Salvage camp on ice for damaged planes

Press, Issue 33846, 19 May 1975, Page 14

Salvage camp on ice for damaged planes

A salvage camp will be built 683 miles from McMurdo Station next summer, where two United States Navy ski-equipped Hercules aircraft, which crashed last summer, will be repaired and. flown to Christchurch or to the United States.

This was decided at a planning conference in the United States earlier this month devoted to ways of salvaging the two Slsm planes. The salvage camp and skiway at Dome C, 683 miles from McMurdo Station, will be built by the National Science Foundation’s public works office, and the Lockheed Company. It is intended to make the aircraft capable of being flown to Christchurch, or the United States, for a complete overhaul. The planning conference was the first of several meetings which will resolve problems associated with the salvage operation. The two aircraft crashed on January 15. One aircraft had gone from McMurdo Station to pick up a joint American-French scientific party but during take-off a

jet-assisted take-off bottle exploded. A fire started, the aircraft skidded round and stopped, and the fire destroyed the wing. Nobody was injured. When a second Hercules arrived to pick up those stranded, its nose ski collapsed, puncturing the fuselage. At one stage late last season, a plan was being considered to tow the aircraft back to McMurdo Station for repairs. It was then thought that surveys would have to be made to see if there was a practical route over* which bulldozers could tow the big planes. Such a tow could last two seasons.

An American partv visited the site of the crash late in January to assess the situation. The conclusion reached then was that the two Hercules could be repaired, but not where they now are.