FLIGHT SOUTH TODAY

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29107, 20 January 1960, Page 14

FLIGHT SOUTH TODAY

Five Hercules For McMurdo

Five Hercules transport planes are due to leave Christchurch this morning for their experimental service in Antarctica, the United States Navy headquarters at Harewood announced yesterday. The ski-equipped planes will be used for supplying inland bases. The first plane will take off at 7 a.m. and will be followed by the others at half hour intervals. Lieutenant-Colonel W. Turk, officer commanding the Hercules squadron, will ’ pilot the flightleading plane. Weather over the flight route was expected to be good with a slight tail wind, a Navy spokesman said. For this reason it had been decided to abandon last week’s plan to send a weather reconnaissance plane from Hobart to fly to the ice edge and return to Christchurch, radioing back information as it went.

• However, a final weather report was being awaited at 5 a.m. today. Including passengers, there would be 70 men aboard the five planes leaving today, the Navy said.

Two more planes of the squadron would probably follow the first flight on Saturday. They would wait for two or three passengers expected to arrive in Christchurch from the United States.

The flight to McMurdo Sound is scheduled to take 7hr 45min. Planes will be met by the American task force commander (RearAdmiral D. M. Tyree) when they land on the Ross Ice Shelf skiway recently prepared for the squadron. The Navy said yesterday that a picket ship, the U.S.S. Peterson, was expected to be on station early this morning about 600 miles south of Dunedin to act as a radio beacon for the planes passing overhead.