Burton Island (AGB 1) - Naval Cruise Book

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lit-f A Herc head-on. The fuel situation became so critical that the Hercs had to suspend their flights on December 19, 1965, the same day that the tanker Alatna arrived with JP4. They took to the air again two days later. ii

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7' Ll ' Tiff? 1 I l ,Z 'I T1 'il 1 l il I 5 i Q el l 4 ii is i A F0 rgz'vz'ng Azrcrap The South Pole is 850 miles, as the skua flies, from the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf. The shelf is a Barrier of permanent ice the size of California, in places 1,000 feet thick, about 150 feet of it showing above the sea. It is formed by innumerable glaciers flowing through the Queen Maud Range from the polar plateau. Before the airplane, there were two ways of getting to the P013 across the shelf. In 1908 Shackleton left Hut Point fnow McMurdo Stationj, struggled 400 miles through soft snow, and went up the Beard- more Glacier which is over 100 miles long. It took him two weeks to get past the Glacier, but even before they entered it his party was eating the flesh of the Manchurian ponies they had brought to pull the sledges. Their third day on the Glacier, the last pony fell into a bottomless crevasse. Amundsen started in 1911 from the Bay of Whales, 400 miles east of McMurdo. Due to the southeasterly trend of the mountains, he was able to remain on the relatively flat Barrier for an extra 100 miles, and he discovered the steeper but shorter Axel Heiberg Glacier. He and Shackleton each spent a month on the Barrier, but the N orwegians were pulled on skis by dogs and arrived at the mountains comparatively rested. Scott, who was only weeks behind Amundsen, wrote in his diary on the Beardmore Glacier: HSki are the thing, and here are my tiresome fellow countrymen too prejudiced to have prepared themselves for the event. It costs 3800,000 to put skis on a Hercules, since so few of these aircraft have been fitted with them, and the bottoms are coated with a culinary wonder, Teflon. Wheels retract through the center of the skis, once the aircraft has left the concrete runways of New Zealand. In spite of this outlay, the ice can tear the skis off in a moment. The fact that this delicate assembly of metals and instruments has survived six years in the Terrible South speaks well for its design. With its squat undercarriage, sitting close to the ground, the Herc appears cumbersome. If it required a mighty effort to take off, it would have to be confined to long hauls and long runways. Yet it can get off the ground in 20 seconds. It lands on the world 7s worst surfaces, and in places that were formerly accessible only to the much smaller LC-47. Coming in for a landing, the Herc looks like a gull, the Globemaster, which it replaced, re- sembled a sausage. On the snow runway at McMurdo, 'c319 is turning up. One advantage of the turboprop is that it doesn't have to be preheated like a reciprocating engine. A Herc was forced down once be-, tween McMurdo and Byrd with ice crystals in the fuel, but it was soon repaired. When Cdr Morris of VX-6 was mulling over possible aircraft for future operations, he said, Ulf we were to try to design an airplane for the Antarctic, we would probably come up with the Hercules. 26 W ,f f'. 5 -fW.V5Y.

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From the tail of 319 a ramp has been let down onto the room for a whole nuclear power plant - in sections. The nuclear i snow, another ramp has been hoisted inside the plane, leaving Some ofthe Alaskan huskies kept by the New Zealanders at Scott Base, which is out of sight to the right. Dogs usually last about five seasons. Then they start getting a bit stroppy, says John Murphy. There was one at Hallett that went woot lwolfl. By special permission, under the Antarctic Treaty, they are fed seal meat. plant at McMurdo was prefabricated in a series of c'modules weighing no more than 30,000 pounds each and measuring no more than 878 X 8,87' X 30', so that if necessary they could be shipped in Hercules LC-1305. Under the soaring tail of the Herc comes a tractor that looks, head-on, like a modern sort of owl. It is towing a sled with drums of DFA. The pallets are slid aboard with the help of a winch in the forward part of the cargo space, and secured by W. H. Tam- plet, the plane's loadmaster. In spite of a slight wind, everyone is in high spirits. The optimism of just going somewhere is enough for the '6deadheads,', or passengers, and even the men who work on the ground are enjoying the air after a spell of bad weather. The Antarctic is said to be odorless, but the smell of a fine morning is as real as the Mice blinka' at sea that glances off the clouds from the invisible ice pack. It is the smell of purity. The air, which has been silent, is filled with the sound of engines, the heartbeat of the Continent. To the north, a plume of steam comes from 13,000-foot Mount Erebusg far to the right is Mount Terror - both named for the ships of james Clark Ross who was the first to see this coast, in 1841. Farther still but out of sight, at the eastern end of Ross Island, is Cape Crozier. In 1911, three men from Scott's expedi- tion went there on foot, in absolute darkness, to test their gear and to have a look at the Emperor penguin, the only bird or ani- mal that remains on the Continent in winter. One of the party, Apsley Cherry-Carrard, later called this trip, a mere 50 miles from McMurdo in a straight line, 'fthe worst journey in the worldf' i '!n i,,NXN M N N, Lyff' -A ' ,. ., .V VZ ff .Av .if gf-fq'-5?', ' -lilf f W . . ff ' V, ' ,- 'f 'W-ZYWQK WT A W ' ,jf ,A V fr. rw if V. 5- I A CW .Wea I ' 'rf . - t . . . . . ' 't'i 1 T' 2 5 M, , 3- saga...-a...4,-Y.-4,,,.,v--s.f-.sf-- f' L 'ws ........ nf I-.H