PILOT LANDS ON ICE-FLOE

Southland Times, Issue 23437, 18 February 1938, Page 5

PILOT LANDS ON ICE-FLOE

Attempts To Rescue Soviet Party

VALUABLE EQUIPMENT TO BE SAVED (United Press Assn.-'-Telegraph Copyright) (Received February 17, 6.30 p.m.) MOSCOW, February 16. The ice-breaker Taimyr battered her way for six miles through thick ice in 10 hours to a point within 20 miles of the members of the Soviet scientific expedition and found a suitable floe on which it landed both aeroplanes. The wind then shifted the floe, compelling the crew to dismantle the aeroplanes and return with them to the ship. A later message says that an aeroplane was assembled on the deck of the ice-breaker Murman and went up for two hours, but because of poor visibility was unable to find the Russian scientists’ camp. The Taimyr and the Murman are now 10 miles apart, but their progress is arrested by thick ice which is freezing solid. Later the aeroplane from the Murman landed on the ice-floe on which M. Ivan Papanin and the three other members of the expedition are stranded, says the Moscow correspondent of the British United Press. The aircraft afterwards returned to the Murman.

The Riga correspondent of The Times says it is hoped to take off the greater part of the valuable equipment as. well as the members of the expedition, which is one of the reasons why the men were not taken off by air immediately by the Murman’s aeroplane.