GOING SOUTH AGAIN

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 25 July 1935, Page 6

GOING SOUTH AGAIN

Lincoln Ellsworth Plans Another Big Expedition FLIGHT OVER ICE BARRIER TWO PROBLEMS TO BE SOLVED Two futile visits to Antarctica have not sickened Lincoln Ellsworth in his hopes of flying across the great white continent, and in October he is to start again from .South America for the Weddell Sea, says an American paper. Dundee Island has been selected as the base for his flight. “Difficult as it is, there is no insurmountable reason why our job cannot be done, and done next fall,” he recently stated in the United States.

His pilots are both Canadians, his old pilot, Bernt Dalchen, now being back in Norway. Neither H. Hollock-Iven-yon, chief pilot, nor J. H. Lymburncr, second pilot and expert mechanic, has had any true Arctic or Antarctic flying experience, and neither is an ocean flyer. Holloek-Kenyon, of Winnipeg, had already had over GOOQ hours in the air. He fought in the Canadian infantry during the war until 1918, when he was transferred to the Royal Canadian Air Force. Flying in the Canadian Arctic and over the Barren Lands, he has demonstrated his ability to handle an aeroplane in all sorts of w'eathcr. He is 37, married, and has two children. Lymburncr lias had 1600 hours in the air. He has flown most of the time in the northern part of Canada, and last winter he flew in the Hudson Bay region. He is a pilot for Canadian Airways.

GOING TO BRAZIL After climbing at St. Moritz and at Cortina, in the Italian Tyrol, Mr Ellsworth is now at the 1000-year-old Schloss Lenzburg, near Zurich, his summer home. He is not allowing his muscles to soften. On August 24 Mr and Mrs Ellsworth will fly to Rio de Janeiro, going from there into the Matto Grosso country, in Central Brazil, for three weeks of jaguar hunting. After that trip he proposes to return to Buenos Aires, from where he will make a climb to the summit of the Andes, a trip lie has long promised himself. From Santiago it will be a short hop to Montevideo, where his ship, the Wyatt Earp, is laid up, with the monoplane Polar Star stored in her holds.

This itinerary will give the explorer three weeks in which to prepare for the trip to the Antarctic, on which Sir Hubert Wilkins will again accompany him. He proposes to leave Montevideo on October 20 for Dundee Island, in the Weddell Sea, ninety miles north of Snow Hill Island, last year’s base. The trip will probably take about a fortnight, but much will depend, of course, on the whims of the Cape Horn weather. At Dundee Island, the explorer and his pilot will wait for settled weather for the flight of 2SOO miles across the unknown tract. All that is required is twenty hours of good weather; but last summer he waited four and a half months.for that short spell, and it did not come. Tn fact, Mr Ellsworth’s difficulties will probably be greater this season, as he will be without the daily weather reports from the Ross Sea quadrant which were sent to him from Byrd’s base at Little America.

ROUTE OF FLIGHT The tentative route for the flight will be south along the mountainous coast of Graham Land to the Filchner Ice, Shelf, and then direct across the Ant-, arctic Continent to the Bay of Whales, on the Ross Sea. On landing, lie will radio the Wyatt Earp, and she will then, start her 3000 miles’ trip around j the Continent to the Ross Sea to pick) up the aviators and the aeroplane. This) journey will take the little ship about five weeks, and emergency rations for that period will bo carried in the Polar Star, which with its 000 li.p. Pratt and Whitney engine, makes about eight andj a half miles to the gallon of petrol.. The Polar Star will carry 500 gallons of petrol, giving a reserve of .1200 miles.! But between Dundee Island and Little. America there will be nothing to help’ the explorers—no bases and no relief j stations. 3fr Ellsworth does not ex-1 pcct that the weather -will be favourable for the w-hole distance, and he is prepared to land and take off again should' the necessity arise.

The great questions which Mr Ellsworth is deter,mnied to solve, and it will be agreed that he is a most persistent man after his two costly failures, are:— Is Antarctica a single land mass or two great islands? Do the highlands of Graham Land, on the Weddell Sea side, undoubtedly a continuation of the Andes, link up with the mountain system of 3 T ictoria Land, on the Ross Sea side, to form the backbone of the continent? In an interview before leaving for Europe, Mr Ellsworth said': “We have no more reason to be certain of success this time than on the previous attempts. But Peary spent twenty-three years of continuous effort before Teaching the Pole. Undoubtedly polar exploration is difficult, or it would have been done before this.”