Burton Island (AGB 1) - Naval Cruise Book

Page 22 text:

- 'W ,,,, , ,, , '4He has the confidence of all the pilots - that's the most im- portant thing - and of his senior officers. Iwould say that any pilot he briefed would go or not go, on the basis of his forecast. Because they know his previous operation? Cdr Kranz is a meteorologist himself. HLast year, at the beginning of the season, he was aboard the Herc that flew from Punta Arenas, Chile, to McMurdo. That was a hairy one. He evaluated the weather in- formation and held the plane for twenty-four hours. Drummond now comes in the door, as Cdr Kranz goes over to the wardroom for a briefing on Plateau Station. HThe main thing is we were going west into the teeth of the windf, Drummond explains, Hwith no reporting stations west of there - clear to New Zealand. The biggest gap in the world, on the weather map, is between New Zealand and South America. We went over Palmer Peninsula 'for one photo run. We got 95 per- cent. The only reporting station on the way was Byrd. We went to Punta Arenas again, then three days later back to McMurdo - we diverted along the coast to take picturesf, uIt's a parlay, he goes on. c'For instance, youave got McMurdo and Byrd, and if you're taking out a field party to the Sentinels it means the weather has to be good at all three. If you have weather that is c0incz'a'em'aZb1 bad at both McMurdo and Byrd, you only lose so many hours, but if it's consecutivebz bad you lose twice as many. -You add on to this the availability of aircraft - say a plane is down for maintenance - and by the time the plane is perked up your weather is down. '6We get about twelve to seventeen reports in one synoptic period Qevery six hoursj - from the whole Continent. In the States there are four hundred, and they report hourly. Itis like using Chicago, Norfolk, and Kansas City - they 're about the same dis- tance -to forecast the weather in Washington, D.C. Every year it's getting harder, because the scientific parties are going farther out. At first, the traverses were near the coast, or close to Byrd or Pole. But, now, they want to get way out there, like forty people in the Pensacola Mountains, 1,100 miles from here. Take Plateau .... H The wardroom is a ramshackle sort of place. It's where the movies are shown, and a beat-up piano can be made out against a wall in the dim light. The officers who drift in represent all the main divisions of Deep Freeze, and are there to smooth out the wrinkles in a plan that originated a year ago in Washington. It will put eight humans in a new station far out on the ice, in an unexplored area, for two winters to report on weather, geo-mag- netism, aurora, and simply how they feel physically at 11,900 feet, 130 degrees below zero, and in six months of total darkness. Plateau Station will have four vans, 8V2 X SVQ x 36 feet, de- signed to fit inside a Herc, two small geo-magnetism buildings, and one emergency generator building, as well as three Iamesway huts. After an exploratory flight to determine the position of the station, flying at a constant altitude so as to detect any humps or hollows, the original plan is to 4' go in betweenthe 10th and 13th of December, with one knocked-down jamesway hut, three men 20

Page 21 text:

was the first time in history that a plane had landed on the Continent in winter. For missions like this the Navy selects its best men. Garwood, the 'cramrodfl enters wearing a yellow jacket made of bird cloth. He is in charge of aircraft maintenance, and he watches Iohn Giro make himself a cheeseburger the size of a fuel bladder. They take steaks or anything else from this icebox at any hour. The idea is to get nourishment as fast as possible, and get on with the work. ulay jay Grayson, who is in charge of the uFirebird, one of the wheeled uConnies,H can7t bear to see it drawn into such frivolous work as transporting cargo and pas- sengers from 4'Chee-cheev QChristchurchj. He prefers to reserve it for photo-mapping, where three cameras are used simultaneously. The center camera is aimed straight down, and each of the others is at a 60-degree angle to the vertical. Trimetrogon photographs are made approximately every 30 seconds, along a predetermined flight line. uThe reason I,m unreasonable about it, says Gray- son, Mis we've been trying to photograph Roosevelt Island near the Bay of Whales for six years now. The weather always sees us coming, and the island blends into the Ross Ice Shelf so we can 't even see itf' A well is being drilled next to the new head, to reach the wa- ter under 160 feet of ice, and jay jay says, HOne day they suck- ered a trout from the cook and put it on a line. They dropped it in the well and hollered, cGot a bitel' Guys came running over, and when they pulled it up their jaws dropped open .... 7' They are grousing because ASA QSupplyj wonit send them down what they need. Often they have to go up on the Hill to get it. Antarctic Support Activities does the Hhousekeepingw for Deep Freeze: fuel, food, water, sewage, public works, and so on, as well as maintaining all the stations on the ice. When VX-6 moved onto the Strip in October, they found the buildings in a relatively unfinished state, and completed the interior themselves. Someone says, HProbably therepll always be a shortage of equipmentfa They laugh. 'GVX-6 is supporting ASA.', Living on the Strip as Horphansf' neglected by the Hill, makes them closer. As in most remote villages, they are clannish. Last February, the ice began breaking out of the Sound, and they thought the camp, runway, and planes would go to sea. The Heres were used as trucks. Zimmer says, c'We loaded beds, food, honey buckets, everything. They taxied 'em about a mile and a half back. Nobody got any sleep. He recalls two AT's driving D-8 tractors across a crack in the ice. 'cThey did a real job. In the weather room on the Hill, Cdr Art Kranz, acting op- erations officer, is talking about UBulldog7' Drummond. uHe,s one of the most experienced weather forecasters in the Antarctic. That Punta Arenas flight . . .lv He breaks off to look at a mes- sage from the icebreaker Burton Island: WX SAME AS GLA- CIER. BREAKING IN CHANNEL ASTERN GLACIER. WINDS CONTINUE HIGH, EASTERLY AND SOUTHEAST- ERLY. ESTIMATE 20 PERCENT BRASH IN CHANNEL. EVAPORATORS OPERATED AT CAPACITY LAST 24 HOURS. , 19 ,- fl' I

Page 23 text:

from the National Science Foundation, and a radio operator. The question is: can the aircraft get back out, without ex- cessive takeoff attempts P There is very little 'csidei' about who sits where. Capt Don Bursik, the Chief of Staff, with a hawklike profile, takes an un- comfortable folding chair in the shadows. The key figure is the slim young doctor, Lt Tim Cowan, who will command the winter- ing-over party. Yet the beauty of the operation is in its logistics, and Cdr Steve Kauffman, assistant chief of staff, in charge of con- struction, stakes out a high swivel stool for himself. Cdr 'cMoeN Morris, who is responsible for all aircraft as commanding officer of Squadron VX-6, explains that the initial flight will carry only 14,000 pounds payload and therefore no bulldozer. HI do think we ought to position a Traxcavator at the Pole, says Cdr Kauffman. The South Pole willbe the staging area, and he means that the bulldozer should be ready to be flown out to Plateau. uCan three men put up a Tamesway at that altitude ? '7 Arthur Weber wants to know. He is a civilian architect with the Navyis Bureau of Yards and Docks, who designed the vans and will fol- low them to the site. Since' people need oxygen at more than 15,000 feet, Plateau will be near the limits of endurance. Far left: USARP Hal Preston, U. S.WeatherBureau,at the South Pole. Twice a day he sends up balloons that transmit their weather data back to the station by radio, using radar to track them as they are blown by the wind. This work is not without its hazards. A balloon inflation shelter exploded at the Pole on January 31, T966. Luck- ily, no one was inside at the time. Ten SeaBees put up a new shelter in less than two weeks, relocating the re- lease door according to prevailing winds in order to al- low balloons to be released more easily. Lcdr Vince Law in the weather office at McMurdo. Lt Norm Terrell says, Right now, we're running about 90 percent - flights forecast and not aborted. He keeps a forecast verification chart that shows how successful the current forecasting has been. Getting the planes down safely is what we're interested in. He gets upper-layer reports from the balloons that are sent up twice a day, as well as daily reports from foreign stations on the ice. There is also a satellite that gives weather information, which is shared with the Russians and other nations. E WAY'