Burton Island (AGB 1) - Naval Cruise Book

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The main entrance at Byrd Station, for both men and vehicles. The monster on tracks is a Nodwell Fire Boss, and the men riding in it are the two top Navy officers of the station: Lt Gordon W. Callender, Officer- in-Charge tleftj, and Lt Robert B. Hunt, the doctor. ciAt Byrd the snow starts picking up at 20 knots, because there's so much of it,', says Lt Norm Terrell in the weather central at McMurdo. HBy the time you get to 30 knots visibility is al- most invariably below minimum. For aircraft itis zero-zero, since blowing snow makes itevenworse as you get closer to the ground. Byrd, the largest inland station, ought to be a citadel, imper- vious to weather. It is entirely underground, but hand-lines are rigged outside for the men who have to reach the antennae, vents, or any of the four scientific towers. In iihand-linen weather, Brent Scudder, who will winter-over for the U. S. Weather Bureau, walks the 200 steps from his quarters to the galley- in-shirtsleeves. 'iWhen the hurricane howls outside, you donjt even know it, he says. c'You can't hear it.'7 The weather station picks it up, SinCC all indicators inside are piped to instruments outside. . Scudder has charge of measuring ozone, a .kind of super- oxygen whose movements can be used to trace air movements into the Antarctic from elsewhere. The ozone instruments are in the Aurora tower, so three times a day -in his shirtsleeves -he climbs a 62-foot ladder which is in aclosed shaft. He has no fear of falling, as the shaft has shelves all the way up. When he gets tired, he just leans back. 'iWhen thereis a storm out there, you know it in the tower. It rocks with a steady motion. Certain measurements require 21 needle to stand still on a dial. Not only does the tower shake the needle but the generator voltage fluctuates as well, so the recorder makes a wavy line. At least it's never blown away. live decided on a 50 mph rule, above which the ozone ob- servations can go hangf' 72 B

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The marvelous Goony-Bird. For thirty years in civil aviation it has been called the DC-3, but the one shown here with skis is the Navy LC-47. Admiral George Dufek landed in a similar plane at the South Pole in l956, the first man to set foot there since Scott left it in l9l2. The Goons are used now for shorter flights, to place scien- tific parties in the field and to resupply them. Goony-Bz'm's y The DC-3 has gone through as many changes as a moulting chick. In the early days of Deep Freeze it was called the R4D or c'Dakota or Skytrain, and the survivors are the LC-117 and LC-47 or 'cGoony-Bird. The crews say this with affection, since they have to admire unpredictability. The LC-117 is a Super- Goon, configured with more power and other modifications. They used to fly to the Pole, but planes designed 30 years ago would have a hard time now, with their piston engines panting as they gain altitude. One of them was held for 17 days in Christchurch once, waiting for a fair wind. In December a Goon was putting a field party in the Horlick Mountains, halfway between Byrd and the Pole, when it caught a ski in the sasirugi - violently contorted waves in the snow made by the wind. Fortunately, only two of the six scientists were aboard and, intentionally, they had enough supplies to be self- sufficient. Later, in the same area, a second Goon suffered strike damage, it was a total loss. For some reason, in these accidents, there are rarely any injuries. When Cdr jerry Driscoll was taking off on the second flight of the season, a propeller came off and sliced through the cockpit, missing him by inches. His mechanic was a tall, supple man with black hair and a two-day beard, named Dan Dompe. This curi- ous name may be a contraction of Don Pedro. He was lucky t0 be sitting down, since ordinarily he is all over the plane, making adjustments with a pair of pump-pliers. The Coon is a 'ado-it-yourself airplane, and Dompe is con- stantly improvising, using everything but friction tape and baling wire. One moment he is aft, and the next he is squeezing past the radioman and the navigator, whose seats seem to have been add- ed as an afterthought, to fix something between the two pil0tS. The ice goes out, at Hallett Station, usually by the Gnd Of November. Since this is the only other runway for wheeled air- craft, the Air Force ends its supplementary flights from New Zea- land as close to that date as possible. Once an aircraft passes PSR fthe point of safe returnj, a little more than halfway from 74 r