ANTARCTIC ’PLANE

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 March 1929, Page 7

ANTARCTIC ’PLANE

STORY OF THE WRECK WIND’S GREAT STRENGTH (Australian Press Association.) (By Cable—Press Assn. —Copyright.) (By Russell Owen, Copyrighted, 1929, by the New York Time's Company, and St. Louis Post Dispatch. All rights for publication reserved throughout the world. Wireless to New York Times).

(Recd. March 23, 10.30 a.m.) BAY OF WHALES, March 22. Relating the story of the wrecked aeroplane, Harold June, after describing the fury of the wind, said : “It had done all it could do to us when we turned in for the night. Next morning the wind dropped. We saw our plane half a mile away. The snow blocks, where she had been anchored, were untouched. The craft had been lifted straight up, while the blocks of snow, which had been piled on the skis of the ’plane, were strewn for a quarter of a mile.

“Despite the dangerous nature of the icy surface, Balchen went to the plane. We could see him crawling back with a knife and a ski stick to hold him from being blown away. He was long returning and then exclaimed, ‘She’s a wreck. ’ “In the afternoon we all were able to go, as the wind was only forty miles an hour. The ’plane lay fifty feet from where she had first hit. AH agreed with Balchen that the ’plane certainly was wrecked.”