ANTARCTIC FLIGHT

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 110, 6 November 1933, Page 12

ANTARCTIC FLIGHT

MR. ELLSWORTH'S PLANS

JN THE CAUSE OF SCIENCE

"I'm looking forward lo this Jlight —it's about the last of the groat adventures left; but I don't want people to think that I am going because of the adventure alone —there is a service to be done for science," said Mr. Liueolu Ellsworth; the American explorer, who left today for Dunedin, where he expects to meet his ship, the Wyatt Earp, about November 10, preparatory to proceeding to the Antarctic, where he will attempt to fly across the southern continent and back.

This projected non-stop flight, starting from the Koss Sea, will bo 1450 miles each way, and, Mr. Ellsworth thinks, the longest flight ever made over unknown territory. Once he lias travelled the first outward 300 miles, he ■will be covering a region where, so far as is known, man has never been bofore. Mr. Ellsworth wants to probemysteries of the Antarctic' Continent in the. configuration and arrangement of the area.

"My flight will bo a pioneering effort," he said. "All that I hope to do is build a framework of knowledge, a framework revealing tlio main features along the route of the flight. Other explorers will come after me, to fill in the details."

The flight is planned for about the middle of January. It is expected that if there are no stoppages it will occupy about twenty hours. In those twenty hoars 2000 miles will be covered. Mr. Ellsworth has no doubt that, if necessary, it will be possible to land in the course of the flight. His machine, specially built, is capable of lauding at less than 50 miles an hour, though it has the great maximum air speed of 230 miles an hour.

He hopes to return to New Zealand in March, on liis way back to America.