Evening star., 1933-02-12

gust /. I plan to sail on the Monterey
from San Francisco for New Zealand
/ August %.
From Dunedin our united party will
make for the Bay Of Whales. We shall
be a very small party; there will be
need for every man Of US to do his part
In working the ship. In addition to the
nine of the crew, there will be Bal
chen, Sir Hubert and myself, q radio
man. a mechanic and perhaps Q meter
orologist. All. including the Leader.
must take turns standing watch.
My plan Is to land the plane on the
Ross shelf ice for the. take-off, which
should be some time between December
Is and December 81, depending on Ice
conditions The ship will be our base,
and on our flight We shall be in con-
slant radio touch with her. rs.
On the other side Of the continent,
in Coates Land, near the Weddell Sea.
the Norwegian explorer, Riiser-Larsen,
will have established his base for his
land exploration Of that unknown re-
gion. He has suggested to me that we
effect radio communication With him
on our arrival at New Zealand and ar
range a code whereby he will be able
to give us weather information from
his side. shall be most glad to do so.
A Twenty Hour Flight.
II we are not forced down by sudden
storms which we are unable to fly
over, or under, or around, we should
make the flight across the Weddell Sea
and back in 20 hours. And busy hours
they will be for two men, for Balchen
at the controls and the radio, and for
me as navigator, photographer and rec
ord keeper. .ta
We shall have to depend on dead
| reckoning and hourly observations OF
\ the sun. We must expect hundred-nile
winds. Flying at 10000 feet, we should
| be able to see for 800 miles on either
side. We shall not try to cross the
pole, but will point easterly for the
Filcher shelf ice and Luitpold Land,
| ,450 miles, over part OF the globe that
no mans eyes have seen.
OF course, should prefer to make a
one-way flight Of 1t, starting on the
Weddell Sea side and ending at q base
in the Ross Sea, because the great terra
| incognita Is the region lying between
the Weddell Sea and the South Pole.
But conditions seem to preclude such
q possibility. Only two expeditions
have ever succeeded in penetrating to
the head Of the ice-choked waters OF
this treacherous sea; Weddell. who
reached it in 1849, and Filchner In
! 1912.
In 1915 Shackleton, whose objective
was a transcontinental sledge crossing
| from the WeddelI to the Ross Sea, saw
his ship, the Endurance, crushed by the
driving pack ice, and after an open-boat
journey of supreme strife amid heav-
! ing waters" succeeded with five COM
panions in traversing the 800 miles 70
South Georgia for assistance.
A Voyage Of Discovery.
I think of my flight merely as voy-
age Of discovery, because fully realize
that the best can hope to accomplish
is to construct framework, so TO
speak, consisting Of the general Tea
remain for future explorers to I'LL IN the
detail This flight win be the last /!
shall undertake. II 1t succeeds, shall
rest content thereafter with having
been the first man to fly across Dotn
the north and the south polar regions.
The camp equipment, weighing loo
pounds, will include handsledge, tent
Primus stove, cooking utensils, snow
shovel, snow knife, carpenter saw for
cutting snow blocks, ice Ak, man mar
ness for hauling sledge, Alpine rope
Alpine axes, two pairs of skis, medical
equipment and two sleeping bags. The
emergency rations, for three months,
will be pemmican, chocolate, biscuits.
nuts, raisins and matted milk, al
weighing ITS pounds.
portable Heinz g. Kaufman hand
driven wireless generator and trans
mitter will be carried, with q short
and long wave receiver. Apart from
this, the plane will be equipped with
special airplane transmitter and re-
ceiver with generator driven from the
engine. For navigating am taking {
three-bubble artificial horizon sextant
the kind used on the Graf Zeppelin.
Two ZeiSs hand cameras for oblique
and vertical pictures will be carried
also q new type Of camera, operated by
clock, which will take one picture every
10 seconds throughout the entire jour-
ney. This, when we are flying al
5000 feet, should record a continuous
strip record, IA miles wide, Of the
route traversed.
Great deeds have been done IN the
Antarctic. Amundsen and Scott have
stood at the South Pole and Admiral
Byrd has reached and circled 1t by
plane. Heroic men have toiled and
suffered there-Wilkes and Ross, Nav.
son and wilkins and long line OF
others. Many men have given theil
lives there in the quest for knowledge
Man viii not rest until he knows his
earth.
The Antarctic holds the greatest an.
known regions left Aside from the
lane running inland from Ross Sea tc
the Pole, the inland parts that Byrd
saw and the fringe Of headlandg RUand