Flying Cold: The Adventures of Russel Merrill, Pioneer Alaskan Aviator - Softcover

Robert Merrill MacLean, son of Thyra and Russel Merrill, retired in 1994 from the sailmaking business he began as an outgrowth of his involvement in sailboat racing. He was a naval aviator in World War II, earned a degree in industrial engineering at the University of Washington, and later worked as a manager for Todd Shipyards in Seattle. Sean Rossiter is the author of four books, including LEGENDS OF THE AIR (1990), which details the development and use of aircraft at Seattle's Museum of Flight.

Trained as a pilot during World War I, Russel Merrill was determined to spend his life flying. His love of flight lured him from Oregon to Alaska, the far frontier of aviation, where Merrill piloted the first airplanes to fly into Petersburg, Wrangell, Kodiak, and Anchorage. He was an inventive aviator who oce declared he would rather eat beans in Alaska than live in comfort elsewhere. "Flying over uncharted mountain ranges, large bodies fo water, and vast expanses of tundra, Russel Merrill was teh space astronaut of his day... He brought aviation to Anchorage the same year Charles Lindberg flew the Atlantic." - Ted Spencer, Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum. Flying Cold chronicles Merrill's daring 750-mile journey across the Gulf of Alaska in a flying boat with a single small motor, his first rescue mission by air, crash-landings, and strandings. in 1928, Merrill nearly died after being forced down in the Arctic while helping fly a Fox Film Expedition crew to Barrow in northern Alaska, showing up there three weeks later, half dead, but still carrying a cup of rice he had saved for an "emergency."