AERIAL NAVIGATION.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 19 December 1927, Page 5

AERIAL NAVIGATION.

SOUTH POLE FLIGHT, EYRD’S PLANS. j P/sss Association-Electric Telegraph-Copyright. WASHINGTON, Saturday. Commander Byrd informed the National Geographical Society of his plans for his flight to the South Pole. He said: “The last great -challenge to an aviator to explore comes from the Antarctic Continent.” He further said that the personnel and equipment of his expedition would be taken to a base at the Great Ross Barrier in a ship specially built to withstand the ice. Three ’planes will be used, with which he hopes to lay down bases a hundred miles apart to the edge of the unexplored area and till in “great blank -spaces on the maps of school children at the rate of a hundred miles an hour.” Tbe party will include six Esquimaux. The rest will consist of a dozen men who are expert at the work. He added that he had already received three hundred applications from persons, young and old, who desired to participate in the expedition. “The primary object of the expedition,”, he said, “is scientific, and wc hope to plant the American flag on the South Pole, to photograph geological sections of the rugged, mountainous cliffs, and to search for fossil remains in an .effort to disclose something of the past. I will depart from South America for the Antarctic, and hope that a valuable by-product of the expedition will be the cementing of goodwill between the United States and South America.” He concluded: “It is my intention to make the expedition completely an American venture.”