U.S. ICEBREAKERS DAMAGED

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29108, 21 January 1960, Page 7

U.S. ICEBREAKERS DAMAGED

Atka Also Returning For Repairs

Two American icebreakers are out of action as a result of damage caused during their Antarctic service this season.

They are the U.S.S. Glacier, which is at Wellington for dry docking to repair propellers, and the U.S.S. Atka, which has been directed to return to New Zealand from work in the Ross Sea

Propeller bearings in the Atka were “shimmying,” a United States Navy spokesman said in Christchurch yesterday. The Atka, which had just finished breaking H.M.N.Z.S. Endeavour out of ice, would return to Lyttelton at reduced speed and then carry on to Wellington for dry docking, investigation and repairs-

No new propellers are available to be fitted to the Atka. The navy’s deputy-task force commander (Captain E. A. McDonald) said yesterday that the present screws would have “heat treatment and straightening out” -to make them usable again. “We’ll just have to do the best we can,” he said. Captain McDonald said he hoped that the Glacier would be able to be back in Lyttelton by

February 1 before leaving New Zealand for an attempt to penetrate—with the icebreaker Burton Island—the previously unsailed Bellingshausen Sea. The Atka, when repaired, would be sailing south once more this season, he said. »