It was followed by the Buhl Miss Doran, the Breese Aloha, the Travel Air Woolaroc, and the Swallow Dallas Spirit. The Miss Doran, Oklahoma and Dallas Spirit soon returned with difficulties. Only the Miss Doran was able to become airborne again, and by 2 p.m., Loughead knew the Lockheed Vega was the fastest plane in the race. None of the planes carried radio transmitters - all Loughead could do was to await news from Hawaii. The airplanes were supposed to arrive about 1 PM the next day. The next morning, Jim Dole and the Race Committee gathered on Wheeler Field at Honolulu. The Travel Air Woolaroc landed after 26 hours and 16 minutes aloft, and Art Goebel and Bill Davis crawled out to claim the $25,000 first prize. Two hours later, the Breese Aloha landed, and Martin Jensen and Paul Schluter claimed the $10,000 second prize. It became apparent that the Golden Eagle and Miss Doran were down in the Pacific. Despite an extensive air and sea search, no trace of either plane was found. Gloom fell over the Lockheed factory, even though a factory demonstrator Vega was underway. Arctic explorer Captain George Hubert Wilkins had seen the Golden Eagle from his San Francisco hotel window during a test flight. He was so impressed that he went to the Oakland airport to learn more about it. Then he drove to Hollywood and met with Loughead, Northrop, and others and pored over its drawings. He placed an order for the third Vega equipped for Arctic exploration. After flight tests in January 1928, by Eddie Bellande, he said, "She's a pippin!". Wilkins selected Arctic flyer Carl Ben Eielson to pilot the Vega on a planned flight from Barrow Alaska, the northernmost settlement in Alaska, over the Arctic region to the island of Spitsbergen near Norway. After Eielson tested the plane, it was shipped to Fairbanks, Alaska. Eielson and Wilkins then flew it to Barrow. From there, after waiting three weeks for good weather, they took off from a crude ice runway and headed for the island of Spitsbergen. For the first , the weather was clear. Then dense clouds forced frequent course changes. They made landfall at Grant Land in Canada's Northern reaches. Then, as they edged around the northern tip of Greenland, they encountered more bad weather. Within of their goal, they encountered a raging blizzard.