Evening star., 1947-03-30
Antactcas ceLocked Secrets Are Pred Open by Science

Antarctica's
WITH NAVY ANTARCTIC EX-
petition, Mar. 29.-During the
past two months the Navy's flying
explorers. led bv Rear Admirals
Richard F. Byrd and Richard H.
Cruzen, have torn much of the
shroud of mystery from this planets
last great unknown-6,000,0 900 square
miles of ice and mountain peaks
at the bottom of the world.
A vast graveyard of time is this
Antarctic continent. Under gilt
tering white and blue mountains
lies world dead for 100000 years.
Where now is only ice and cosmic
silence were green forests-perhaps
even swampy jungles-when a great
icecap lay over Central Africa near
the present equator. Then, perhaps
over many thousands of years, came
some great cataclysm and all life
was crushed under countless bill
lions of tons of ice.
Ever since Antarctica has been a
forbidden land. Only a few thou
sand living persons ever have crossed
the Antarctic Circle and probably
less than so have set foot on the
continent itself. The picture is
far different than that in Arctic
regions. There is vibrant life.
Human beings live permanently and
in relative comfort within a few
hundred miles of the North Pole.
Here is only death and utter desc
lation. It is as though one were
entirely off this earth on the sur
face of another planet. 1t is a
topsy-turvy land where skies are
green and purple instead of blue,
where sunburn comes from earth
and not sky, where there is a milk
white darkness more impenetrable
than black darkness, where all
things turn left instead of right.
Mapping From the Air.
Until the war development of
long distance planes and new meth
ods of navigation the impenetrable
ice pack and the towering white
cliffs which line Antarctica's shores
like fortress ramparts constituted
an almost impenetrable barrier to
the lifeless waste of tempest-tossed
snow buried almost perpetuaily in
low fog and bitter cold except for a
few days each year. Every footstep
beyond the shores has been perilous.
But this expedition has used some
of the latest developments of avia-
ton and photography to accomplish
it's ends. 1t has been able to map
as much as $4,000 square miles in
single day, discovered at least 10
new mountain ranges, placed on the
map many new bays, islands and
glaciers. outlined great land-locked
bays, and for the first time even
penetrated beyond the pole" into
the worlds most inaccessible region
1t has found at least one rela-
lively warm, ice-free oasis in the
white desert. The term beyond the
poe" is not quite SO paradoxical as
it might seem. In sense the South
Pole marks the end of the earth, but
it is relatively easy to reach COM
pared with the greater part of the
interior of the continent. From the
Bay of Whales on the Ross Sea, for
example, it is less than a thousand
miles, which is not a difficult flight
in this age.
Series of Mishaps.
The accomplishments of the expe-
dition have been the greatest in the
history of exploration despite the
fact that a series of mishaps and
bad winter prevented the fulfillment
of the entire program and restricted
most flights to less than 200 miles
from the coast. The expedition
operated in three sections-eastern,
central and western. The first
made flights from the northern
edge of the ice pack toward the
interior of the continent from the
Roosevelt Sea just east of the Bay
of Whales to the Palmer Peninsula.
The central group, commanded by
Admiral Byrd in person and
equipped with land-based planes
landing with skis on the snow was
based on the Bay of Whales and
operated far inland toward the
group covered all of a 1,500-mile
coast line of Wilkes and Enderby
Lands whose outlines on maps until
now have been largely conjectural
and were proved almost entirely
wrong. This was due to the difficult
ty of previous explorers In distin-
gushing the point where the shelf
ice ends and the continent starts,
and to almost daily mirages which
make distant objects seem near.
From the start the operations
were highly hazardous The planes
few over uncharted lands and seas
with no landmarks and no certain
means of navigation. One crashed