Men Put On Weight In Antarctic Winter

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28179, 18 January 1957, Page 14

Men Put On Weight In Antarctic Winter

[From BRIAN O’NEILL, “The Press” correspondent with the United States Navy’s Antarctic Expedition.]

McMURDO SOUND, Jan. 12.

The Navy Department in Washington has been asked to supply new, larger, uniforms for sailors returning to the United States after wintering at bases in the Antarctic last year. The men will be returning home next month.

The retiring officer in charge of the bases, Commander Herbert W. Whitney, says that the men put on as much as 401 b during their 14 months’ stay in the South Polar area. Of the 166 men stationed at bases in McMurdo Sound and Kainan Bay. none lost weight. He himself gained 41b. The Navy took two tons and a half (actually 5195.21 b) in food for each of the Seabees, airmen and four civilians who wintered. This amount included a year’s supply and a 12-months reserve in case ships were unable to reach the bases this summer. Ships Unloading Ships were able to get in and now thev are going about their huge 14,615-ton cargo-hauling job at five different points on the Antarctic coastline. In the freighter Private John R. Towle in McMurdo Sound there is 3668 tons of cargo for the naval air facility there and for the Pole station. and the Beardmore auxiliary facility on the Liv Glacier. Other ships have more than 4000 tons for the Little America and Byrd station outposts; 1000 tons for the joint United StatesNew Zealand station to be established at Cape Hallett: and nearly 3000 tons for each of the Knox coast and Weddell Sea bases.

In the holds of the ships there appears to be everything from spare jet engines to after-shave lotions. There are electric razors, oarts for delicate meteorological instruments. flashbulbs, cigar lighters, paper slips and fire extinguishers. There are three tons of radiosondes and half a ton of weather balloons.

For the base hospitals there are surgical instruments; for the machine shops and power-houses generators and tools; for the mess halls salt shakers; and for sleeping huts innerspring mattresses (two tons and a half of them) and seven rolls of linoleum. Other items are toys, pipe filters, tape recorders, building panels, sled runners, space heaters, filing cabinets. lumber and stationery. Frankfurters by the Ton

The food manifest shows similar variety. Under dry staples alone there is a range from one pound of sesame seed to 55.5801 b of wheat flour. Each man has 43.31 b of coffee and 133.61 b of sugar to last him a year. There is three tons of ice cream mix for the Ross Sea area alone, four tons of frankfurters and hamburgers and two tons of cranberry sauce.

“Grasshoppers”—an item appearing in the food list between

“coffee, roasted” and “vegetables” —is no exotic French dish. Grasshoppers are electronic robots dropped from aircraft by parachute to broadcast weather information. On reaching the ground they automatically stand up on legs, sprout radio antennae and begin transmitting. More than 70001 b of these robots will be dropped into meteorologically useful, but otherwise difficult or inaccessible, country in the next year.