Crane Never Owned the Cabin That Held Him 6 Weeks.

On the tenth of March, 1944, a trapper on the Charley River opened his door and found a stranger in the snow with a two-inch black beard. He was Lieutenant Leon Crane, and he had been in the Alaskan interior for 81 days. Eighty-one days earlier, the B-24D Liberator "Iceberg Inez" had taken off from Ladd Field outside Fairbanks at 9:45 in the morning. The unit was the Cold Weather Testing Detachment, and the job that day was a propeller feathering test at altitude. Climbing through a gap in the cloud layer, the number one engine quit and the vacuum selector valve froze. The bomber entered a spin from 20,000 feet. The radio operator, Ralph Wenz, had time to report the engine failure and the spin — but not the aircraft's position. That unfinished sentence sent weeks of searching to the wrong country. Two men reached the hatch. Crane came down hip-deep in snow with a Boy Scout knife, two packs of matches, a silk parachute and no mittens. For nine days he lived on water taken from under the river ice and killed nothing. On the tenth day he found a small cabin, unlocked, stocked with canned food, sugar, powdered milk, a rifle, ammunition and a pair of moose-hide mittens. It belonged to a trapper named Phil Berail, who was thirty miles away in Woodchopper and had no idea anyone was in it. Nine weeks later Crane met Berail in person and asked why. Berail told him it was the custom of Alaskan trappers to keep their cabins well stocked, in case a travelling stranger was ever in need of refuge. This video counts what Crane brought, what he found, and what the record still cannot answer. — NUMBERS AND THE DISAGREEMENTS BETWEEN THEM — The duration appears as 80, 81 and 84 days in different sources. All three are correct and they count different things. 21 December 1943 to 10 March 1944 is 80 days elapsed, 81 days inclusive — the number of days Crane spent in the country. 21 December to 14 March, when he reported to his commanding officer at Ladd Field, is 84 days. 1944 was a leap year and the arithmetic accounts for it. Six further disagreements are left open rather than smoothed over: • How many men jumped. military.com says Crane and Pompeo. NPS says Pompeo "possibly" jumped and no evidence was found. Air & Space Forces says Crane and two others — a third man no other source supports. This video says two. • The mittens. One source says he lost them bailing out, two say he never had any. This video states only the fact they agree on: his hands were bare. • The size of Berail's cabin. 9 by 10 feet in one account, 10 by 12 in another. This video gives no measurement. • How long he rested in the second cabin. Three days, two days and about a week all appear. This video says "a few days". • The date he reached Albert Ames's cabin. 9 March in one source, 10 March in two. This video uses 10 March. • The spelling of the fifth crewman's name: Seibert or Sibert. — WHAT IS NOT IN THIS VIDEO — Brian Murphy's "81 Days Below Zero" (Da Capo, 2015) is the fullest account of this story, and its own preface states that its dialogue and interior passages are extrapolations from Crane's words and from his family's recollections. Facts are taken from it; thoughts and feelings are not. The only words put in Crane's mouth here are two quotations recorded by the National Park Service and one recorded by military.com. — SOURCES — • National Park Service, Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve: "A WWII Survival story from the Charley River" (Crane's own quotations; Lt. Arthur Jordan's diary entry of 14 March 1944) • Wikipedia: "Leon Crane" (radio call times, the vacuum selector valve, the cabin inventory, the sled, the dates, the 2006 recovery) • Air & Space Forces Magazine: "Valor: Alone in the Arctic" • military.com: "How This Airman Survived 3 Months in the Alaskan Wilderness After a World War II Plane Crash" • Anchorage Daily News, 24 December 2023: "Lost in the wilderness for 81 days" • Brian Murphy, "81 Days Below Zero" (Da Capo Press, 2015) • University of Alaska Anchorage, Archives and Special Collections, HMC-0093: "Leon Crane photographs" (not digitised; the archive does not hold copyright) Harold Hoskin was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honours on 7 September 2007. Richard Pompeo has never been found. == Image Credits == All footage licensed from Pexels and Pixabay. No AI-generated imagery is used on this channel. --- == Image Credits (The Years Alone) == Video: Crane Never Owned the Cabin That Held Him 6 Weeks. Source and licence information for the visual assets used in this video's thumbnail (TASL: Title — Author — Source — License): B-24D Liberator — U.S. Army Air Forces — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... — Public domain Modifications: Background sky removed (aircraft cut out); cropped and colour-adjusted for the thumbnail. Image content unaltered.