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Aviation History
1954
1954 - 0813.PDF
FLIGHT, 26 March 1954 363 R.A.A.F. in ANTARCTICA . . . operating from the ice, the pilots found that the skis became frozen to the ground and could be released only by rocking the aircraft. Blizzards added to such difficulties, and the Austers had to be "de-iced" with brooms before take-off. Maintenance of mechanical equipment in the Antarctic is always a trying business, for in sub-zero temperatures metal sticks to flesh like chewing gum to shoe-leather. Eventually the R.A.F. crews found that the secret of handling nuts and split-pins with bare hands was to smother the hands in grease. The Australian crews in the present expedition find it a strange contrast to be flying over the icefields of the Ant arctic instead of across the dry interior of Australia. Preliminary adaption of their two Austers was finished at R.A.A.F. bases in New South Wales and Victoria. The air craft were overhauled, stripped and winterized, while their crews took courses in navigation, photography, survival, and cold-weather aircraft-operation. On the way south in Kista Dan they brushed-up with lec tures on meteorology, ice-pack conditions, photography, air craft-handling, first-aid, and most important of all, naviga tion. Success of the flying operations from the ship and from the expedition's base at MacRobertson Land will depend on the aerological reports from the expedition scientists. They will spend many anxious hours over the weather maps, so that the pilots will know what to expect, and so that the ship may, whenever possible, move to a place where there is good weather. Conditions may be cloudy much of the time over the ship, even though the continent itself may be clear. The Austers should, if necessary, be able to take off with a 500ft cloud-ceiling and one-mile visibility. The usual Antarctic weather in February and March is generally solid overcast with bases around 1,000 to 2,000ft, visibility about ten miles and scattered snow-showers in the vicinity. Pilots attached to previous expeditions have found it inadvisable to fly low, due to the great amount of icing encountered at the bases of clouds. Snow showers and ex tremely poor visibility, with some of the icebergs towering to between 200 and 300ft, are additional hazards. After take-off alongside Kista Dan the Auster pilots usually set their heading from the ship's head and then climb straight through the overcast. They break through this at about 5,000 or 6,000ft into clear sunlight. Descents are made as rapidly as possible, and flying through overcast or clouds is held to a minimum. As the magnetic compass is known to be unreliable in polar regions, the pilots fly over the ship to obtain a true heading check from the vessel's gyro. An electric direction-indicator is then set on the true heading. In flight the true headings are checked by astro compass and the instrument re-set. Navigators check their true headings every 15 minutes on the astro compass and keep a log of the precession of the electric gyro. They find drift hard to determine, as the Antarctic terrain is mainly unbroken, white and featureless. Charts being used by F/L. Douglas Leckie and Sgt. S. Seaver, two of the expedition's pilots are, perforce, anything but accurate. The ship's radar operators, however, have been able to track them out and get them in from 100 miles away. The Auster crews are to photo-map the whole coastline of MacRobertson Land and make probing flights into the unex plored interior. These sorties should produce invaluable information about the surrounding terrain for the land parties which will sledge out there later in the year. Despite all the handicaps and hazards, the aircrews are likely to be able to achieve more in the way of aerial discovery and photography in a few weeks than many previous expeditions of a com parable kind have been able to accomplish in an entire year. The R.A.A.F. has a splendid record in the field of Ant arctic exploration. Mawson chose R.A.A.F. pilots Stuart Campbell and J. Douglas for his "eye" on the British-Austra lian-New Zealand joint expedition 1929-31. These pilots photo-mapped hundreds of miles of Antarctic coastline for the first time. Then, on January 16th, 1936, an R.A.A.F. aircraft first spotted the lost American explorer Lincoln Ellsworth, and his Canadian pilot, Hollick-Kenyon, after they had found sanctuary in Little America. The Australian pilots operated from the British scientific research ship Discovery II. The R.A.A.F. returned to the Antarctic in the post-war rush of scientific exploration. In March, 1947, three im portant flights were made to collect meteorological data, to gain a special form of flying experience, to examine and photo-map Macquarie Island, 1,000 miles south of Tasmania, and to indicate the possibility of aerial liaison with Austra lian ground parties in Antarctica. The first two flights were made in modified Lincolns, the distances and durations being 2,000 miles in 13 hours, and 2,200 miles in 11 hours 40 minutes. On the second trip the farthest point south which the aircraft reached was latitude 52 degrees S. On the third flight the Lincoln covered 2,800 miles in 14 hours 30 minutes. It circled low above hills on Macquarie Island, and more than 250 photographs were taken. This point was the farthest south ever reached by an aircraft based on the mainland. Throughout the trip radio contact was maintained with the base in Victoria. The writer was fortunate enough to be a member of the Australian Antarctic Expedition in 1948. We made the first flight over the top of Big Ben, Heard Island's 9,000ft volcano, and saw that the mountain was active. They glimpsed a thin spiral of smoke creeping up from the central cone, 1,000ft above the white dome of the mountain. Unfortunately, a few days later a 100 m.p.h. hurricane tore the aircraft from its moorings and wrecked it on the beach. In the present expedition to MacRobertson Land Kista Dan is manoeuvred so as to give the Austers as much lee as possible, using the ice-pack to cut down the wind chop and swells for take-offs. Some of the swells average five feet in height, and the pilots have to take off parallel to them, yet into the wind as much as possible. As in take-off, the direction of the landing is determined by sea conditions. It is made as much as possible into the wind, parallel with or down swell. These three photographs were taken on the 1948 expedition to the same area, in which the author took part. On the right is seen, in the distance, the wreck of the R.A.A.F. Walrus amphibian, which was blown ashore in a gale; in the foreground is a vulture petrel. (Left, below) G/C. Stuart Camp bell, R.A.A.F., a pioneer of Australian Antarctic exploration. (Below) A meteorologist tracks a weather balloon released near the 9,000ft volcano on Heard Island.
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