Byrd's Plans

(See front cover)

Of all lands, Antarctica is coldest, windiest, most mountainous, most inaccessible. It is almost entirely unmapped. The nearest human habitation is over 1,000 miles distant.

Upon this forbidding land there will soon advance the most elaborate party of exploration the world has ever seen--the Byrd Antarctic Expedition. Seventy men and 75 dogs are prepared to travel 20,000 miles (round trip), build a village in a frozen continent, roam over some 4,600,000 square miles of unknown territory for a year and a half. Almost incidental is their purpose of flying over the South Pole. No expedition ever departed with such vast objects, or with such luxurious equipment.

Hegira. With a commissariat of five tons of beef, one ton of jelly, 1,200 Ibs. of cookies, 1,200 gallons of assorted pickles, the Antarctic expedition is comparable to an army on the march. Accompanied by business managers, physicians, cameramen, dog trainers, scientists, aviators, newspapermen, the size and diversity of its personnel suggests a circus.

First to leave the U. S. is the stout sailing boat City of New York (nee Samson), veteran of Arctic service, with the three airplanes and.all explorers except a small group headed by Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd himself. This smaller group will leave during the middle of September from Hampton Roads, Va., on the whaler Larsen. Both ships are scheduled to reach Dunedin, New Zealand, in the last week of October. Here a third ship, the Chelsea, joins the flotilla, which then proceeds 2,300 miles across the Southern Ocean to the Ross Sea and the Bay of Whales. The ships will remain long enough to see the expedition established in the ice village, the great wireless mast grounded in the glacier, then withdraw for ten months to escape the six months' night which is the Antarctic winter. In the autumn of 1929 they will return to pick up the expedition, carry it back to the U. S. early in 1930.

In the meantime the explorers will have set up the six houses now stored on the City of New York. Using this village as a base, they will push by airplanes and sledges toward the South Pole, establishing camps 100 miles apart. From these, they can fly over a considerable portion of Antarctica's 5.000,000 square miles, studying many a curious problem. Geologists will have hunted fossils. Astronomers will have gazed at the beautiful aurora australis, southern counterpart of the aurora borealis (northern lights). Cameramen Willard Vander Veer and Joseph T. Ruckner will have filmed scenes for a gripping ice drama of the future, to be produced by Paramount Pictures. Newsgatherer Russell Owen will have assembled material for a hundred exclusive stories in the New York Times.

Problems. Serious-minded Commander Byrd, famed as an aviator, likes to be thought a scientist as well. Indignantly he battles the idea that his flight to Europe last year was any mere trans-Atlantic hop. Science was the lure which drew him to the attempt. And Science, pure Science, calls him to the South Pole and Antarctica. These are the scientific mysteries Explorer Byrd hopes to bring to light:

What causes the curious plateau of ice, two miles high and flat as a pancake, of which the South Pole appears to be the almost exact centre?

Are the mountains of Antarctica related to the distant Andes, the nearer New Zealand ridges, or neither?

Will Geologist Lawrence M. Gould and Surveyor John S. O'Brien find rocks and fossils giving a clue to the nature of life on Antarctica before the age of ice commenced?

What of the strange Antarctic weather? What causes the terrific hurricanes, sometimes reaching a velocity of 120 miles an hour? What influence have Polar blizzards and monsoons on the climate of the southern hemisphere, upon the waters of the Nile? U. S. Weatherman William C. Haines, expert aerologist, will seek to interpret these phenomena.

More recondite, subtler problems are in the province (oceanography, hydrography, magnetism, photomicroscopy, solar radiation, glaciology, the aurora australis) of Physicist Frank T. Davies and Oceanographer Ralph F. Shropshire.

Home Life. Terrible are the winds and temperatures of Antarctica. On many a winter's day, explorers shiver in weather 70 or 80 degrees below zero, no degrees below freezing. For the foundations of their six houses, they must use ice. Gales will blow great banks of snow against doors and windows.

But the intrepid scientists will not live entirely bleak and barren lives. They may improve their minds. For light reading, they will have: The Little Blue Books (1,280 volumes donated by the Haldernan-Julius Co.), the Harvard Classics, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a set of the works of Rudyard Kipling (Doubleday, Doran), a dictionary (Merriam).

Music-loving explorers may play or learn to play: harmonicas (Hohner), one player piano (Wurlitzer), one accordion (Hohner), one xylophone (Deagan), guitars (The Harmony Co. of Chicago), victrolas (Victor Talking Machine Co.).

Gourmets can roll their tongues over chocolate yeast cakes (Chocolate Yeast Co.); two tons of ham, three tons of bacon (Armour & Co., etc.); Sumoro orange juice (Canada Dry Ginger Ale, Inc.); popcorn (Excel Electric Co.); Life Savers (Life Savers, Inc.); cough drops (William H. Luden, Inc.); 1,500 Ibs. of kippered herring, two tons of corned shoulder, two tons of corned spare rib, two tons of pork sausage, etc., etc. And no toothaches will mar their pleasure, since every explorer has dutifully attended a dental clinic, where even the suspicion of a cavity threatened the loss of a tooth.

All explorers may use the six Singer Sewing Machines, the Frigidaire Water Cooler (sic.), the folding bathtubs, the Maytag Washing Machine, the 30 doz. tooth brushes (Prophylactic, etc.), the 500,000 cigarets (many brands), the ton of tobacco.

Hopefully and generously contributed were these and many, many another product of the genius of U. S. industry. But no matter how satisfactory any or all of them may prove, Explorer Byrd has announced he will endorse none of them. Nor will he endorse the clothing designed, after months of experiment, for the expedition. U. S. underwear men went into conference at Troy (N. Y.) to evolve the airplane cloth garments for summer wear, the heavy wool underwear for winter.

Pathfinder. Explorer Byrd pioneers for Science. For glory, adventure, curiosity, many another man has pushed toward the poles. Among them:

Capt. James Clark Ross: Six times he invaded the Arctic, then turned South and in 1842 gave his name to the Ross Sea. Fifty-eight years later, no explorer had penetrated closer to the South Pole.

Carstens Egeberg Borchgrevink: He shipped as a seaman from Australia to explore Victoria Land (1895), was one of the first group of men ever to set foot on the Antarctic continent. In 1900, Explorer Borchgrevink returned with his own expedition, reached Lat. 78DEG 34' S.*

Fridtjof Nansen: His dash for the North Pole by ski and dog sledge was the most daring, most successful of early Arctic attempts. In April, 1895, he reached Lat. 86DEG 4' N.,* nearest approach to the North Pole made up to that time.

Robert E. Peary: He (first to do so) reached the North Pole, April, 1909.

Roald Amundsen: If Explorer Byrd reaches the South Pole, he will probably be the only living man who has seen both extremities of the earth. But the lost Amundsen accomplished that feat before him. In 1903, he was the first explorer to pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific north of Patagonia. He went through Bering Strait. In 1911, he led a successful expedition to the South Pole. In 1926, he flew to the North Pole with Pilgrims Nobile and Ellsworth. In June, he disappeared while attempting to rescue Pilgrim Nobile.

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton: In January, 1919, Explorer Shackleton pushed to within 97 miles of the South Pole, reaching Lat. 88DEG 23' S., determining the exact location of the South Magnetic Pole.

Capt. Robert Falcon Scott: He first invaded the Antarctic in 1902, came nearer the Pole than any previous explorer. In 1912 he realized his life's ambition, arrived at the South Pole. But Amundsen had been there before him.

Floyd Bennett: He piloted the plane which carried Explorer Byrd to the North Pole in 1926, the first man to circle above the North Pole in an airplane. He died last spring while speeding to aid the stranded German & Irish trans-Atlantic fliers. Explorer Byrd said of him, last week:* "That gallant gentleman of the air ... was to have been co-leader with me."

Cash. Capt. Scott's last expedition to the South Pole cost $450,000. The Byrd expedition will cost more. Many a famed citizen is numbered among the backers: Julius Rosenwald ($10,000), Harold Vanderbilt ($7,500), Col. Chas. A. Lindbergh ($1,000), Charles Evans Hughes ($500), Nominee Alfred E. Smith ($50), etc., etc.

* The International Geographic Conference recently decided to abandon North and South reckonings, figure all latitude from the South Pole.

*In a speech before the Advertising Club (N. Y.). On the same night he had a "farewell" radio hour, given by the Tide Water Oil Co., with a hook-up of 20 stations. For the notification speech, last week, Nominee Hoover had a hook-up of 107 stations, 13 more than Judge Joseph F. Rutherford, Missouri evangelist, gathered for a speech, last fortnight, before the International Bible Students' Association Conference at Detroit. Other big hook-ups have been: Fourth Annual Radio Institute Banquet, Manhattan, Sept. 21, 1927 (85 stations); Dodge Victory Hour, March 28, 1928 (55 stations); Dernpsey-Sharkey Bout, Yankee Stadium, July 21, 1927 (52 stations); Reception to Lindbergh, Washington, June n, 1927 (50 stations).