BUILDING POLAR BASES

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27873, 23 January 1956, Page 11

BUILDING POLAR BASES

Progress Of U.S. Task Force (Rec. 12.15 a.m.) McMURDO SOUND, Jan. <22. After less than a month in the Antarctic, “Operation Deepfreeze” has two expanding bridgeheads on the world’s least inviting continent. “The worst is over—we are now well into the final phase,’’ said Rear-Admiral George J. Dufek, commander of the task force.

The main base to be used in the next few years by international geophysical year scientists is well along at Kainan Bay, Little America, 400 miles to the east on the flat, windswept Ross sea ice shelf. Here in McMurdo Sound, the Navy has begun building an air base under difficult conditions. Work at Little America V has been progressing according to plan. The whole operation at McMurdo Sound has been a series of improvisations. The ice in the bay was strong enough to support an airfield for 32-ton planes. It was'too tough for the cargo ships to be led through. When the expedition’s four big planes landed here from New Zealand, the first problem was to fuel them for long exploratory flights. The airstrip was 30 miles south of the edge of the McMurdo bay ice. Tractors took too long to carry fuel and they were needed elsewhere. At first, helicopters carried fuel in rubber gas tanks from the ships to the planes, but they could not carry enough. Then two planes themselves —a pair of ski-equipped twin-engined Neptunes—flew 30 miles to the tanker Nespelen and ferried fuel back to the strip. Later, it was decided to bring the planes to the ships. Before each long flight, planes were flown from the landing strip to the ice edge, fuelled from the Nespelen and sent on their way. Exploratory flights were made while the fliers had no real base. Captain G. L. Ketchum, deputy task force commander, was trying to build an airbase while keeping the planes flying. The ice had the icebreakers Edisto and Eastwind stopped. It was so thick that they could not penetrate even half a ship’s length. At that point, the Glacier, the Navy’s newest and biggest icebreaker, arrived from Little America. In 20 hours, she carved out a channel 18 miles towards the operating site. The three icebreakers were able to start ferrying cargo and moving it up the bay. About 700 square miles of ice were blown out to sea, permitting cargo ships to steam within 12 miles of Hut point. Admiral Dufek and his staff knew that the ice holding the planes might break up any day as a big crack had formed to the north behind the landing strip. “This was the toughest decision I had to make,” Admiral Dufek said. “We had made six long-range flights. I thought it important to make three more into the interior. The risk was obvious if we kept the planes here. They were in danger of being lost floating out to sea. There was no danger to personnel. We could have evacuated them easily by helicopter. We decided to take a gamble.”