Burton Island (AGB 1) - Naval Cruise Book

Page 72 text:

cg- gg:-y+7g---l T-442: 'M 5,5-li-TIF'TLT:::L-1 - P-Lil-414241 ,-II1 1 W' 'gr '-5:4---'---.-...-......,. -,. ,. -,. -- -.v..-,-.-.. -,. - .,. . . - '- ---.--..-.. ..-.- .. .ZTlTl1:TL1T:2T':'-'-+--L e'V...L .-......LTL1i7 ---s-....JT. '2Lx.' 77 v-- .-.- rL.:T11:rLT1T-7'rv-.-.-.-.-.v.-.-.-.-.-...- ..- Bernie Pope in the corpenter's shop wintered-over of the Pole. It is so worm below the ice thot he works in his undershirt. The tonk stores the fresh wafer thot comes from the snow-melter. equipment, which is subject to his control. He believes the genera- tor that powers the radio may give trouble in the thin air. 4'I'm going to haveto getitup here and really adjust those carburetorsf' uThe biggest increase in altitude is between sea-level and the Pole, Picciotto points out to Horton. HThere is only 10 percent between here and Plateau. So you just have to take it easy. They will meet at the same point on an endless sheet of ice. His experience is greater than Horton's, but the radio may save his life. This accounts for the intuitive respect between the USARPS and the Navy. The 'chouse mouse for today, the man assigned to clean up, is Ambalada, a swarthy electrician's mate who is in charge of the generator room. At the moment he is washing dishes, but he spent a week recently in the nuclear power plant at McMurdo. Munoz comes in with the other two Argentine pilots. They put themselves out to be charming, since they.feel they have stretched the Navy ts hospitality - from three days to three weeks. Picciotto, I

Page 71 text:

vii iv It will take the SeaBees about three weeks to set up the buildings, but long before that the radio has to be operating. In the mean- time, they will live in tents. uIt is much more comfortable in a tent than in the Sno-Cat, says Picciotto. i'We use a Coleman stove, and I had my shirt off. He was on the same traverse last year, this is his sixth time in the Antarctic. In 1958 he wintered-over at Belgium's Roi Baudouin base, about where the four-year traverse will wind up in 1969, and made the first exploration ofthe interior. One group of his party got lost in the Belgica Mountains and was rescued by Russian DC-3s. Warmth appeals to Horton, since he was born in Maine. He speaks nostalgically of Torremolinos where he spent two weeks while stationed in French Morocco, and he hopes to work his way back to Spain or Italy. Volunteers for Deep Freeze, whenever possible, are given preference in their next assignment. The short- est way to the Mediterranean may be by way of the South Pole. Horton says the radio he will take to Plateau is a KWM-2A, basically the same as the one in the ham shack. A few minutes ago, I was three-way with Byrd and Illinois. Byrd dropped out, but Illinois was loud and clearf, Plateau makes everyone un- easy, simply because they donit know whatthey will find out there. Horton prefers action to uncertainty, and he concentrates on his At left, top: Club 90 at the South Pole, named for the degree of latitude. Movies are shown here every night, and parties are held on Saturday or to celebrate a pro- motion. At one of these affairs, Madeira, the sled dog, grabbed the cook's hat and disappeared under a bench to chew on it. Stew refused to get angry: I gotta keep in good with that dog -in case that plane don't come back. Bottom: A resident at Pole reaches up to remove a panel in the galley so that he can empty a can placed there to catch the drip. This building leaks from the weight of the snow and is one of two scheduled to be replaced in Deep Freeze '67. Below: Stew, the cook. Bobby .loe Davis prepares an unlimited supply of good food for the men at the Pole, and his wisecracks keep them from feeling sorryfor them- selves. He belongs to Antarctic Support Activities, which does the housekeeping on the Continent. Aircraft have replaced the slow tractors that hauled supplies overland, but it takes a large ground force to maintain the planes, and ASA to maintain the ground force. '1' -aI 'f ' ., .J-H-V , P' ' Q 'if w

Page 73 text:

'- who is 45, compares his age with that of Munoz. i'At 38, I was driving with dogs in the Belgica Mountains .... I want torepeat the Amundsen-Scott journeys with dogs, says Munoz, his eyes glowing. In the future they will use Hovercraftf' Picciotto answers gloomily. A hundred yards out on the ice is the cosmic ray hut, where Doug Thompson spent most of last winter counting things that are invisible. These are subatomic particles that come from some- where -in outer space and from the sun. They reach the Poles more easily because they can slide down the earthis lines of mag- netic force instead of ramming through them. Their intensity, though, varies from minute to minute and from year to year, depending on the sun. The International Geophysical Year, which was timed to take advantage of the sun's maximum activity, was the original reason for Operation Deep Freeze and produced an unprecedented ex- change of data. With a new monitor that transmits information to high-speed computers, Thompson was able to detect infinitely more subtle variations in the neutrons, or low-energy cosmic rays, during the period of minimum solar activity H964-55. Its name has a delightful Chinese sound: The International Year of the Quiet Sun. This little hut is one of two high-altitude cosmic ray stations beyond 60 degrees, the other is at Vostok, the Russian base. Led by Madeira, Thompson walked back and forth every day during the six months of darkness to tend his instruments. He installed a hi-fi set, which brings him literally the music of the spheres? At night he spends hours fiddling with the ham radio, gossiping on the most trivial subjects with people all over the globe. When a plane lands, he is invariably on hand to help with loading and unloading. The winter doesn't bother him. By the time he turns things over to Lars Andersson, he will have spent three years, altogether, in the Antarctic. Teilhard de Chardin said that one cause of man's loneliness may be his awareness of the coldness and vastness of the uni- verse, but Thompson is perfectly at home in the solar system. Far from being a mere technician, he sees an overall picture of the upper atmosphere as well as the stunning mosaic of related sciences. Instead of being made lonely by the cosmos, he is re- assured by a series of cosmic coincidences. Byrd Station, for in- stance, is linked with the Great Whale River in Canada, since they are Hconjugate pointsf' or opposite ends of the same magnetic line of force. , In May, 1965, Carl Disch, an ionospheric physicist for the National Bureau of Standards, was visiting a fellow scientist at the radio-noise building, a mile and a half from Byrd. He head- ed back to the air station from the hut, exactly the size of Thomp- son's, and was never seen again. A search was made as far as the old Byrd station, six miles away, and around the 21-mile VLF antenna which lies on the ice, but the darkness and the cold and the wind made it futile. ' 71 Dr. Mike Gadsden of the National Bureau of Standards is one of two principal investigators on a grant from the National Science Foundation for the Study of the Dis- tribution of Sodium at High Latitudes, the Spectral Dis- tribution of Polar Cap Aurora, and Auroral Luminosity Pulsations. The aurora is caused by particles from space that slide down the vertical and near-vertical lines of force around the geomagnetic pole, striking the upper atmosphere and causing it to glow lmore or less like electrons striking a TV picture tubel.