Roy Jones History Story - Daily News

By Dave Kiffer

For the Daily News

It was a gorgeous sunny July day around 1 pm as Northbird pilot Roy Jones and his mechanic Gerald Smith approached Revillagigedo Island and Ketchikan from the south. Already the two men could see the scattered houses south of Ketchikan near Mountain Point.

Jones leaned over to Smith and shouted "I'm going to swing in and come down behind Deer Mountain."

The roar of the airplane's 150-horsepower Hispano-Suiza engine was so loud that Jones knew Smith couldn't hear him in the open-air cockpit, he recounted nearly 40 years later in a story for the January, 1961 issue of the Alaska Sportsman magazine, so he just pointed. Smith nodded back.

The two men had left Prince Rupert 90 minutes before and were cruising about 4,000 feet above Revillagigedo Channel at about 60 miles per hours in a Curtiss Flying Boat Jones had purchased from the US Navy and named the "Northbird."

Commercial aviation was about to arrive in Ketchikan - and Alaska - for the first time. The date was July 17, 2022.

One hundred years ago.

"I swung to the right, flying over Revillagigedo Island," Jones wrote in 1961. "Out of sight of the town, behind the mountain, I steered for a close passage of the crest. As we cleared the peak we saw, directly below us at the base of the precipitous north side, the yawning depth of Granite Basin."

Before leaving Prince Rupert - the last stop in a 650-mile, 10-day trip from Seattle - Jones had wired his good friend Jack Talbot, who had arranged for the Ketchikan Commercial Club to help finance the purchase of the Northbird earlier that spring. Jones expected a few people to meet him when the Northbird landed.

The entire town, nearly 3,000 people, turned out.

Past Deer Mountain, Jones - who had learned to fly in the Signal Corps during World War I - throttled back the Hispano-Suiza engine and the plane began to descend as he followed Ketchikan Creek into the city.

"On the flood plain in the lower valley floor after the creek tumbled down the rugged chasm, the powerhouse and ballpark were located," Jones wrote. "Then I noticed that the ball teams were running from the field and the bleachers were fast emptying, as if a general alarm had sounded."

Jones also noticed that the steam whistles at the Ketchikan Spruce Mill and elsewhere were sounding. He couldn't hear them but he could see the steam billowing into the sky. He also noticed as he flew over the docks that people were thronging the downtown streets.

"Must be a fire somewhere," he shouted at Smith.

He was shocked when he realized that the entire town was streaming to the waterfront as Ketchikan's first airplane was arriving.

"I circled twice over the town to let the people know the airplane...was overhead," Jones wrote. "It was a happy time for Smith and me, the pioneering flight completed, so we waved our arms, jumped up and down as much as our safety belts permitted, and beat each other over the shoulders."

After gliding over Pennock Island, Jones set the plane down and was met by his friend Joe Krause, who brought a "racing sea sled" out to help bring the Northbird to "Al Krieder's dock" according to Jones. The Krieder dock was located in the Newtown area north of downtown.

"There was not a landing slip in town safe to approach with idling motor, because of the piling sticking up like naked tree trunks from the water - a severe menace to the fragile wood and linen wings of the aircraft," Jones wrote. "I had to stop the engine and - with the help of Joe and others - warp the ship into the slip. The wharf was packed with people shouting eager, excited greetings that I could barely hear through deafened ears."

Then it got even more chaotic.

First, Jones and Smith were greeted at the dock by Talbot. Then the crowd took over.

"We did not get our feet on solid planking," Jones wrote. "I found myself being carried along above the crowd and looked down to see (Norman) 'Doc' Walker, Lawrence Erickson and Frank Mulally supporting me."

Meanwhile the steam whistles were still sounding, joined by church bells and the siren of the fire truck. They were carried across the downtown and taken to the Pioneers Hall above Front Street where the Pioneers of Alaska just happened to be holding its statewide convention. 

The statewide president of the Pioneers welcomed the aviators whom he called "true pioneers in bringing the airplane to a country which needs it probably more than any other place in the world." 

"We welcome today, not only these aviators who have shown that it is practical to fly to Alaska, but also a brand new era which brings great benefit to all," announced Pioneers President Joe Elmer, Jones recounted later.

Before the week was out, both when would made honorary members of the organization.

"It was a welcome I had not expected," Jones wrote. "For my thoughts had been concentrated upon making a safe flight of more than six hundred and fifty miles over coastal waters to bring my aircraft home," Jones wrote.

Jones himself was not a long term resident of the First City, but had spent two years sailing with the US  Coast and Geodetic Survey in Southeast before World War l. He also spent a year as a regional salesman with the Standard Oil company, based in Seattle, where he had become acquainted with another person who was to cast a long shadow in Alaskan aviation, R.E. "Bob" Ellis.

Jones also had a family connection to Ketchikan.

During a visit several years before he had met Alice Kincaid, whose father was the Citizen's Power and Light powerhouse operator in Ketchikan. Kincaid had lived in Klawock in 1897 before moving his family to Wrangell where Alice was born. The family moved to Ketchikan in 1912. Alice had graduated from Ketchikan High School and then attended the University of Nevada-Reno. After college, she and Jones had married and then moved to Seattle, where their daughter, Dorothy, was born. 

Unfortunately, Alice had died from peritonitis several months after the birth and Jones brought Dorothy back to Ketchikan to live with her grandparents. Jones then decided to purchase a plane and start a flying service in Ketchikan. 

Jones would spend the spring raising money for his flying boat. After returning to Ketchikan in July, he started Northbird Aviation Company immediately by offering flights that very afternoon. The plane would be docked in the Thomas Basin area and, according to George Beck who worked for Jones, charged $10 for a 20-minute flight over the Narrows and the downtown. That would be the equivalent to $173 in 2022.

Besides flightseeing, the company also provided aerial photography and transportation throughout the region, specializing in working with commercial fishing and mining interests.

"President Harding came to Alaska in (June) 1923 and he was very surprised to see an airplane circling overhead as I carried a Fox news photographer, Dick Suratt, to photograph the president as he lay a wreath on the grave of Father William Duncan in Metlakatla," Jones wrote in 1961.

Jones planned to operate for many years, but the Northbird suffered a serious crash in August of 1923 at Heckman Lake and never flew again. Jones tried to keep his company going but was not successful. He ended up working locally in construction and for the US Customs Service for several years.

In 1925, he married schoolteacher Grace Chapman,  and eventually left Ketchikan in 1931 to work for the US Customs Service in Seattle. He retired in 1955 to Vancouver Washington.

In the summer of 1973, Jones was one of the guests at the grand opening of the Ketchikan International Airport on Gravina Island.

He died in 1974 in Vancouver