Burton Island (AGB 1) - Naval Cruise Book

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A weather balloon at the South Pole. Right: An LC-130 Hercules on the ice at Williams Field, McMurdo. Under the plane's wing, at right, is Observa- tion Hill which shelters McMurdo Station. At left is the Royal Society Range. The permanent ice ot the Ross Shelf, here, is over 100 feet thick, but the runway for wheeled aircraft in the background is on sea or annual ice and may go to sea at any time. I. R. Dantzler, one of the Lockheed Tech. Reps., explains magnaflux, a method of detecting cracks in metal: 'iIf the part is small enough, it can be removed from the plane and subjected to electro-magnetic analysis. You coat the suspect area with mag- netic filings or shavings, and when you polarize it, north and south, the filings will form a wavy line that will be the line of the crack. N Previous types of large cargo planes used in Deep Freeze couldnit handle the rough surfaces found almost everywhere on the Continent, but the Hercules is so successful that it is replacing the overland traverse in which tractor trains reach remote areas. Henry Storm, the lanky bosun's mate who is in charge of refuel- ing at the Pole, says that once the fuel lines iced up on a LC-130, causing it to lose power, and it landed on one engine: That Herc's a real forgiving aircraft. 48 ,

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'-yfg, I ,t- ,...A.T.T,T1T , . f . '- Y - A - - i-- --Y '-- f--ii- The U. S. Navy's Operation Deep Freeze supports scienti- fic studies in the Antarctic with one of the longest and most complex supply operations in the world. Here is the notorious Nineteen Mile Ship. That's how long the USNS Pvt. John R. Towle will have to be in order to hold all the cargo the various units are waiting for. The van being swung over the side was designed in Washington, D.C., built in Calgary, Alberta, put aboard the ship at the Deep Freeze base in Davisville, R.l., and flown from McMurdo to the re motest part of Antarctica. ln spite of modern transport methods, men are as vital to the operation as they were when the early explorers man-hauled their heavy sledges 60 years ago. The van is set on the ice, instead of the quay, so that it can be pulled four miles to the snow runway by a heavy D-8 tractor. The Navy's summer support of the year-round scientific program sponsored by the National Science Foundation requires that all ships and aircraft converge in the Antarctic at precisely the right moment, with the right instruments and materials. The ship shown here has sailed many thousands of miles, making only one round trip per season to furnish the supplies necessary to back up ventures far out on the ice. ix l l i..-E