Evening star., 1935-04-21
Dangers on Every Hand,
E1pedition's Chief
Pilot Reveals.

was about 1000 feet high. They were
enormous mountains and 50 straight
they gave the illusion of being square
blocks.
"All the way in, we had found the
surface rising. but. beyond the Edsel
Ford range it seemed to run fiat at
1000 feet as far as we could see,
where we turned around. That was
probably about 400 miles out, perhaps
q little more.
The weather began to get bad
and before we had gone far we were
flying at 1900 feet through clouds.
Under US were mountains, which we
could sometimes see through small
opening in the clouds And then
both motors cut out because of ice
in the ventura tubes Of the carburetor
"The usual way to get that out is
to lean the mixture so the motors will
backfire, but at our altitude I couldn't
do 1t. We began to come down,
slowly but surely, and those mountains
below became more numerous and
much closer. Finally, in desperation,
I thought of turning off the gas to
make the motors backfire. That did
1t, and as turned it on again they
backflred again. and we picked up
speed and altitude. But it was bad
few minutes. We were 2S0 miles from
home, and every mile would have
been doubled because Of the contour
of the ground.
Byrd Too Weak to Fly.
This flight and the long one to
the southeast, on which we saw the
Queen Maud mountains get lower
and finally seem to blend into the
plateau. were planned after Admiral
Byrd made his first triangular flight
to look over the ground in that
direction. The flights were the
carrying out Of his ideas, and it was
only because he was so weak as the
result of his isolation during the
Winter that he did not make them.
But from what We saw on those
two flights and two or three others,
and the observations made by Black
burn in the Queen Maud range and
Siple in the Edsel Ford range. there
is no longer any possibility that the
Antarctic is divided by frozen
strait. Both these ranges apparently
blend into the plateau. and the
Queen Maud range far to the east
seemed to be completely covered by
ice flowing down from the Polar
plateau. I think myself that the
Queen Maud range comes out again
in Graham Land and the western
shore Of the Weddell Sea and is a
continuation of the Andean chain.
"The Edsel Ford range, the Rookie
feller mountains and the Scott
Nunataks are all part Of the same
mountain chain that outlines the
northern coast line Of the Antarctic
in this sector.
The coast line runs just west of
the Rockefeller mountains, turns
south and runs in a gentle curve to
the Queen Maud range. There is one
break in 1t to the southeast, where
there are apparently a number Of
islands above sea level which cause
the break in the ice that is con-
tinued far to the west in a tremen-
dous chain of crevasses. We have all
our positions we'll marked, for we
took literally hundreds of celestial
observations. I think our present
maps show nearly all the mountain
ranges and other landmarks within
mile OF their true position.
Sounding Work Valuable.
"One of the most interesting jobs
we had in aviation was flying the
party that took seismic observations.
Landing away from base has been
looked upon as hazardous. but we
made about IA or IS landings and
never had any trouble.
This sounding work was of tre-
mendous value, for it established the
coast line under the barrier and en-
abled US to explain what goes on in
the Bay Of Whales. We even landed
once on the peninsula north of Dis
covery Inlet and found that that long
tongue Of ice is also anchored to land.
I'VE could have done much more
il the weather had not been so bad,
much worse than on the former ex-
pedition. 1t was hard year. Land
ing was terrible job. much worse
than we had anticipated, and aviation
played part in it. There was little
relaxation during the year because it
took SO long to get settled and we
had to get busy SO early in the Spring.
But we are well satisfied with the
result and would be happy about the
whole trip if it had not been for Ad-
miral Byrd's illness. He is not at all
well. although he is naturally graft
fled at the results of his plan"
Admiral Byrd's two ships may ar
rive in this country the latter part of
May. although the time will depend
upon when they reach Panama after
their long trip across the Pacific, and
the length of the interval there for
refueling and repairs.
(Convriohf 1OaS hv NJ NJ p. -,