountainous region west of the
Redoubt volcano—a region on aeronautical maps of the time left blank except for
the word “UNSURVEYED.” An extensive aerial search of the general area at the
time of the disappearance had turned up no sign of the bomber.
In 1942—17 years before Alaska became a state—information
and population in the Cook Inlet region was considerably sparser than it is
today. The 10,197-foot Mount Redoubt was not yet arrayed with sophisticated
seismic and photographic equipment. Across the inlet, Kenai and Ninilchik were
mere fishing villages, many Kasilof residents were still farming foxes, and
homesteading was still five years away in areas that would become known as
Soldotna, Nikiski and Sterling.
Harris and Michaelis informed the authorities that on June 1
their plane had crashed into the side of a volcano that they believed was Mount
Redoubt, and that both their pilot and co-pilot had been injured too badly to
leave the plane. The pilot, Lt. Edward Clark, had either broken or badly
sprained one of his ankles, and the co-pilot, Lt. Joe Donaldson, had suffered a
compound fracture of his lower left leg and had “something wrong with his
eyes.”
After remaining with the aircraft for two days to tend to
the officers and wait out a severe storm, the enlisted men were ordered by the
officers to leave the crash site and attempt to find help. In difficult
conditions and unfamiliar territory, Harris and Michaelis spent the next five
days descending the mountain and traveling overland to the west coast of Cook
Inlet.
At the coast, they discovered a shelter cabin, from which, a
week later, they were able to signal a fishing vessel that rescued them and
delivered them across the inlet to Anchorage. Although lieutenants Clark and
Donaldson had shelter inside the bomber and had been left with provisions,
Harris and Michaelis had no way to know whether they were still alive.
Almost immediately, a reconnaissance flight was ordered.
Included in the flight was Maj. Milo H. Fritz of the Army Medical Corps.
According to Fritz—who would garner renown in later decades as an Alaskan
physician and politician—the skies over Redoubt were overcast, but the clouds
dispersed just enough for the recon crew to spot the plane at an estimated elevation
of 7,500 feet on the southwest flank of the mountain. In that brief glimpse of
the craft, they were unable to discern any movement that might indicate survivors.
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| Major Milo H. Fritz of the Army Medical Corps. |
After he had reported back to commanders in Anchorage, Maj.
Fritz was ordered to lead a rescue mission, and a plan was hastily pieced
together: The rescue team would be taken by boat across the inlet to Redoubt
Bay, which lay directly west of lower Kalgin Island, across the inlet from
Kasilof. They would disembark and make their way overland about 12 to 15 miles
to the mountain, climb and then locate the bomber, rescue the pilots, and
return with them to Redoubt Bay.
As the rescue attempt proceeded — early on, they estimated it
would take only 18 hours once they reached the west coast of the inlet—the
rescuers were soon to learn that they had grossly underestimated their task,
and that their hardiness and determination would have to compensate for the
heaviness of their supplies and their general lack of adequate clothing,
footwear and gear.
And their guide—an experienced 50-something outdoorsman
named Lee Waddell—would have to compensate for some poor military planning and
the rest of the team’s complete ignorance of the countryside.
As the military portion of the rescue crew was being
organized—Sgt. E.I. Robinette Jr., and corporals Earl E. Karnatz, Darrell E.
Prince, Miles H. Prince, Costello W. Pizzutillo, and John W. Garner (all in
their early 20s)—Fritz set about ordering the medical supplies.
The major, who was then in his early 30s, did not scrimp:
“three units of plasma, two ampoules of 50 percent glucose, 12 rolls of prepared
plaster splints, dressings, antiseptic solution, two Thomas splints, adrenalin
in ampoules, and two Stokes litters.”
The litters, which were deemed essential for transporting the
wounded down the rugged mountainside, were constructed from “small-mesh chicken
wire, reinforced with steel” and weighed about 25 pounds apiece.
At 2 p.m.—12 hours after Harris and Michaelis had arrived in
Anchorage—the rescuers were under way.
*****
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| Lower Cook Inlet, according to a 1940s-vintage map. |
They arrived at midnight and then slept on the cabin cruiser
until 4 a.m.
Although Fritz was not specific in describing the landing
site, they probably began their cross-country journey just north of Harriet
Point, and before they departed the cabin cruiser they had to ditch the splints
and most of their tinned military rations because of weight considerations. “If
we had unloaded all that we thought we should bring along, it would have taken
twice our number to handle it, so we had to eliminate what we thought we could
do without,” Fritz said.
At 5 a.m., they began ascending the slope from the coast and
headed inland. On their backs, Waddell, their pathfinder, carried 35 pounds of
supplies and equipment, Fritz about 50, and each of the other men about 60, in
addition to taking turns hauling the heavy litters.
Each man carried a sleeping bag, head net, a .45-caliber
pistol, a knife, gloves, tinned rations, candy bars, and a few extra clothes.
“We each should have had a change of footgear,” rued Fritz, “and I should have
seen to it that each man had sunglasses and a little table salt.”
Following game paths and old hunting and trapping trails,
Waddell led the men in a generally southwestern direction, intent on reaching
Redoubt Creek—Fritz referred to it as the Redoubt River—and following its
channel upstream to the base of the mountain.
Despite the effort required in this sometimes difficult
terrain, Fritz frequently noted the surrounding beauty—blooming violets, active
beavers in small ponds, trumpeting swans, bear tracks, and even the mountain
itself.
By 2 p.m., they reached a stand of spruce trees surrounding
a pair of unnamed lakes—now known as Bear and Wadell lakes—and then began to
hack and pick their way through immense thickets of alders. At 5 p.m.,
exhausted, they made camp.
At 2 a.m., Waddell, who had spent an additional four hours
creating a passable trail through the alders to Redoubt Creek, woke the weary
team and urged them back into action. In order to travel more swiftly—always mindful
that the pilots’ lives were on the line—they decided to leave some of their
gear at this campsite, so they stashed their sleeping bags and more of their
food, and headed out.
Only an hour later, Garner, who had been wearing an infantry
pack that none of them had known must be adjusted to each particular wearer,
was so sore about his kidneys that he could no longer continue. He was sent
back to the previous night’s camp and instructed to wait for their return. As
the remaining members of the rescue team dropped into the Redoubt Creek
drainage, spotted the plane high on the mountain, and made their way west
toward the boulder-strewn glacial moraine in the distance, Garner could not
have known that he would be waiting for more than 48 hours before any member of
the team returned to his camp.
*****
Sometime
between 4 and 5 a.m. on June 20, 1942, Maj. Milo Fritz, now traveling solo
ahead of the rest of the rescue team, crested a ridge of snow high on the
mountain and spotted the wreckage of the airplane, lying on the edge of a
crevasse 200 feet wide. Finally, after approximately 48 hours of overland
travel, Fritz was about to learn whether either of the pilots who had crashed
there 19 days earlier had survived.
Doggedly,
then, in the gusting wind and deep, swirling snow, he began to climb up and
around the crevasse toward the aircraft.
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| The rescuers on the ascent. |
They had clambered onto the boulder-strewn moraine, which
twisted upward into the main rocky bulk of the mountain and became
progressively snowier with increased elevation. High above them they could see
that soon they would be climbing through deep snow and over exposed ridges of
rock.
As they ascended beyond the snowline and onto the high white
slopes, they entered an extended sort of twilight common around Alaska’s summer
solstice. At some point, they hunkered behind a large boulder and munched all
but a pair of their remaining candy bars—saving the final two for the pilots.
At this point, Fritz divested himself of most of his
remaining gear, and continued ahead of the others with plasma and plaster,
figuring that his earlier arrival was most crucial.
On slopes steep enough that he sometimes had to bend low and
grip with his gloved hands, Fritz climbed steadily. Sometimes he sank in drifts
that were hip-deep. Exhausted and having to stop every few steps to catch his
breath, he pushed on until, at about 4 a.m., he had the plane firmly in his
sights.
After rounding the crevasse and sliding carefully down to
the battered bomber, he peered inside and saw something rolled up in a sleeping
bag near the bulkhead behind the pilots’ section.
Fritz was initially dismayed: “Crawling in to investigate
what I thought would surely be a corpse, I was startled to have someone throw
back the covers and say, ‘Who’s there?’ It was Lt. Donaldson, perfectly
rational, but a most pathetic sight.”
Almost immediately, despite his relief at finding someone
alive, Fritz detected the “sick-sweetish stench” of gangrene. He moved outside
and fired a pistol shot to signal the other rescuers, then inspected his
patient and inquired about Lt. Clark.
Donaldson was emaciated, covered with filth and three weeks
of beard, and his eyes were red from hemorrhaging. As he chewed hungrily at the
two chocolate bars Fritz presented, Donaldson told him that Clark had headed
down the mountain five days earlier, bound for the coast.
*****
Soon, they were joined by Karnatz, Darrell Prince and
Waddell—the others had stopped farther down the mountain, too exhausted to
continue—and they cut and fashioned parachute risers into ropes for hauling and
braking the litter once Donaldson had been secured onboard. As the wind
intensified, they strapped in the patient and began trudging with him around
the crevasse and downhill.
They found Miles Prince and Pizzutillo a short distance
below and learned that Robinette, dressed only in coveralls, had stopped even
lower and retreated toward warmer climes. Sharing the burden of the heavy
litter, they all continued their descent, moving easily despite the deep, soft
snow—until they reached the moraine and were forced to carry the litter as they
stumbled around boulders and over porous sand.
At 6 p.m., just above the bed of Redoubt Creek, they stayed
above the drainage until 10 p.m., when they stopped to make camp. Then, while
Waddell hiked back nearly two miles to retrieve their stash of food and
clothing, Fritz and the Prince brothers cleaned and casted Donaldson’s wounds,
which Fritz described as “gangrenous,” “badly infected” and “splintered.”
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| The rescuers during the difficult descent. |
Despite a
situation he referred to as “a nightmare of fatigue,” the doctor did not
entirely lose his sense of humor. While giving Donaldson an I.V. of plasma and
glucose in far less than sanitary circumstances, he remarked that “the
conditions of asepsis … must have made (pioneer of antiseptic surgery, Sir
Joseph) Lister turn 180 degrees in his grave.” He was delighted to note later,
however, that Donaldson seemed to suffer no ill effects.
They were
awakened by the sun at 4 a.m., and the group determined that Waddell should
forge on ahead and try to reach Anchorage for more help. On the way to the
coast, Waddell stopped at their first campsite to retrieve Garner and learned
that Robinette had passed through already, bound for the inlet.
As the main rescue team continued its slow struggle down the
long drainage, Waddell and the others arrived at the coast and were hurried to
Anchorage in the group’s cabin cruiser. On the morning of June 22, Waddell was
inside a small civilian plane, flying over the weary rescue team and dropping a
parachute load of rations to them.
Then, as the thankful men gorged themselves on the food,
Waddell flew back to Anchorage, and then returned with a large group of
volunteer soldiers in a six-passenger Bellanca floatplane, which landed on one
of the twin lakes the rescuers had encountered on their first day.
Eventually, the Bellanca hauled in 13 volunteers, who were
led by Waddell back to the Redoubt Creek drainage. As Waddell then returned to
the lakes for a well-deserved rest, the volunteers moved on until they
encountered the rescuers at 4 a.m. on June 23.
Traveling all day through rugged conditions and voracious
mosquitoes, the entire group arrived at the floatplane shortly after midnight.
Fritz, Donaldson, Waddell, Karnatz and Miles Prince took the first 50-minute
flight out, and by 3:30 a.m. on June 24, Donaldson was in bed in Station
Hospital in Anchorage.
And the next day, Fritz learned that Lt. Clark had also survived.
Just like the sergeants before him, he had managed to walk all the way to the
coast and signal a boat ride to Anchorage.
Despite the horrific condition of his leg, Donaldson did not
have to undergo an amputation. In fact,
Fritz said that “maggots had kept the wound clean,” and the lieutenant was
expected to start flying again later in 1943.
Fifty-seven
years later—after Dr. Milo Fritz, had passed away in his Anchor Point home at
the age of 91—he was memorialized in the Congressional
Record by then-Sen. Ted Stevens, who recalled that Fritz, who had risen to
the rank of command surgeon during his tenure in the Army, had served three
terms in the State House of Representatives, had performed pioneering medical
work with Native children in Bush communities across Alaska, and had received
commendations for rescuing one pilot from Mount Redoubt and another from a
burning plane at Elmendorf Air Force Base.
In spite of the acclaim he had received at the time of the
Redoubt rescue, however, Fritz preferred to share the credit. In the latter
part of a 1943 article he wrote about the rescue for The Saturday Evening Post, Fritz gives credit to the many men who
took part in the adventure—but particularly to Lee Waddell, without whom, he
says, “this rescue mission might well have failed.”
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