12. THE TRAIL TO MARIE BYRD LAND

One of the squadron's main goals during the first summer of Operation DeepFreeze II was to assist in the setting up a large research station in Marie Byrd Land, about 400 miles southeast of Little America Station V. To accomplish this mission tons of equipment and building materials had to be moved from Little America Station V to the projected site. To accomplish this giant D-8 Caterpillar tractors, pulling large sleds in tandem, were scheduled to move inland over uncharted frozen ice fields.

Before the tractor party could set out on the long journey an advance party of tractors went ahead to lay out the trail. As they proceeded they marked the trail with bright red flags every mile along the way so the main tractor party could navigate by them.

During the previous summer an attempt had been made to lay out a trail following the most direct route possible to the proposed research site. Unfortunately they encountered heavy crevassing and in an attempt to cross this area one of the tractors broke through the surface and the tractor and its driver plunged into a deep crevasse. The driver, a man named Kiel, lost his life in the fall and neither he nor the tractor could be recovered. Our airfield at Little America Station V was later named in his honor.

Our Advance Tractor Party, hoping to avoid this crevasse area, initially went further inland on the Ross Sea Ice Shelf before attempting to cross the crevasses. Even with this precaution being taken they still encountered heavy crevassing and several weeks were spent in dynamiting these cavernous openings in the surface and in using the bulldozer tractors to fill the holes with snow and ice. Once through the crevasse field the advance party was able to establish a fairly smooth trail all the way to where the Marie Byrd Station site was to be located.

Initially our R4D was used to bring dynamite to the Advance Tractor Party because the amount that was needed to fill the crevasses was a lot more than they had taken with them when they left Little America. It should be noted that the fully loaded main tractor group only moved forward at about four miles per hour so it was expected that the entire movement of goods for Marie Byrd Station would take all summer. We were expected to deliver diesel fuel to various staging areas along the marked trail where rubberized fuel tanks had been placed by the Advance Tractor Party for use later by the Main Tractor Party as they proceeded towards Marie Byrd Land. The main party carried only enough fuel to take them to the next fuel tank thus allowing them to carry a maximum amount of cargo on the tandem towed sleds. Our R4D's could carry 800 gallons of diesel fuel in our cabin fuel tanks. There were rubberized fuel tanks every ten miles along the planned tractor trail so many R4D flights had to be planned to get the job done.

Red flags on bamboo poles had been placed along the trail to mark the trail for the tractor train once it started out from Little America. Sometimes we could see these tiny flags while flying low over the trail, but at other times, when our in-flight visibility was obscured by blowing snow or haze we had to rely on our radar to pick up the fuel tanks and occasional metal drums which had been spaced alongside the trail every ten miles. Whenever we arrived at one of the pre-placed fuel tanks we would land and then taxi over the snow so as to get close enough for our enlisted crew members to hook up a hose between our aircraft tanks and the rubberized tanks on the ice. After a time or two our crew became quite proficient at transferring the fuel so we had only to spend a short while on the surface before taking off for a flight back to Little America. On some days we made several of these flights to the trail because the success of the Trail Party depended heavily on our getting fuel cached along the trail.

While long hours were spent on flying these fueling missions our occasional hours of rest and relaxation were spent in Little America where we had been assigned temporary quarters. After a few days we found that living conditions at Little America were considerably different from those of McMurdo Station. There was less hustle and bustle at Little America and since the station consisted of many buildings interconnected by covered tunnels there was less need of going outside as was necessary in McMurdo Station. It was entirely possible for one to stay entirely indoors for days at a time, rather than going out into the cold air. Many workers did just this because their jobs did not require going outside.

During the winter months which followed this most active summer there was one office worker I knew who boasted that he had never gone outside from the day the ship dropped him off at Little America until another came to reclaim him ten months later. For most of us, however, there were times when we had to leave the comfort of the "city life" and face the perils of the outside cold. The outside air at Little America was much colder than it was at McMurdo Station because there were no mountains to block the blowing wind and no hillsides to provide solar radiation. Except on the warmest of days one did not remain long outside unless the job required it.

One of the pleasures of Little America, as compared to McMurdo Station, was that there were few newspaper and television personnel on board to make for unwelcome activity. At McMurdo these gentlemen kept things stirred up as they went about in search of a publishable story. It seemed that they were always in search of a short term "hero", one who could be used for editorial fodder. Since Admiral Dufek's staff was mostly located at McMurdo, and everyone there with a job to do leaned towards the staff for decisions it seemed a natural place for news personnel to seek out story material. At Little America each unit was more independent of command and as a result things got accomplished without having to seek positive authority before starting out. As a result I believe that we were more successful in our operations at Little America than those units located at McMurdo.

Our navigator, Ensign Creech, soon became adept at picking up the pre-positioned fuel tanks on his radar, so we were able to stay over the trail even when visibility became poor. This trail flying was not difficult, however, the repetitious nature of the flights made it difficult to maintain a proper degree of concentration as we proceeded up and down the trail. Since the sun stayed bright 24 hours a day, we flew whenever the weather was acceptable and the body didn't revolt due to fatigue. Folks who were permanent members of Little America Station during the preceding months tended to keep regular hours in their waking and sleeping, so they found it difficult to accept our around-the-clock mode of flight operations. We found it a difficult task as well, but we had a specific timetable given to us by the Admiral's staff and around-the-clock flying happened to be the only way we could meet our deadline.

During the first few flights along the trail it seemed strange to land at a location where the surface was featureless and where there was no object in sight except a lone fuel tank that we had come to fill. In all directions the surface contained no geographic features like hills or bare rocks. Like future landings on the Moon nothing we could see bore any resemblance to things we saw from the air in other parts of the world and the loneliness of a featureless space was oppressive.

At these remote locations we had no runway, no boundary markers, no signals telling us where to land. We had to determine our landing area using the wind direction as our only determinant. Sometimes the surface had been roughened by the wind, producing patterns in the snow called sastrugi. Sometimes these sastrugi were large enough making our landings and takeoffs were quite rough so we had to select landing directions so as to minimize the wear and tear on our landing gear and skis as well as in consideration of the wind direction. Sometimes I would get out of the aircraft after a landing along the trail, when the crew members were transferring fuel. Once away from the noise of the idling engines I would marvel at the silence of the snowscape and the endless view of snow in all directions. Nothing on earth could be quite so peaceful and yet so lonely as that scene before me.

Flight after flight over this vast plain of ice and snow built up a lot of flight time for our log books, but it did little for us emotionally. Inside the aircraft, however, we did develop a close working relationship as crew members, which helped towards completing our flying assignments. Eddie handled the planning of all the flights, the times and the directions we would fly, when we would stop for rest and when we would stop for necessary maintenance work on the aircraft. My job was to act in his stead when he was not available. He might have included me more in the planning stage of these flights, but this was not his nature. He always preferred to do all this on his own, seldom clueing me on what was to take place before it happened. In the air we split the flying time evenly, except for those occasional times when he allowed our navigator, Ensign Creech, to abandon his plotting board to get a little flight time of his own. Mr. Creech who was without navigational experience when he reported to the squadron quickly learned that polar navigation required that he utilize every bit of information he could obtain about the wind, the sun location and his radar to keep track of our flight path over the ice. Basically he had the sun's position in the sky, our gyro-stabilized compass, wind drift measurements and our cockpit visual sightings to help him determine our location over that vast continent, where magnetic compass readings and radio signals were mostly unreliable. In spite of his brief training as a navigator he soon learned his craft and he always got us where we wanted to go and then back to base camp.

Our two enlisted crew members were both top notch men. Our Crew Chief knew our aircraft perfectly and he must have worked often when the rest of us slept because our aircraft was always in tip top condition. I can't remember having missed a flight because of a maintenance problem. He also provided us with delicious in-flight meals which he cooked on a small stove towards the rear of the cabin. Because of the continuous cold in the cockpit, our bodies demanded large amounts of food. Our Crew Chief was always there with piping hot meals to keep us going. Once Eddie spilled an entire bowl of hot soup in the cockpit and it settled to the floor where it soon froze solid. Our Crew Chief must have worked long hours after that flight getting this mess cleaned from the flight deck but he never complained.

Our radio man operated his gear from a tiny compartment behind my cockpit seat and it was his job to send our messages by hand-transmitted code to Little America so our home base could be kept aware of our in-flight situation. He also copied our weather bulletins and any messages from Little America pertaining to our mission. Voice messages didn't carry well over the radio in the Antarctic so sending and receiving coded messages became a necessity once we were away from Little America. Our radio man was uncomplaining and faithful in the performance of his duties. When postflight work had to be done on our aircraft he was there every minute he was needed and I believe, like our Crew Chief, that he often missed sleep just to keep our aircraft from defaulting on a flight mission.

Our flights were mostly satisfying events and we often spent much time talking and joking on the aircraft intercommunications equipment while airborne. Most of our conversation was related to our mission; we seldom talked about home or life back in the States. It seemed we were constantly searching for the next trail marker or fuel cache, and each of us in the cockpit strove to be the first to sight the next ahead.

With the super-bright glare of the Antarctic sunlight bearing down on our eyes for hours at a time our vision would often play tricks on us. Often when looking towards the featureless horizon I would imagine that I could see a dot-like object straight ahead of the aircraft. As I would stare at this object it would seem to move towards the left or right and if I continued to gaze intensely at it, it would soon move over one of my shoulders and disappear behind us. If I would then switch my gaze to the horizon in front of the aircraft the object would again return to a dead ahead position and start again to slide to the left or right side of the aircraft. Watching these imaginary specks on the horizon became a game for me to play to amuse myself on these long flights. I fully realized that the speck on the horizon was only an apparition, however, toying with it helped dispel the boredom during some of the long hours of flying.

One sensation coming from Antarctic flying which I never got over was the cold feet situation. Although we wore lots of Arctic survival clothing and we kept the cockpit as warm as possible the icy aluminum flight deck transmitted the outside cold directly to my feet. As a result my feet remained painfully cold from takeoff to landing and there was nothing I could do to alleviate the pain. I constantly flexed my toes and arches to ensure that frostbite would not set in, but this did not stop the hurting. I believe that all of us in the aircraft hurt from the cold but we erased it from our thinking as much as we could do.

Everything has to end sometime and our Phase One Trail Party experience terminated when we were ordered to return to McMurdo Station. While we were away at Little America the other R4D's had resumed flights to the South Pole and soon it was to be our turn to make that long flight as well. I was not quite sure if we had been relegated to Little America because of our Squadron Operations Officer's hostility towards Eddie but later events gave many indications that this was the case. I don't believe that the emergency fiasco back at Quonset Point, when we couldn't get our skis to retract, had been forgotten and we were purposely removed from the most dangerous flying situations when the South Pole Station was being established, because they were afraid that Eddie might come apart when tough situations arose. Still it was a good feeling to know that we were going to make a South Pole flight while it was still an adventure. 35

Antarctic Facts
- Antarctica's interior is one of the world's major cold deserts. Precipitation (if melted) averages only 1 to 2 inches a year.