ANTARCTIC FLIGHT

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 68, 22 March 1933, Page 7

ANTARCTIC FLIGHT

AMEEICAN PEOJECT

ELLSWORTH AND WILKINS

PARTY AND PROGRAMME

(From "The Post's" Representative.) NEW YORK, March 2.

Lincoln Ellsworth and Sir Hubert Wilkins have practically completed their plans for their .Antarctic expedition. The Fanefjord, a 500-ton Norwegian oil-burning motor-ship, with a crew of nine, wiU leave New York on August 1 for New Zealand, via Cape Town. Ellsworth, Wilkins, and the, pilot, Bernt. Balchen, who flew Admiral Byrd across the South Pole, will travel from San Francisco on August 22 by - the Monterey. They will be accompanied by a radio operator, mechanic, and iperhaps a meteorologist. With Sir Hubert's advice Ellsworth has chosen a 600 h.p. single-engined monoplane, which has already flown 210 miles an hour in tests. The snow-laud-ing gear is now being tested in Northwest Canada. The intention is to mako a base at the Ross Sea and fly across the entire land mass of the continent to Weddell Sea and back—a distance of 2900 miles. Ellsworth will act as navigator during the flight, Wilkins remaining at the base as recorder. Subject to ice conditions, the flight will be made between December 15 and December 31.

TOUCH WITH NORWEGIANS.

On tho other 6ide' of the Antarctic continent, in. Coates Land, near the Weddell. Sea, tho Norwegian explorer, Captain Eiiser-Larsen, will have established his base for his land exploration in that sector. Both leaders will establish radio communication as soon as Ellsworth reaches New Zealand, and arrange a code by which weather reports will be supplied from Weddol Sea. "We shall not try to cross the Polo," Ellsworth says. "We will point easterly for the Filchner shelf ice and Luitpold Land,' 1450 miles, over a part of the globe that no man'seyes have seen. I should prefer to make a one-way flighty of it, starting on the Weddell Sea side, because the great terra incognita is the region lying between the Weddell Sea and the Pole. But conditions seem to preclude such a possibility.' Only two expeditions have ever succeeded in penetrating to the head of the ice-choked waters of this treacherous sea—Weddol], who reached it' in 1823, and Filehner, in 1912. Shackleton, whose objective was a transcontinental sledge crossing from Weddell to Ross Sea, in 1915, saw his ship, the Endurance, crushed by the driving pack-ice, and, after an open-boat journey of 'supreme strife amid heaving waters,' succeeded, with five companions, in traversing the 800 miles to South Georgia for assistance." '

IN EVENT OP TOECED LANDINGS.

Camp equipment, weighing "1001b, will be carried on the aeroplane, for use in the event'of a i'orcod landing. It will include hand sledge, tent, primus stove, cooking utensils, snow shovel, snow knife, saw for cutting snow blocks, ice axe, man harness for hauling sledge, Alpine rope, Alpine axes, two pairs of skiis, medical equipment, and two sleeping bags. Emergency rations, for three months, will be pemmican, chocolate, biscuits, nuts, raisins, and malted milk, all weighing 1751b. Fully loaded, the aeroplane will weight 3 tons 7 cwt.

"To Sir Hubert Wilkins I am indebted for much advice and assistance in forming my plans," says Ellsworth. "In view of the delay in his proposed submarine venture in the Arctic, due to world conditions, he has unselfishly offered to continue this service down to the base in Antarctica." •■