New Wiki: James Wooten
Writing a new wiki by itself is satisfying. Trying to write them in a historical fashion responsibly keeping out editorial aspects or ergodicity is important and difficult. I refrain by compiling my personal perspectives are posted here.
Here is a new one written from scratch for James Wooten.
Wooten was a transportation entrepreneur in trucking and more importantly in aviation. In a risky move, Wooten, as President of Alaska Airlines, purchased US Army Air Force surplus C-46, DC-3 and DC-4 aircraft without great clarity where the demand would come from to match to this supply.
He reminds me of another logistics risk taker, Malcom McClean. McClean found Liberty ships for sale as war surplus a singular value. This appears obvious with present hindsite given the long lives of these assets, but without it McClean was betting on ships constructed for an operating life of only five years, some of which had been already expended and the demand to match to this supply uncertain. The ships moved to where demand lived - initially Puerto Rico - and later in McClean’s introduction of standardized containers.
Similarly, Wooten saw singular opportunity in the C-47 and C-54 military cargo aircraft (DC-3 and DC-4 respectively in civilian designations) that were mass produced by the United States in WWII but with perhaps there was even more uncertainty that demand for these aircraft would appear. Wooten moved the aircraft to where the demand was to be found. In 1949, that meant Berlin and Aden - two airlifts of different varieties. By the time Wooten left Alaska Airlines, it was the largest non-scheduled freight carrier in the world.
McClean and Wooten both started as entrepreneurs in trucking as teenagers at nearly the same time. There is nothing sexy about 1930’s truckers, dented shipping containers or war weary, ex-USAAF freighters. Yet they all move a lot and so did McClean and Wooten with their organizations - Sealand and Alaska respectively.
The differences between the men are their most significant impacts in retrospective. McClean brought about the changes of containerization. Wooten had no such industrywide methodological change, his accomplishments were more human.
In Operation Magic Carpet (Yemen), Operation Ezra and Nehemiah and Operation Cyrus, Wooten’s aircraft and dedicated pilots moved tens of thousands of Jews out of danger in Yemen, Iraq and Iran to Israel.
Photograph: Al Taylor. Joint Distribution Committee Archives.
https://archives.jdc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NY_15379_cropped.jpg
