Air Guard retraces first flight to South Pole

  • Published
  • By Kristan Hutchison
  • U.S. National Science Foundation
LATHAM, N.Y. (AFPN) --  Their route was the same, but the crew of Skier 94 did not expect any of the hat tossing and hurrahs that greeted Navy Rear Adm. Richard E. Byrd and his flight crew 75 years ago.

That is the difference between being the first plane ever to reach the South Pole and the fourth plane of the day.

The ground crew at the pole fueled Skier 94 without fanfare. A team of mechanics heated the propellers and engines, added fluid to the hydraulic systems and ran through a maintenance checklist on the LC-130 Hercules flown for the U.S. Antarctic Program by Airmen of the New York Air National Guard’s 109th Airlift Wing.

In 1929, Admiral Byrd and his crew, aboard a Ford Tri-Motor christened the Floyd Bennett, were on what they called “a flight of discovery, and wanted to see things and record them.”

Skier 94 was on a cargo mission, supporting modern explorers who use sophisticated telescopes to look out to the very edges of and, in a sense, back in time to the beginnings of our universe. But it was also a flight down memory lane, following the path Admiral Byrd took to the pole when he opened the way for Antarctic aviation and research.

In the cockpit, pilot Maj. Mark Doll and co-pilot Capt. Marc McKeon agreed to leave the autopilot off. They would fly this one the old-fashioned way, trading the controls as Bernt Balchen and Harold June, Admiral Byrd’s pilot and co-pilot, had done. Navigator Maj. Vinnie Wilson did his part, plotting their course using coordinates Adm. Byrd jotted down during his original flight and navigating with a sextant, as the pioneering explorer had. But Major Wilson had the backup of navigational technology the admiral never dreamed of, as well as weather reports and maps.

“Byrd had no way of knowing what the winds were. I have that advantage,” Major Wilson said.

Admiral Byrd flew into uncharted territory, in a plane a tenth the weight of the modern cargo plane. The maps Major Wilson checked still bear Admiral Byrd’s mark by virtue of the names along the way: Mount Balchen for the pilot, June Nunatak for the co-pilot, and McKinley Nunatak for the aerial mapper Ashley McKinley. A nunatak is an Eskimo word meaning “lonely peak,” a rock or mountain rising from ice. Admiral Byrd had been the navigator and the expedition planner.

Major Doll and the crew of Skier 94 began their history-tracing flight from McMurdo Station, Antarctica. The ski-equipped Hercules rumbled as the engines started, settling into a gentle vibration like the belly of a purring cat. The pilots pointed the plane onto the runway, a smoothed white surface stretching out on the sea ice. The bluish transantarctic mountains sped by to their right and in seconds Skier 94 was up, orange airfield buildings shrinking into toy boxes on the wide, white carpet.

Captain McKeon steered away from the southward path that planes usually take to the Pole and instead veered east, along the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf. Admiral Byrd had come through the dark waters below in a three-masted sailing ship in 1928, with three planes in the hold -- a strange overlap of ancient and modern technologies. Flight was still new and uncertain, something to be proved, and Admiral Byrd believed exploring the Antarctic by plane would further not only science, but the future of aviation.

“The idea was to get up and fly,” Major Doll said. “An airplane back then was a new invention. It gave them the opportunity to get up off the ground.”

The ice shelf was shaped differently when the crew of the Floyd Bennett saw it, before it lost large chunks to the sea. The massive Antarctic ice sheet constantly oozes toward the sea, and the ice shelves have a natural cycle of growing and breaking to stay in equilibrium. In 2000, a slice of the Ross Ice Shelf the size of the island of Hawaii cracked off, broke in half, and lodged at the entrance to McMurdo Sound. Several more have joined it there, diverting the normal flow of water, wind and sea ice. This logjam of island-sized bergs hid under low clouds as Skier 94 flew along the edge of the ice shelf.

As they neared the area where Admiral Byrd’s men had built a cluster of wooden buildings called Little America, Skier 94 dropped down for a closer look. A bay curved back into the ice. Wind tossed white spray along the dark water. Skier 94 tipped a wing and circled. The flight crew craned forward to look.

“It’s 35 miles out, right in the middle of the water.”

“It’s gone.”

“Somewhere at the bottom of the South Pacific.”

Skier 94 turned south at 1:30 p.m., following the ghost of the Floyd Bennett, which had lifted off at 3:30 p.m., 75 years ago. The Floyd Bennett flew so low Mr. Balchen could follow the dogsled tracks left by a geological party heading for the base of the transantarctics.

From a higher altitude of 17,500 feet, even the heavy tractors and trailers of a team investigating the possibility of supplying the South Pole by land were a mere blip on the radar screen.

If Admiral Byrd was able to glance over the cabin of this modern machine, he would have been impressed with the amount of space inside. Even with three sled frames taking up the space of a family car, the loadmasters had room to pace in the hold. The sled frames were headed for the South Pole to pull heavy drilling equipment into place for the IceCube project, which is creating the world’s largest neutrino detector by implanting instruments deep into the ice.

The Floyd Bennett had no room for extra cargo, being tightly packed with a sled, sleeping bags, cans of fuel, food and survival gear until there was scarcely room for the four men to move. Skier 94 was also a flying survival kit, with stoves, ice saws and sledgehammers tucked away in the walls. A stack of large duffel bags held extra clothing and sleeping bags for each person on board. The gear gets used a couple times a year, on average, when flights are diverted because of weather.

“It’s easy to get complacent, because our planes are very reliable, very comfortable,” Major Doll said. “But you still have to face the harsh reality (that) we’re flying over the coldest, windiest continent.”

While Admiral Byrd had worn a cumbersome fur parka through his flight to keep warm and Mr. Balchen landed with frostbite on his nose, the crew of Skier 94 sat comfortably in flight uniforms without coats. Instead of shouting and passing notes, as Admiral Byrd had done, they conversed comfortably through the headsets over hot coffee and microwaved pizza.

Below, wind-sculpted ice flashed by. Admiral Byrd had compared his speed to Roald Amundsen, the first to reach the South Pole. The Norwegian explorer’s five-man team was pleased to make 25 miles per day by dog sled during their 1911 trek, while the Floyd Bennett averaged 90 mph. Skier 94 beat them both, clocking 300 mph most of the way.

The “Hump” appeared ahead, where the ice surface lifted from near sea level up the glaciers and the Transantarctic Mountains to the Antarctic Plateau at 9,200 feet.

For Admiral Byrd, this was the riskiest part of the flight. Without maps or knowing the height of the glaciers, he had to choose which way to go. He chose the Liv Glacier and barely made it, having to toss all survival food through a trap door to lighten the plane and allow it to rise over the “Hump.” The Floyd Bennett cleared the pass by just 500 feet.

Already at 18,000 feet, Major Doll looked down at the path Admiral Byrd had taken. The peaks that had been level with the Floyd Bennet’s wingtips were low bumps, and the bags of food exploding would have been specks.

Tossing anything was out of the question on this flight. A different philosophy engulfs the Antarctic now, one of environmental stewardship. Since 1959, a treaty has protected the continent. The pristine snow plateau is just as Admiral Byrd had seen it.

“A white desolation and solitude disturbed by the sound of our engines,” he’d written. “The pole lay in the center of a limitless plane. No mountains were visible.”

For Admiral Byrd, that had been the end of the story: “One gets there, and that is about all there is for the telling. It is the effort to get there that counts.”

Not so anymore. A collection of black spots on the horizon grew swiftly into a collection of buildings and scientific instruments. Major Doll landed Skier 94 smoothly on the groomed snow runway in front of the new South Pole station, something the admiral did not consider. The first landing at the South Pole did not occur until 1956, when Navy Lt. Cmdr. Gus Shinn landed an R4D named the Que Sera Sera there.

“I kind of wonder why Byrd didn’t just touch the skis down,” Major Doll said. “If I was there, I would have been tempted to do it.”

South Pole crews unloaded the sleds and the fuel. The fuel will help run everything on the station, from labs monitoring the air and ozone for signs of climate change to the construction equipment building the new station.

Delivery made, Skier 94's crew again followed Admiral Byrd’s lead and, as he had written, “We put the pole behind us and raced for home.”

No hat tossing awaited the modern crew, no triumphant ticker-tape parade, just a warm dinner at the end of a day’s work.