HARD WORK

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 50, 28 February 1934, Page 10

HARD WORK

SERVICE WITH BYRD

NEW ZEALANDER. RETURNS

HAY ENTER BIG AIR RACE

Service with tho Byrd Antarctic Expedition means hard work and littlo more, according to Mr. E. N. Griffiths, of Wellington, who returned to Port Chalmers on the Jacob Ruppert after an absence of two and a half months with the. expedition as pilot-mechanic.

Speaking to n "Post" reporter today, Mr. Griffiths said that at times he had worked up to fifty hours without sleep, 'find ■on. one- occasion .ho -and others had' had only four hours' sleep in ninety hours, Tho circumstances were exceptional, of course, but ho believed thai; tho aviation department normally worked harder than any other unit of the expedition. , It took half a day to get the Condor ready for tho first test flights from tho ship, and the same time to get tho machine back on board and snugged down. For several hours before : a flight was, undertaken the engines were warmed up and then tho. oil, which had been kept hot on the ship, was poured in. Special fuel was used, as much as 800 or 900 gallons being put into the tanks for a long flight. rUEL JETTISONED. Mr. Griffiths recalled one occasion when bad weather sprang up as the Condor was about to leave tho ship. The dump-valves in the tanks were lifted without hesitation, and inside a minuto 500 gallons of costly fuel' had been discharged into tho sea.', Then, withxall haste, tlio machine was lifted back on to the Jacob Ruppert arid made fast. Sometimes, ho said, tho Condor would bo back on board only a short time and conditions would change sufficiently to warrant a flight being made. Then the whole weary process had to be gone through again. With the additional work of assembling the.Fokkcr, tho Pilgrim, and the autogiro,the aviation department was kept extremely busy. The cold was intense when working with exposed hands on tho machines, and a man1 could only do one small operation before having to warm his hands. " , ARDUOUS EXPERIENCE. One of Mr. Griffiths' most arduous "experiences, was'when he and another man had to stand on tho pontoons of the Condor pushing off ice floes with long poles for nearly nine hours. Although many of the floes ' were big ones, the Condor suffered no damage.

• Mr. Griffiths travelled in the Condor on one of the test flights, and was impressed by, the beauty' of tho spenes and the way in which the Jacob Buppert was dwarfed by her, surroundings. On the whole the flying conditions were no"t nearly as bad :as some1 messages had reported. Landing on the ice was a tricky business,. but after some experience it. was not so bad. On the question of high; winds, Mr. Griffiths said that there had been a good deal of exaggeration about them. ■' The recordsi made by Scott and Amundsen showed' that the highest winds- they experienced, were 88 miles aii hour, and he believed that tho average for Little. America was. less than' Wellington's. / A CRASH AVERTED. , ■ Thrills were few and far between, Mr. Griffiths continued, but there was plenty of excitement in the landing of the- Condor by Harold June, chief aviation officer, when the snow^ skis were found to^be hanging down?almost vertically owing'to the shock cords being stretched by the. downdraught from the propellers. June brought the Condor down to within two feet of, the ice and then put her nose, up sharply, causing the skis to be flicked momentarily into their normal position.- Precisely at the right moment ho put the Condor down 'on the ice,: landing with/out the slightest damage. Only about twenty .members of the expedition saw the. incident,; and they, all expected' the machine to crash.

"A; remarkable feature of conditions at Little America was that no rust was found on any part of. the aeroplanes that had -been,left ; behind 'by ~ the previous, expeditions, or on .any metal in the settlement buildings,* although they .were buried under many feet of sno;W. In the old administration building at Little America, left in a hurry by Byrd arid his party four years ago, they found everything,precisely, as it had been left. The remains of a meal were stillon.the table, butter on plates and knives^' and; meat:cooked and ready to eat, apart from the fact'that it was frozen solid. By way of experiment some of the meat was thawed out. arid appeared to be- quite wholesome, but no onb;.tried it. ''-■.Practically all the unbroken stores left' behind by the previous expedition were in perfect order,'and_ during the time Mr. Griffiths was at Little America the party used these stores as their main food supply, including New Zealand honey, as good arid palatable as ever.

■ Mr/ Griffiths said that when lie left New Zealand; he had intended to remain in the Antarctic through the winter and the coming summer, probably as.one of the pilots on the Fairchild, one of tho machines left behind in 1930 (and- found to bo in easily repairable condition), but the success of his negotiations by radio with overseas manufacturers of aeroplanes led him to change his plans, and, with the consent of Admiral Byrd, ho had decided to return. . ... . ..,.*,.. HOPES FOR THE BIG RACE. • Mr. Griffiths, who has had extensive flying experience in New Zealand and in China, during the very bloody dispute; between Japan and China at * Shanghai and Chapei, and also flying along the Yangtze River with the China National Aviation Corporation, said that he hns for a long time past been keen oh the idea of tackling the Australia to England record. Through the radio overtures he had been able to arrange at least tho preliminaries of such an attempt, and had secured an option over a machine with a normal .cruising speed of 130 miles an hour, a considerable margin over the, speeds of machines which have up to now made tho flight either way between England and Australia. With such a machine and the knowledge gained from a flight from Australia to England, Mr. Griffiths- considers that with anything like a reasonable handicap ho would be able to hold his own in the handicap section of the big MacHobertson air race from England. toTMelbourne next October. ■_ -"Financeis, of course, the.big hurdle in the way of a New Zealand pilot with national backing taking part in the Macßobertson race," added Mr. Griffiths, " and naturally ..the sum of £5000, which appears to have been frequently mentioned in connection with such a plan, is a fairly effective stopper, but so .successful -were the arrangements which I was able "to make-by Tadio half-way round the world that just one-itenth of that, amount would ensure ' the entry of at leastlone New Zealand pilot." , ".',,' , ,