ANTARCTIC CHALLENGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20099, 9 November 1928, Page 10

ANTARCTIC CHALLENGE.

PERSONNEL OF EXPEDITION.

PROMINENT IN GREAT;TEAM.

HOPES OF THE LEADER. SCIENTIFIC FACTS—AND HONOUR.

BY COMMANDER RICHARD E. IiYRD No! XIII.

Gauging a man's physical reaction lo hardship and cold is difficult, and hardship and cold, sleeplessness and nerve strain, will be, in greater or luss degree, the portion of all of us. The conditions at the poles are so different from anything met with elsewhere* that there are no standards to go by; the evidence that a man can stand up under them, until ho has proved it on the spot, must he » stiy what lawyers term circumstantial. But I believe iniplicity that all my companions will come through; with no other belief could I possibly start on such a journey as we contemplate. The man who was to havo gone witb me as second in command 'will not ho with us. Floyd Bennett, great aviator, friend and companion in many a dangerous enterprise, died in lino of duty last May. His place in the planes will ho taken by Chief Petty Officer Harold 1. .June, U.S.N-, a pilot of skill and long experience. Ho is one of the ablest pilots in the navy. His colleague as pilotmechanic will bo Bernt Balchen. llio young Norwegian who returned from Spitzbergen with me, and who flew on the transatlantic flight of the America. With myself as pilot-navigator, they will probably form "the crew of the Ford trimotored plane Floyd Bennett on the flight to the pole. The Essential Mechanics. The chief engineer of the expedition will be Thomas B. Mulroy, who went with me on the North Pole expedition. The Marine Corps will he represented by the two mechanics, who will keep the planes and tractors up to par, K. F. Bubier and Victor Czegka. On these two men will rest the great responsibility of caring for the sensitive motors of the three planes. The newspapers will give them—to judge by the past—little credit. All the mechanics do is to put the engines iii commission, and that is not enough to excite any very general enthusiasm. Who recognises the name of "Doc" Kinkade to-day? Probably not one person in a hundred. Yet he is tho wizard of the Wright Aeronautical Corporation, and the man who tuned up the engines that carried Lindbergh, Chamberlin and myself across tho Atlantic. Without his genius those flights might never have been made, y.et ho is too modest and self-effacing to be pushed —into tho limelight. And there are dozens of others like Kinkade. I hope the timo will come when tbey are more generally appreciated. Elaborate Radio Equipment. In charge of our extensive radio equipment will be Malcolm P. Hanson, civilian, assigned by the Navy to the expedition. Hanson stowed away Lo go to the North Pole with me, and through continued hard work kept our radio apparatus in perfect condition. He is one of the foremost experts on the subject. With him will be associated Leo V. .Berkner, assigned by tho Department of Commerce, Lloyd K. Grenlie, an exmarine who was associated with Hanson |in the North Pole work, and H. F. Mason, who has been with Wilkins- The apparatus under their care will be, so far as I know, the most extensive that any polar expedition has ever carried. William C. Haynes, otherwise known as "Cyclone" Haynes, meteorologist of the United States Weather Bureau, is our meteorologist. Haynes was another of our North Polo group, and while at Spitzbergen he produced weather as nearly perfect as could bo desired. Although I expect to do a certain amount of geological work myself, our expert in that line will be L. M. Gould, of the University of Michigan. Since some of the most important questions regarding Autarctica turn about geology, his job will be an exacting one. I wish it were possible to say a word about all of the nearly 60 men with the expedition, but unfortunately lack of space prevents me. All of them will be essential parts of our machine—of our team, I might say, for an expedition has one thing at least in common with a football team—both depend on the perfect functioning of every individual. Last Great Challenge. Mod and equipment, months of forethought and minute preparation, are part of my answer to the challenge of the South—almost tho last great challenge left to the explorer. To me that challenge —and to conquer it—is the purpose of our

expedition. What a better knowledge of the tarren Antarctic continent will do for humanity is not for mo to say. I believe for one thing that it will make the enormously important problem of predicting weather conditions much easier to solve accurately than it is at present; for another, that it will add a great deal to our knowledge of geology, and may possibly open up new supplies of minerals, and even coal and oil. These supplies cannot be worked _ at once, but with the rapid depletion of reserves in temperate climates, the knowledge of the existence of vital necessities elsewhere will be of value in the future.

Such results will be practicable and tangible, but there will be many others not so obviously useful: pages of observations, for instance, that may seem to have no immediate use. Perhaps in the end they will actually prove to have none at all. On (lie other hand, thev may some day supply the missing link in an otherwise insoluble problem There are questions of geography to he determined whether the < bain of the Rockies and the Andes run across the bottom of the world and up through the Australasian islands and the Himalayas, to form an immense- world-spanning girdle; whether there are more active volcanoes lost in the polar ice than the two known at present, Mounts Erebus mid Terror, and if so, what relation they bear to the formation of Antarctica. There rue dozens of other facts to be investigated or discovered, and all of them will have particular interest to some branch of science. So much for science. The primary pur* pose of our expedition is study of new lands and new 1.-nmvMßes but T must confess that the instant vlien we drop from our plane the ha*; 1 Tinited States, to rest for the first time «» the world's farthest south, '■*'-> 1 f s f ' so long at the farthest north, vnl be to ine the greatest moment of the expertr ! ion. (Concluded. 1