POLAR FLIGHT PICTURES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 162, 10 July 1926, Page 36

POLAR FLIGHT PICTURES.

A THRILLING TRIP.

AEROPLANES FROM SKAGUAY.

MAD RACE TO CIVILISATION.

(From Our Special Correspondent.) SAN FRAXCISCO, June 2. The race to bring the first pictures of the latest of eeries of Polar flights to civilisation proved one of the mostepochal in world annals and International Xewsreel claims to have outstripped all its rivals in printing actual pictures in newspapers and displaying them in various theatres in the United States. The steamship Berengaria brought the first actual motion and still pictures of the flight of Commander Byrd from King's Bay, Spitsbergen, to the North Pole and his return, and of the departure from King's Bay to Teller, Alaska, of Raold Amundsen, together with incidental scenes of these great epics of history. " . There was a mad race in the harbour of New York to get the and films from the ocean greyhound, and before nightfall tho motion pictures of these wonderful achievements were beinrr shown at' leading theatres in New York" Meantime, motion and still pictures of Amundsen's arrival at Teller, Alaska, and of scenes of his Polar flight had reached .Seattle late on the night of Thursday, .May 27, and two days later were being shown at theatres in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other points on the Pacific Coast. Prints of these pictures were rushed east by aeroplanes, t while other planes from New V'.rk carried westward prints of the pictures that had arrived in Xew York on the Berengaria. Thus- was successfully consummated one ot the most amazing exploits of history. Three weeks and three days after Byrd and Amundsen hopped oft" from Spitsbergen for the Pole, thrilling motion pictures of their flights were being exhibited to the public in America. When Peary made his dash to the Xortli Pole in WO9, five months elapsed before the world even knew of his great achievement. The trip of the films from King's Bay, bpitzbergen, to the Berengaria at Southampton, was thrilling in the extreme. The pictures of Commander Byrd's flight from King's Bay to the Pole and return already had been made. Then came Amundsen's unexpected hop-off for the Polar regions, which was photographed together with all the spectacular scenes attending it. All of these films were then rushed to bhe Norwegian gunboat Heimdal, which made a record run to Tromso, Norway. From there they "ere dispatched by aeroplane to Stockholm, Sweden, via Narvick. At Stockholm they -were delivered to George A. Allison, who had flown from London to receive them. • The Norwegian Aero Club arranged for an all-metal plane which flew Allison with the films to Malmo thence to Copenhagen, to Hamburg and Amsterdam. Alhson then took a specially chartered British aeroplane to Southampton, where the precious films were placed aboard the Berengaria. + The sensational trip of the films of Amundsen's arrival at Teller, Alaska, was told in dispatches from Seattle, More than a dozen areoplanes were used in the long and perilous flight to Skaguay, across the Alaskan mountain range with its towering peaks. At Skaguay they were placed aboard the steamer Princess Mary en route from Juneau to Vancouver. In order to save a day's time, T. G. Randolph, representative at Seattle of the film organisation flew from Vancouver to Alert Bay, a distance of 400 miles, where he picked up the films and flew direct to Seattle reaching there on the afternoon of May ZT ■