The Nome Nugget

EVIDENCE FOUND FATE OF RUSSELL MERRILL

ANCHORAGE, Nov 8. (AP)

What is regarded as unquestionable proof that the plane of Russell Merrill, who disappeared September 19, 1929, was wrecked in the waters of Cook Inlet, was brought here in the form of a bank and turn indicator.

The instrument was identified as one of several belonging to John Cook, Anchorage post office employee who loaned them to Merrill just before the fatal flight.

Arthur Coates of Anchorage found the instrument on the beach forty miles from here. Coates said that bones, believed to human ones were seen in the mud and also what appeared to be the fabric of a plane. The incoming tide forced the abandonment of the investigation.

Two boats plying between Cook Inlet points were asked to search for the wreckage.

Merrill was flying from Anchorage to Bristol Bay with heavy machinery when he vanished. Although pieces of airplane fabric were found several times near Anchorage after his disappearance, his fate had never been definitely known.

It will also be recalled that an extensive air search was made for him lasting until around the first of November of that year. Some of the men who took part in that search will never know what his fate was as they too were taken away. Colonel Eielson and his mechanician Borland who flew for a long time down that region looking for Merrill, not even a full month later, were visited by the same fate. They disappeared from the face of the earth, November 9th of that year.

Pilot Dorbandt was another, who was engaged in the search for Merrill and later for Eielson and Borland. At present he has just abandoned the search for Pilot Burke and two companions who have been missing for three weeks on a flight out of Atlin, British Columbia.

At the same time, it will be remembered how Merrill, when on his first flight in this section, was lost on a short trip to Candle. He cracked up on Selawik Lake and was lost for several days before anyone knew of his fate and that of the two passengers he was carrying.

Later Merrill very nearly lost his life while on a flight to Point Barrow accompanied by Noel Wien, when they took the Fox Film company men into that country.

Merrill was over four months regaining his health due to the severe attack of scurvy which he suffered from. Pilot Merrill was flying for the Alaskan Airways Inc. when he lost his life.