On October 25, 1957, after a local test flight, in which we checked out our
aircraft after that long over water flight from New Zealand, we then departed
McMurdo Station on our first operational mission of the summer season. While
the other three Squadron R4D's began establishing a weather and refueling
station at a site halfway to the South Pole, we were sent to Little America
Station V, which was about 575 miles east of McMurdo Station. Little America
FIVE Station had been established the year prior to my arrival in the
Antarctic and since it had been eight months since that station had received
visitors, our arrival there with mail, cargo and relieving personnel was
expected to be a welcome one. 27 & 28
The surface of the ice between McMurdo Station and Little America Station
was both interesting and beautiful so the flight between the two locations
was always interesting. After leaving the ice runway at McMurdo we flew
eastwards with Mount Erebus and Mount Terror on our left and the smooth ice
shelf below us, extending itself towards the southern horizon without
discernible features. Both mountains had a heavy mantle of snow and appeared
massive and stark against the smooth ice shelf below us. Both mountains had
their own individual aspects. Erebus was craggy and imposing, with a large
plume of smoke coming from its volcanic mouth. Terror had softer lines and
appeared less stern and forbidding than Erebus. Mount Terror had once been an
active volcano, but it has been quiet for centuries and its surface has been
smoothed somewhat from the wear of time. The surface of the ice shelf was not
absolutely smooth but showed small disturbances called sastrugi, caused by
the scouring of the surface by the wind. From our altitude of about 500 feet
over the surface the sastrugi effect was somewhat apparent but down lower the
roughness could be seen more clearly.
After leaving behind both island mountains our flight path took us to where
the ice shelf met the open sea. Here the edge of the ice stopped abruptly,
leaving a sheer icy cliff about 125 feet high. This 500 mile long ice cliff
was in the state of constant change. As the waves of the sea pounded against
it during summer months and as the warmer water below melted it, large chunks
of ice, sometimes several miles long in size, would calve off and fall into
the open sea. These pieces of the ice shelf then became icebergs and floated
northwards, moved by the wind and ocean currents. In time I noted that if we
had several days of high winds and unruly seas, the debris from the fallen
cliffs would cover the ocean for as far as one could see grouping itself into
a vista of seemingly unending floating icebergs. Since these floating
icebergs were readily available, the seals would often cover them as they
rested from their fishing forays.
The ice shelf below our flight path was called the Ross Sea Ice Shelf and it
was about 600 miles long and about 600 miles wide, and it contained the ice
pushed down from the Antarctic Continent by numerous glaciers over thousands
of years gone by. The ice itself was several hundred feet thick and floated
on the ocean below. Though it rose and fell with the tides, its motion was
indiscernible to those who lived on it and one soon forgot that below the
place where one worked and existed 24 hours a day took place over a 5000 foot
deep ocean and not over land. The ice shelf was attached to land on three
sides and where the ice met the land there was a considerable amount of
fracturing caused by the rise and fall of the tides. Later in the summer our
large cargo-carrying tractor trains experienced considerable difficulty with
these tidal fractures on the surface and it took considerable snow bridging
to make the route they traveled across these tidal cracks safe.
For the most part the surface of the ice shelf was smooth and we were able
to safely land our R4D's just about anywhere we needed to without expecting
difficulty. This massive ice shelf also moved northward as more ice was
pushed towards the sea from the numerous glaciers, and in its passage it
occasionally moved over a submerged island or some rocky formation just below
sea level. Wherever this occurred the surface of the ice shelf became
disturbed and exhibited strange characteristics. Within fifty miles of Little
America Station there was a surface feature called Roosevelt Island which was
about thirty miles long where a section of the ice shelf passed over a
submerged rock or island . The ice shelf in this region rose up into a smooth
dome several hundred feet high and could be seen from a considerable distance
away.
On this, our first navigational flight in the Antarctic, I was amazed how
clear the air was in all directions. Since there was no haze we were able to
see hundreds of miles in all directions. Mountains which appeared to be close
were according to the maps actually a long distance away and though we were
traveling at speeds around 150 miles per hour they receded from our view very
slowly. Objects appearing ahead of us often seemed closer than they actually
were and our judgment of distance was often in error by a factor of three or
four. We learned in time to measure our distances by using our aircraft
radar, instead of depending on our eyeball estimates. Most of our flights
over the ice shelf were made at 500 feet above the surface because there were
no hills or rises which we might fly into and it was an ideal height to pick
up small objects on the surface which we couldn't have detected from higher
altitudes.
On this first flight to Little America we discovered that the edge of the
ice shelf was a perfect navigational feature for our purposes, for it proved
to be a straight line pointing to Little America Station and all we had to do
was to follow this line of cliffs and be certain that we would reach our
destination. Even when visibility was poor enroute or when clouds covered the
surface we were able to use the coastline for navigation purposes because the
reflective light from the ice cap and the dark ocean water came through the
clouds giving a sure indication where the ice shelf stopped and where the
ocean began. On this early summer flight the ocean was still frozen solid and
there was no dark water below us, but within a few weeks the ice would move
away from the cliffs and the contrast between the two would become apparent.
About forty miles before reaching Little America we passed over a small
inlet, called Kainan Bay, which had been used by Rear Admiral Byrd when he
established the Little America Station in the year 1935, as well as
subsequent years when his expeditions took him to Antarctica. This bay had
been carved in the ice shelf as the ice flowed over the submerged Roosevelt
Island. Here the ice shelf was thinner than elsewhere and the cliffs were low
enough that ships could unload their cargo without too much difficulty. In
Rear Admiral Byrd's time the inlet, called the Bay of Whales, was deeper than
when I saw it so it was quite a haven for his off loading operation, but less
impressive in 1957 when we flew over it. Later in my stay in the Antarctic I
was able to explore Admiral Byrd's old camp and I will tell of it later in
the story.
After passing the old Little America Station, we were able to establish
radio communications with the control tower at the newer Little America
Station FIVE. Being the only aircraft in the air within a 500 mile radius,
the control tower operator gave us clearance to land without hesitation. This
was to be my first snow ski landing and I was surprised at how smooth it was.
Since the runway had been scraped and leveled by one of the station's
tractors, it made the surface a lot smoother than it would have been
otherwise. After landing we parked next to the small airport terminal
building and proceeded to debark. Since the personnel there at Little America
had not been visited for about eight months, they gave us a warm welcome.
Our enlisted crew members were left behind to refuel the aircraft for the
flight back to McMurdo Station, while the three officers, Eddie, Ensign
Creech and I were driven by a tracked vehicle to Little America itself, which
was about a mile away. I was surprised to find that although the buildings
had been assembled just eight months earlier, they were entirely covered by
snow. Only the smoke stacks and radio antennas rose above the level of the
snow. We were soon to find that any tool left outside for a short period of
time was soon covered over by blowing snow, so the buildings being larger
stopped a lot of blowing snow and thus they were soon covered. Considerable
amounts of equipment had been lost in the first year of Antarctic operations
because there was no time available to store it inside of buildings and once
it got covered by snow it was almost impossible to locate.
We discovered right away that Little America was a much different place than
McMurdo, mostly because it was located on packed snow and not on solid land
like McMurdo. Winter or Summer it was colder at Little America because
everything surrounding Little America was snow and at McMurdo there was the
black soil which radiated heat in the summer and the hills which blocked some
of the icy winds as well. It deserves mentioning, however, that the snow
immediately surrounding Little America was not white but dark gray. Although
the snow was white when it fell, the constantly running generator engines and
tractor engines spread a film of carbon over the surface which made the camp
surroundings look dingy.
The buildings were large at both stations, however, differently constructed.
McMurdo had Quonset Hut buildings, which were developed during World War II
and Little America had buildings which were cubicle in shape, with flat
roofs. These Little America buildings were built and pre-assembled in the
States and when they were fitted properly they were disassembled and shipped
to the Antarctic where they were reassembled. The walls of both types of
buildings were heavily insulated and did a remarkable job of keeping out the
cold.
On entering Little America buildings we were surprised to note that we had
to step down into them because the snow outside the buildings had collected
so as to be several feet higher than the inside floor. All this accumulation
had taken place in the eight to ten months since the buildings were put
together. We also noted that the outside doors all opened inwardly because
the snow piled up outside the door during the night and had to be shoveled
away every morning before work could commence outside. In all there were
about twelve large buildings at the main site of Little America and they were
all connected by one unheated tunnel which ran the length of the camp.
Although the temperature in the tunnel was below freezing, the snow covering
kept the wind out, so you could move about in the tunnel without wearing
heavy outside clothing.
We were first taken to the building which housed the officers who had
wintered over during DeepFreeze I. I was surprised and taken aback at the
appearance and manner of these men, whom we would have thought would have
been overjoyed at seeing us, the first visitors of the summer. Since we wore
bright, new arctic-style clothing, it was not surprising to find that the
long winter months of hard work had taken its toll on their wearing apparel.
Some were dressed in tattered and torn items. What was surprising, though,
was that everyone there was so unkempt and dishevelled, and uncaring about
their physical appearance. The second surprising thing about these officers
was how nervous they seemed and how suspicious they seemed of us, the
newcomers. The senior officer of the group had a large beard and as we talked
with him his fingers either shook badly, or he engaged them in twisting his
beard continuously. I later commented to Eddie that I hoped that when my
forthcoming wintering-over period had approached its ending that I wouldn't
exhibit these same characteristics. Looking back to that time when I, too,
ended my stay on the Ice, I can truthfully say that I survived the rigors of
the Antarctic winter without any of the signs of exhaustion shown by these
Little America men.
After this brief meeting with the station officers and a meal in the station
dining room, we were escorted back to the airfield, where we made
preparations to return to McMurdo. I was asked to help carry an R4D aileron
from the Operations Building to the aircraft, a distance of about fifty
yards. The aileron which was part of the wing of the R4D had been brought to
Little America by ship and in off loading it on to the ice shelf it was
damaged. We were taking it to McMurdo for repairs. At that time I was wearing
a pair of woolen mittens, instead of the leather fleece-lined gloves the
other men were wearing. I thought they were adequate for doing the lifting
that needed to be done but the intense cold of this metal part instantly
seeped through the gloves and by the time we were halfway to the aircraft my
hands became extremely pained by the cold. I couldn't afford to let go my end
of the aileron for fear of letting it fall to the snow and thus damage it
further, so I forced myself to continue carrying this heavy item until it was
safely loaded into the cabin of the aircraft. As the blood returned to my
frozen fingers, I experienced the greatest pain I had ever known. I sat in
the Operations Building for at least 30 minutes with pain showing all over my
face and tears rolling down my cheeks as well. Those mittens might have been
adequate for moderate temperatures but were useless in the Antarctic, so I
never wore them again.
As soon as my hands were usable again, we said our brief good-byes to the
Little America personnel and we started the engines for our return trip to
McMurdo. Taxiing the aircraft on skis was a different experience from what it
was when we maneuvered the aircraft on solid ground, or on the ice runway at
McMurdo. Whenever we parked after a flight our skis froze to the surface of
the snow and when we started to taxi it would take full power on both engines
to get the aircraft to move forward. Once the aircraft started moving
forward, the power would then be reduced so as not to taxi too fast. When
taxiing on a hard surface the wheel brakes would slow the forward motion and
the rudder would control the direction. With skis we had to use differential
power settings, plus the rudder, to get directional control. Since we had no
brakes with the skis it took more judgment as to when to reduce power so as
not to overshoot the place where we wanted to stop.
The takeoff from the Little America snow runway was smoother than I had
expected but it took more of a takeoff run to get airborne than it would have
on a hard runway. Once airborne we headed for McMurdo and since there were no
planes in the air at McMurdo, nor any well south of New Zealand, Australia,
South America and Africa at the time, you might consider that we had a large
expanse of the southern part of the world all to ourselves. The weather
remained clear throughout the flight and although it was after midnight when
we arrived at McMurdo the sun was still high on the horizon. It was going to
take a little while to get used to this constant daylight. Few senior
officers were still up when we returned to our quarters so we had to wait
until the next day to debrief on our mission. 29
Antarctic Facts
- Antarctica has three points that are called "south poles."
The best known is the geographic south Pole, at 90 degrees S. latitude. It is
at the axis of the Earth's rotation. The geomagnetic pole is at about 78
degrees S. 110 degrees E., in East Antarctica; it is the center of the
Southern Hemisphere auroras. The magnetic south pole is the area toward which
compasses point; it is just off the Adelie Coast at about 65 degrees S. 140
degrees E.
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