FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1952
1952 - 0468.PDF
2IO ICE-ISLAND An Imminent U.S. Air Expedition, By FRANK I THIRTY-FOUR American airmen and scientists are to spend the summer on an oceanographic survey of the Polar Basin—that is, the ice-jammed waters lying between the north coast of Siberia, Canada and Alaska. They recently left the naval air station at Patuxent River (Maryland) in three aircraft for the most northerly promon tory in Alaska, Point Barrow, where there is a laboratory and airstrip. The urcraft have been fitted with combination ski-wheel landing gear and they carry winches and hauling tackle so that they can extricate themselves in an emergency. It is almost certain that landings will be made on the three sizeable ice islands which are known to re\o.ve around the North Pole—and which could prove strategically impoitint as advance bomber and interceptor bases, and as mid-way airfields on any future trans-polar civil air routes between North America and the Soviet Union. The U.S.A.F. established a temporary meteorological camp on the ice-floes 200 miles north of Alaska last year. The Russians have maintained scientific stations on boating sea-ice for many months at a stretch—camps which were established from the air—and there is no doubt that the United States could maintain a permanent advance air base and met. and radar outpost on one of the three islands now known to be revolving around the Pole. Authorities in America think it will prove easy enough to establish such advance outpcsts. At a conference in Washington last year, a member of tne U.S. Naval Hydrographic Ornce, Mr. J. P. Allen, said that bulldozers and men could be parachuted onto the ice islands to flatten out landing-strips. The first of the islands, known as T-i, was discovered on August 14th, 1946, by an aircraft of the U.S.A.F. Arctic Meteorolo gical Flight. When flying through fog 300 miles north of Point Barrow the navigator located on his radar screen an island about 18 miles long by 16 miles wide. Appreciating the strategic value of even a small island in the Polar Ba.ir, the U.S.A.F. diverted aircraft from Arctic patrol duties to tohow up the discovery. Because of continuing fog the search had to be conducted entirely by radar, from 17,000ft, and, although successive flights located T-i without difficulty, each nx put the island a few miles to the east of the previous one. T-i seemed to be moving ! And indeed it was, for far from being an outrider to the mythical Crocker Land (the name applied last century to the Polar region then thought to be solid land) it was afloat and drifting around the Pole from Alaska in the general direction of tae U.S.S.R. When the fog finally lifted, T-i appeared as a 300-square-mile oblong of ice, its clifls towering to a height of 200ft—from which, on the principle that only one-eighth of floating ice appears above the water, its overall depth was put at 1,600ft. The ice of the Polar Basin is normally of the "pack" variety (i.e., bergs), with "pans", up to 14ft in thickness, which, driven by wind and current, pile into contorted barriers sometimes 100ft above the sea. But T-i bore no relation to "pack." From its colour and form it was obviously glacial ice—a gigantic berg broken from a glacier. The " coastline " of Island T-1, with its 200ft ice-cliffs. FLIGHT, 22 February 1952 AIRSTRIPS? the Phenomena it may Encounter LINGWORTH In 1946 the U.S.A.F. 58th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron, under Lt-Col. J. Fletcher, was given the job of mapping the course of T-i, and the next three years saw the island carried 1,500 miles in the currents that sweep eastwards across the Pole and then back westwards along the coast of Canada and Alaska. Next it was decided to discover if there were any more natural landing fields in the Polar Basin. In July 1951 the 58th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron found an island, nearly half as big again as T-IJ and a few days later a third island was discovered, shaped like a kidney, covering some 40 square miles, and situated between the Pole and the coast of Siberia. Meanwhile, there were arguments about the origin of the ice islands. The theories were that (a), they dated from the last ice age and were therefore something more than 15,000 years old, and (b) that they were "broken-off ends of a glacier flowing into the Polar Basin." The cameras of the 58th Squadron proved the latter theory to be the correct one. Flying along the coast of Ellesmereland (the island about the size of Britain lying off the extreme north-east of Canada), Lt-Col. Fletcher discovered a massive glacier: the outline of its "coast" matched the contours of T-2. In other words, this island—and, in all probability, the others, too— originated in this vast glacier, and, judging by the snail's pace at which the latter is moving into the sea, the oldest of the three islands must be at least 1,000 years old. From photographs it appears that they melt around the edges during the polar summer and make up their loss again in winter. When last photographed, T-2 was resting at the North Pole; T-i was aground off Ellesmere Island; and T-3 was drifting towards Siberia. The three could bring about a novel situation in international politics. America claims unofficially "all territory becween Alaska and the Pole," and the U.S.S.R. makes official claims on all territory between the Pole and the Soviet's Arctic coast. What, then, happens if an American-manned met. station and airfield drifts into the "Soviet sector" of the Arctic, or vice versa ? TURBO-CYCLONE PROGRESS IT was Dr. H. R. Ricardo who pointed out that the piston engine was eminently suited to small volumes of working fluid at high temperature and pressure, while the gas turbine was better suited to deal with larger volumes at a lower temperature and pressure. Since the aircraft piston-engine produces an exhaust which, though approaching the permissible upper limit of temperature, lends itself to the operation of a gas turbine, a logical step was to couple the two systems. The Wright Turbo Cyclone (described in Flight of July 27th, 1950) is a development of the familiar Cyclone 18, with three small "blow-down" turbines driven by the exhaust gas. The turbines are arranged at 120 deg. around the rear of the engine and are geared to the main crankshaft via a hydraulic coupling. There is thus no question of "turbo-supercharging" in the accepted sense. • The first aircraft to take the Turbo Cyclone was the Lockheed P2V-4 Neptune, although flight testing took place with an engine installed in the nose of a B-17 in October 1949. Reports of the performance of the engine in Neptunes indicate that there have been very few troubles; some sludging which had occurred in the hydraulic coupling of the turbine drive is now reported cured, while lowering the turbine inlet temperature to 950 deg F has resulted in an "indefinite" turbine life. One Neptune squadron has, in fact, been authorized to operate the Turbo Cyclone to 1,000 hours between overhauls. Other installations of the engine include, among service aircraft, the later types of P2V Neptune, the R-70 Super Constellation naval transport, the C-121C U.S.A.F. Constellation, and the C-119H Packet, which is due to make its first flight shortly. Among civil types, the Turbo Cyclone is to be the standard power plant for the L-1049C Super Constellation and the Douglas DC-7, •while there is a possibility of an installation in the Convair 340. At present, Turbo Cyclones are being delivered only for military and naval aircraft, but the "compound Super Constellation" is due to go into production towards the end of this year.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
