RUSSIA AND ARCTIC

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 36, 12 February 1938, Page 8

RUSSIA AND ARCTIC

SUBMARINE EXPEDITION?

Soviet authorities hint that a submarine expedition to t the North Pole is being considered as a preliminary towards establishing regular plane service from Russia over the Pole to the United States, says a Moscow message to the "Christian Science Monitor." The cruise of exploration under the Arctic ice was suggested recently in the official newspaper of the Commissariat of the Machine Building Industry in much the same manner as the Soviet flight to the Pole first Was suggested early in 1937.

Without indicating that Russia planned a similar expedition', Professor N. N. UuboiT, an authority on the Arctic, said the Soviet Union would watch closely the new submarine expedition under the Polar ice which Sir Hubert Wilkins, British explorer, was reported planning.

Sir Hubert has been searching the Arctic by plane for Sigismund Levaneffsky and five other missing Russian flyers. Soviet authorities said his attempted voyage under the ice in the submarine Nautilus in 1931 failed because of. inadequate preparation.

(In New York, Vilhjnlmur Stefansson said Sir Hubert hoped to make an Arctic submarine expedition, possibly late in 1938. It would not be a trip to the Pole, Mr. Stefansson said, but a search for a link between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans under the Arctic ice.l

"The use of submarines in Polar exploration," a Russian article said, "together with planes and icebreakers, will speed the final conquest of the Arctic. The submarine opens new horizons for scientific research in the most distant and least-known parts of the Polar region."