Dreadnaught Ditched

Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, Antarctic explorer, seems to thrive on trouble, and if he got off on an expedition without something going wrong he might regard it as an ill omen. This month the Admiral starts his third trip to the Antarctic, partly backed by U. S. Treasury funds, to clinch the claims of the U. S. to some 450,000 ice-covered square miles. Last week enough mishaps befell his huge new "snow cruiser" to convince him that everything was going to be all right.

The snow cruiser is an automotive dreadnaught 55 ft. long, designed and built by Chicago's Armour Institute at a cost of $150,000. It has a machine shop and a photographic darkroom, can carry an airplane on its back. Rolling on four retractable, rubber-tired wheels ten feet in diameter, it cruises at 10 m.p.h. (top speed 25 m.p.h.), can straddle and cross crevasses 15 ft. wide.

Last week the monster emerged from its assembly shop for a test run on Chicago streets, found the going difficult. First it got jammed under a viaduct, later broke down twice. The front wheels had to be realigned, the throttles adjusted so that all wheels (each has a separate motor) would turn at the same speed. Finally it started out for Boston, whence the Byrd expedition is to sail, with Dr. Thomas C. Poulter, veteran Byrdman, at the controls. Dr. Poulter perforce learned to drive as he went along. At Columbia City, Ind., he had a slight collision with a truck, but continued. Near Lima, Ohio, aiming for a bridge across a drainage ditch, the cruiser slithered off the roadway, sprawled across the ditch like a stricken turtle, its blunt snout ignominiously under water. A woman hitch-hiker who had been perched on the stern jumped off, fled. Driver Poulter cheerfully estimated that it would take several days to get the monster rolling again, looked forward to the vast stretches of the Antarctic snow fields, where there would be plenty of room to maneuver.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.