MAN’S DEATH AT McMURDO

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28179, 18 January 1957, Page 7

MAN’S DEATH AT McMURDO

DIVERS RECOVER BODY

Tne body of the American serviceman who was drowned when a weasel crashed through thin sea ice opposite Hutt Point in McMurdo Sound on Monday morning has been recovered by United States Navy underwater demolition divers.

The drowned man, Ollie B. Bartley, of Kentucky, was with five other men in the weasel when it crashed through the ice just off the route on which the New Zealand tractor trains were running with supplies from the Endeavour to Scott Base. The others escaped unhurt but the frogmen discovered that Bartley had been trapped by the weasel’s radio wiring, which had entangled his arm.

The six men were going from the base to pick up pumps and a hose from fuel barges which are frozen in as reserve tanks. The pumps and hose were to be used to discharge fuel from the ship.

The frogmen, who were flown from the U.S.S. Arneb, which is bound for the Knox coast, recovered the body from water 30 feet deep. Bartley’s death was the seventh since the American Antarctic expedition began. Four United States Navy and Marine men were killed in an aircraft crash in McMurdo Sound on October 19 and two Seabees were killed early last year. One crashed through the ice in a tractor and the other fell into a deep crevasse.