Sometimes funny, the exploits of bush pilot Les Cook on the Alaska Highway Project make great stories. Most stories portray Les as a hero. Cook flew when no one else could or would. He and his plane saved lives. Cook’s plane brought food, mail, emergency equipment and doctors to places no other mode of transportation could access.
Flying with his spare can of gas, his axe, his rifle, his sleeping bag and a bit of extra food, Cook made himself an indispensable part of the project. He flew to all the regiments and to PRA contractors, but his efforts concentrated in Yukon Territory and the soldiers of the 18th the 93rd and 340th regiments thought of him as one of their own.
Cook not only flew when and where no one else could, he also always got the job done—one way or another. But, because he often flew to places where he couldn’t land the plane, his methods yielded sometimes funny results instead of the results he hoped for.
Link to another story “Gillam Weather and a Legendary Bush Pilot”
Delivering a D8 transfer pump, he found the target dozer deep in the wilderness. He put the pump in the mail bag and dropped it. The bag hit the road then bounced and rolled several feet before coming to rest. The pump survived the drop, but it turned the mail into confetti.
Leonard Cox of the 340th remembered Cook’s delivery of, “… a quarter of fresh beef. Now just imagine throwing a beef quarter out the door of a plane which is going 100 miles an hour. After bouncing several times, the beef was in bad shape. The cooks were lucky to salvage half of it.”
One day Cook set out to deliver several cases of steel drift pins along with several cases of canned beets. It took several passes to push all those cases out the door of the plane. He didn’t even know that every single case burst open as it descended through the trees. The result? Drift pins penetrated the trees everywhere and blood red beet juice dripped around the penetrations Observers described the combined effect as the perfect set for a deep woods horror movie.
