Digital Bob Archive

Dr. DeVighne's flying machine had the distinction of being the first airplane owned in Juneau and the second one to fly here, although some others had flown overhead. But it did very little flying and much of its history is obscure.

The crated plane, which was called both a Boeing LWF Bomber and a Boeing No. 3 (and both designations may be correct) arrived on the channel aboard the steamship Spokane on February 26, 1923, and was unloaded at Douglas. It was consigned to Vern Saylor, but the owner was Dr. H.D. DeVighne, a Juneau physician, who had purchased it as Army surplus. One news story a year later seems to indicate that the doctor bought two planes, but if that is true, the second plane disappeared without a trace.

The pontoon-equipped plane was described as having a length of 26 feet, a wingspan of 50 feet, a Hall-Scott engine, and a carrying capacity of two passengers and the pilot. It was painted Army buff and still had military insignia on the lower wing. It was to be assembled and flown by J.C. Hanna, a mechanic at the Marshall-Newman Company of Juneau, and he was, when the plane arrived, in Seattle taking flying lessons.

In May, 1923, however, there was a news story that Dr. DeVighne had put the Hall-Scott airplane engine in his tunnel-stern boat, the Mud Hen, which he was using in connection with Twin Glacier Lodge which he was opening on the Taku River. Then, on August 25, 1923, it was reported that Dr. DeVighne had sold his Boeing plane to the Northbird Aviation Company of Ketchikan. Roy Jones, head of the company, had visited Juneau with the Northbird earlier in the year, then had crashed it near Ketchikan on August 5. He bought the Boeing as a replacement.

The next part of the story is nebulous. Many years later Dean Goodwin of Juneau found a French ariplane engine, a Clerget, in one of the buildings at the old burned-out Port Althorp cannery. He was told that Jones had discarded it there after it burned out some bearings. Subsequently, Goodwin talked with Jones in Vancouver, Washington, where he had retired. Jones said that he had started for Cordova with the Boeing when he lost the engine. Unfortunately, Goodwin did not ask more questions.

The next news story on the Boeing, dated October 6, 1923, states that Jones took the plane to Ketchikan on the haibut schooner Sitka. The only Ketchikan paper, the Chronicle, reported the arrival of the Sitka but did not mention the plane.

On July 28, 1924, The Empire reported the plane had been purchased from Jones by John Dalzelle, a motorman at the Alaska Juneau mine. During World War I he had served in the British Royal Air Force and had 2,000 hours in the air and he intended to bring the plane to Juneau to start a local air service. He had made two flights with Jones at Ketchikan, then, because he was unfamiliar with the country, decided to ship the plane to Juneau on the steamer Yukon. On July 21, before it could be loaded, one pontoon had sprung a leak and the plane had sunk at the Ketchikan dock, almost taking Dalzelle with it. And so ended Dr. DeVighne's flying machine.

Roy Jones was the first man to fly a plane out of Juneau, but when he wrote about his flying adventures in The Alaska Sportsman magazine in 1961, he did not mention the Boeing plane at all. If any reader can furnish other details about the first locally owned airplane, I should like to hear from him.