SOUTH POLE FLIGHT

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16622, 13 April 1928, Page 2

SOUTH POLE FLIGHT

GREAT HAZARDS NEW CONDITIONS FOR BYRD LONDON, March 17. A man who braved the Antarctic with Scott, escaped the tragic fate of the latter and his five companions, said today that there were untold scientific possibilities in Commander Byrd s forthcoming airplane expedition to the South Pole, but- it must be realized there wiu enormous risk and peril. The speaker was Captain 0- ». Wright, of the scientific research department of tfie Admiralty. Seventeen years ago, he led the expedition which ventured south over the Antarctic waste and found Scott and his companions dead, within 11 miles of food find safety. , ... Captain Wright said the two chief obstacles to Byrd’s success would bo encountered in the event of a forced landing from a plane either on the vast frozen continent or on the floating ice barrier which stretches 400 miles along the rim of the unknown area. FORCED LANDING DANGEROUS. “Byrd is a splendid airman _ and he knows conditions in the North,’ he said, “but he must realize how difficult a landing will be anywhere in the southern continent. Except on the surface of the glaciers and the great ice barrier, the Antarctic is governed not by ice, but by snow. Byrd’s planes must be fitted with some kind, of strut, or possibly n caterpillar device, which will prevent it sinking into the snow. Even so, if Byrd is forced to make a landing on the ice. I do not- see how he can ever take off again. If he were to start the propeller while the body of the plane was stuck fast in the snow it would mean burying the plane’s nose and possibly wrecking it. ' .

“The second obstacle in Byrd’s path is even more mysterious and baffling. It is caused by the peculiar, blinding light of the Antarctic continent, by which the snow, sky, mountain and horizon all merge into an interminable wall of whiteness. "Sometimes the mountains are visible if there are bare rocks, at the summits. But if they are covered with snow you can not see if there are mountains or plains ahead of you. I remember frequent instances when we were walking across the snow together and all we could distinguish were each other’s figures moving onward in a vacuum of whiteness. You may not believe me, but there were times when we could not see objects more than 6ft ahead. There is no shadow whatever so that hummocks or crevasses are invisible until you are almost upon them. For that reason there will be unknown dangers if Byrd flies over the Antarctic, unless, *>f course, these strange light conditions vanish. Byrd may find conditions, entirely different. “But Byrd wil have to be careful that he does not fly into a mountain range if the light conditions are as bad as we found them. If he does have to make a forced landing, it will bo still more hazardous, for he will not know whether ho is 1000 or 10,000 feet in the air and he will have no horizon to tell him if he is flying right side up or upside down.” .