Flying On Instinct by L. D. Cross Page B

Marauder bombers left Gowen Field at Boise, Idaho, headed for the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. They were being flown by new members of the 77th Bombardment Squadron, 42nd Bombardment Group, Air Force Combat Command, many of whom had minimal training. On January 16, facing the probability of foul weather, they took off along a 1,000-mile (1,610-kilometre) route to Whitehorse, Yukon. They were equipped with pencil sketches rather than maps and had no electronic navigation aids.
    By 6:00 pm, three of the B-26s were lost, running out of fuel and flying at low altitude because of snow squalls. The crews decided to crash-land at a suitable location, should they be lucky enough to find one. When a fairly wide valley with a flat floor was sighted amid the mountains, they decided to go for it. Two planes landed without incident by keeping their wheels up, which allowed the aircraft’s fuselage to skim over the snow like a boat’s hull. The third plane dropped its landing gear as a braking manoeuvre to losespeed and nosed over into four to five feet (1.2 to 1.5 metres) of snow. Fortunately, the pilot and co-pilot received only minor injuries, and the rest of the crew was unhurt.
    The aircraft were all equipped with survival equipment, so the crews set up camp in the valley. At first light on January 17, a search was begun for the missing planes but was not successful. On January 18, they were spotted by some Curtiss P-40E fighter planes also en route to Alaska. Then “veteran bush pilot Russ Baker” was dispatched to rescue them. He arrived the next morning in a small Fokker equipped with skis and began airlifting the men to Watson Lake, Yukon. It took almost a week for Baker to ferry all 24 crewmen to safety. A few months later, salvage crews were sent to the wreck site to strip the planes of all useable parts, which were then airlifted out. The remaining skeletal frames were abandoned. The valley began to be called Million Dollar Valley, an exaggeration of the cost of the three B-26 bombers.
    For his role in rescuing the air crews, Russ Baker was awarded the United States Air Medal for “exceptional daring and pilotage ability” in January 1942 by President Harry Truman. By the 1960s, only a few of the 5,266 B-26 Marauders manufactured had survived the war or the scrapyard, and aircraft enthusiasts began searching around the world for restorable aircraft. In 1971, the Million Dollar Valley wrecks were rediscovered, and everything that remained was retrieved. By 2006, one of them had been restored to flying condition and another was undergoing restoration.
    Baker worked for his old friend Grant McConachie of CPA as a pilot delivering mail to the North. He was made senior captain and later divisional superintendent for CPA at Whitehorse. It was during his time at CPA that Baker realized there was great business potential for charter aircraft companies. In 1946, he left to co-found Central BC Airways, based in Fort St. James, with fellow pioneer pilot Walter Gilbert. Its mission was to provide reliable air service to those working in mining, forestry, trapping and hunting in western and northern mountain communities where access was constrained by weather, topography and marginal profitability. It was an iffy business proposition, but Baker made it work and bought out Gilbert’s share in the business.
    Baker started with two Beechcraft seaplanes, two employees and a contract with the BC Forest Service. To meet the expanding needs of the Forest Service, he acquired four more aircraft in 1947, and in 1948 became the proud owner of the first Beaver aircraft manufactured by de Havilland.
    In 1947, Russ Baker became the first pilot to set down in the ancient land of the Naha, a wild and rugged area with no roads in and no roads out. Just a bit north of the 60th parallel in Canada’s Northwest Territories, the Nahanni area includes one of the deepest canyon systems in the world and the turbulent Nahanni River,