Robert Reeve

Entrepreneur

Enshrined 1975

1902-1980

A glacier pilot, Robert Reeve arrived in Alaska with no money or even a plane, but he would soon become an important link between Alaskan cities. A glacial landing is extremely dangerous, but Reeve made it look easy. “I didn’t like the looks of it, but I committed myself. Besides, I’d found that if you turn back the first time, it’s liable to become a habit.” A colleague said of him, “I thought Reeve was 90 percent pilot and 10 percent nuts, but now I know he’s 10 percent pilot and 90 percent nuts!

In 1928 he pioneered an airmail route between Chile and Peru.

He went to Alaska in 1932 and made bush flights and supplied gold mines; became known as “The Glacier Pilot” for making 2,000 glacier landings.

In 1941, he surveyed military airfield sites in the Aleutians for the Civil Aeronautics Authority.

He surveyed a rail route across Alaska in 1942.

During World War II he was contracted as the only civilian pilot assigned to the war zone to fly equipment to Alaskan Communication System bases.

After World War II he founded Reeve Aleutian Airways operating from Anchorage to the Aleutian Islands and Pribilof Islands.

Biography

Jimmy Doolittle, who spent his early childhood years in Nome, Alaska, said of Reeve: “Bob Reeve pioneered glacier flying and proved the airplane offered the key to the future of Alaska. He learned the hard way about flying in the below zero weather and he shared his secrets with the military and brother commercial pilots. He risked everything he owned many times to drop supplies to stranded miners or to go in and get them out when they were hurt and needed a doctor and there was no other way. Bob shrugged off the heroics and told them that it was all in a day’s work. Maybe it was, but in those days every flight Bob made was an aviation milestone and in some important way influenced the history of Alaska.”

Robert Campbell Reeve was born in Waunakee, Wisconsin on March 27th, 1902 of an impressive lineage of Yankee ancestors. As a youngster he became a champion skunk trapper and from the age of ten made his clothing and spending money off his trap lines. When he was about eight, he read about the Wright Brothers and when he was eleven the daring flight of Col. Rogers across the United States in only 49 days left a lasting impression.

When he was fifteen, Reeve cashed in his savings account, hitched a ride to Davenport and enlisted in the Army. He saw his first real airplane in 1917. Two years later he took his first joy ride. “I’ll never forget it,” he said later. “It was a thrill few people are privileged to know in the modern airplane.”

Discharged from the Army in 1919 Reeve hitchhiked to San Francisco where he signed on as an ordinary seaman and made his way to Shanghai, China. There he spent two years with the Chinese Maritime Customs Service on the Yangtze and Taku Rivers. In 1921 he was in Vladivostok, Russia, where he finally heeded his father’s pleadings and returned home to complete his high school education and enter the University of Wisconsin in the Fall of 1922. Of the two and a half years he stuck college out, he once said: “I learned to make gin and not to bet on a one-card draw.” While in his last year, he and three friends began cutting classes to go flying with a local barnstormer. Just six months before graduation they were called into the Dean’s office and expelled from the University.

In 1925 Robert Campbell Reeve took his first flying lessons in Florida. In Texas he joined two barnstormers and earned his license as an aircraft mechanic and a pilot. Later, he served briefly as a cadet in the Army Air Corps.

In 1928, Reeve traveled to South America to deliver Ford trimotors to Pan American-Grace Airways and landed the first Tin Goose at Lima, Peru. The following year he became a pilot for the airline, pioneering its 1,900 mile airmail route between Lima, Peru, and Santiago, Chile. He also made aviation history by setting a speed record between the two cities, by making a night flight up the west coast of South America, and by logging 1,500 hours of airmail flying alone.

By 1932, Reeve returned to the United States, but soon stowed away to Alaska. At Valdez he found a wrecked Eaglerock biplane and proceeded to fix it up. When he flew it over Valdez Glacier, Reeve said: “And I thought the Andes were tough.” His first paid charter flight turned out to be two shady ladies who pay $500 to fly to Nome. Then he contracted to fly supplies into the Chisana mine, and began to learn the techniques necessary to fly in the -60 degree weather. When Reeve completed his contract, he purchased a Fairchild 51 cabin plane and took it to Seward, where he was hired to fly a family to Nome. Enroute, they encountered a raging blizzard and Reeve had to land on a frozen river. After 25 hours the weather broke and, when they fly to safety one newspaper reported: “The saga of pilot Bob Reeve and his passengers is another epic of the North.”

It was 1933, and to get a contract to fly supplies into the Big Four mine, Reeve flew up to Brevier Glacier, where he skimmed low over an inclined snow shelf and suddenly smashed into a snow bank. After digging the plane out, he got the plane airborne by taking off down the slope, which was an aviation first. Reeve received additional contracts with other mines. In order to perform gold prospecting of his own in the snow-capped mountains during the summer, Reeve made aviation history again when he took his snow ski-equipped plane off a mud flat in Valdez Bay. This spectacular deed later enabled him to land on Columbia glacier and discover gold.

Reeve purchased a Fairchild 71 cabin plane in 1934. To advertise his two-plane operation, he painted on his shed: “Always use Reeve airways; slow, unreliable, unfair, crooked, scared, unlicensed and nuts.” Despite the humor, he was always ready to fly to the aid of the sick and injured, for such is part of the Alaskan tradition. Newspapers soon dubbed Reeve “The Glacier Pilot.”

When explorer Bradford Washburn inquired if Reeve could help his expedition conquer unclimbed Mount Luciana in 1937, Reeve said: “Anywhere you’ll ride, I’ll fly.” But when he set his Fairchild 51 down on Walsh Glacier, the plane sunk to its belly in a sea of slush. After being trapped on the glacier for five days, Reeve, in a desperate takeoff bid, dove the plane over a 250 foot high ice fall and achieves flying speed just above the bottom. “That was the greatest feeling of my life, bar none!,” he later said.

When Reeve moved his operations to Fairbanks to get a new start in 1940, he left behind a record of 2,000 glacier landings and a million pounds of supplies dropped into Valdez gold mines.

In 1941, when Alaskan defense called for the construction of a dozen airfields, the Civil Aeronautics Authority hired Reeve to survey their sites. Soon, construction of Northway Field began and Reeve started flying in men and materials in his Fairchild. Later, he used a huge Boeing freight plane to finish the job and one month before the U.S. entry into World War II, the field was turned over to the Air Corps. Later, Reeve helped make an urgent survey for a railroad line across Alaska for the Army Corps of Engineers. Afterwards, he went to work for the Civil Aeronautics Authority, flying supplies to the string of new airfields across Alaska.

Reeve then contracted with the Alaskan communications system to transport men and materials all over Alaska and Western Canada, making him the only civilian pilot assigned to the combat zone. Soon the difficult Aleutian Islands became his special territory, as he traveled to areas to which no one else dared to go.

Trouble came on a night in 1943. While piloting a flight to Cold Bay with radar technicians and equipment aboard, Reeve ran into solid fog. When the plane ran out of fuel, he crashed landed it in the surf, but fortunately all made it safely ashore.

When the war ended, Reeve began to develop an airline out to the Aleutian Island chain and to the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea. These areas all had rich fish canning, fur scaling, and military facilities in need of service. Reeve bought a war surplus C-47 and ferried it to Seattle for conversion into a DC-3 airliner. The day that it received its license, a shipping strike took place and passengers wanting to make the trip to Alaska besieged Reeve. In the next 53 days Reeve made 26 round trips and earned enough money to buy three more planes. He then formed Reeve Aleutian Airways to serve the island chains, using military maintained airbases.

After expanding his fleet of planes, in 1948 Reeve received a five-year certificate to operate from Anchorage to Attu and the Pribilof Islands. His 2,500 mile route was the most difficult in the world. But his superior maintenance programs paid off and he earned numerous national safety awards.

After Reeve killed a world record brown bear and received world-wide publicity, he lamented: “No one will ever say again: “There goes old Reeve the glacier pilot.” They’ll say: “Hey, wasn’t that the guy who shot the bear?”

When the government threatened to close the Shemya Airfield in 1949, an all-weather refuge for his planes, Reeve fortunately convinced the Air Force to keep it open and it later became an important base when the Korean War exploded.

By 1950, even though Reeve finally persuaded the government to share the $130,000 a year it has been costing him to maintain the Aleutian Airfields on his own, his airline ran into difficulties. Fortunately, Reeve got a loan that enabled him to get on his feet again and also establish Reeve Aleutian Automotive, an aircraft maintenance firm.

Reeve began to convert to DC-4s and, after 25 years, finally received a permanent operating certificate for his Aleutian route by a special act of Congress in 1956.

Throughout a challenging but rewarding half century career, Robert Campbell Reeve, through amazing personal determination, courage, and dedication played a unique and vital role. He logged 14,000 hours in the air as a barnstormer, airmail and bush pilot. He was also an airline creator and operator and made one of his greatest contributions through his outstanding contributions to the destiny of Alaska and the development of aviation.

Reeve Aleutian Airlines is still owned by the family, and continues to provide a very special personal and vital type of service to the people of the Aleutian Island Chain. “Bob Reeve,” said one resident, “is the only person who ever gave a damn about folks that live on the Aleutians,” “Those of us out here put our faith in God and Bob Reeve,” said another.

Robert Reeve died on August 25th, 1980.

For more information on Robert Reeve, you may want to visit the following websites:

All Star Network
Alaska Journal of Commerce