Last October 31 one of the most spectacular events in recent naval history took place. Seven Navy men had landed an airplane at the geographic South Pole, marking the first time any American had occupied the pole and the first time in forty- four years that any man had set foot there. The event created only a ripple in the news at the time, perhaps because the Presidential election loomed less than a week away or perhaps because the Hungarian revolt still occupied men’s minds. But twenty-five years earlier it would have electrified man’s imagination.
Strangely enough, among those who did take note of the first occupation of the South Pole by Americans, reactions were mixed. Some said glowingly, “The last frontier has been conquered. Man has exploded an atom bomb, man has broken the sound barrier, now man has landed an airplane at the bottom of the earth.” Others shrugged their shoulders and said, “Ah well, another crew of sailors went glory-hunting.” This reaction was most unfair; exploits for self-acclaim by military men went out with two-bit haircuts. What this group didn’t know was that, of all the progress that has been made in the development of airplanes, no plane has yet been performance-tested at temperatures lower than sixty degrees below zero on the ground. The landing at the Pole was made at fifty-eight below. Further, in developing the fastest and longest-ranged airplane, no large plane has been specifically designed for cold weather operations. The R4D which made the first Pole landing in late 1956 was of a type accepted into naval service as an all-purpose transport in the 1930’s.
Even those men of Operation Deepfreeze who were present in the Antarctic when the historic event took place failed to get excited. To them it was a difficult but necessary job in the overall scheme of building seven Navy bases in the Antarctic for use by American scientists taking part in the International Geophysical Year.
On the morning of October 31, plane captain John P. Strider, a husky West Virginian, had trouble getting down the hill from the Naval Air Facility at McMurdo Sound to the bay ice landing strip where Navy and Air Force planes were parked. For the day’s flight he carried a five-gallon water jug, sandwich ingredients, a pound of butter and some bacon he had commandeered from the galley, and a large thermos of coffee. None of the weasel drivers could give him a ride with his heavy load because they were running errands for other plane captains, and so Strider walked the two miles across the ice to his plane.
Once there he checked with the maintenance crew to see if the plane would be “up” for today’s flight. He got their assurance it would be ready. “Didn’t you see those preheaters connected to the engines?” demanded the maintenance chief.
Strider busied himself with the many chores a plane captain must perform before the pilot arrives. He was especially concerned with the R4D’s oil pressure, hydraulic, and electrical systems. In October, spring has just begun in the Antarctic and Strider knew from experience that the old plane was allergic to the polar temperatures.
Everything checked out. Strider joined radioman William Cumbie in the temporary line shack on the strip for a cup of coffee.
When the plane captain and radioman got back to the plane they were surprised to see a maintenance man installing and wiring fifteen JATO (jet assist take-off) bottles on the plane’s underbelly. They were more surprised to see Rear Admiral George Dufek, the task force commander; Captain Douglas Cordiner, Commanding Officer of AirDev- Ron SIX; and Captain William M. Hawkes, staff air officer, present with Lieutenant Commander Conrad Shinn, pilot, and Lieutenant John Swadener, squadron navigator, beside the plane. Newsmen swarmed all over with their note pads, cameras, and microphones.
Up to this moment Strider didn't know where the plane was going nor that he and Cumbie had been hand-picked for the Pole landing.
A weasel approached the R4D with a sledload of cargo, including an American flag whose staff held a brass cylinder, radar reflectors, survival equipment including food, alpine axes, tents, stoves, extra clothing, and pup tents. Leg room was already limited in the plane’s passenger space due to the installation of huge cabin tanks which had allowed the R4D to carry enough gasoline for the 2,250-mile flight south from New Zealand to McMurdo Sound two weeks earlier. When all the survival cargo had been transferred from the sled to the plane, a man could hardly walk from the cockpit to the passenger seats.
Across the taxi strip photographers Were casting lots to see which lucky three would ride the R5D with its good facilities for motion pictures and which ones would ride the larger Air Force Globemaster that would hover overhead with the R5D, ready to drop survival equipment in case the smaller plane crashed on landing or couldn’t take off from the Pole.
Whatever flight the press got and whatever happened to the plane they were on, they wanted pictures. Several had even talked members of the Pole landing crew into taking their cameras along.
Heaviest responsibility rode the shoulders of small, serious Lieutenant Commander Shinn, the R4D pilot. Only two parties had ever reached the Pole: Amundsen and four others in 1911 and Scott and four others in 1912. Amundsen returned with his party. Scott perished with his.
Several pilots, including the late Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, had flown over the Pole and had dropped objects in an effort to learn the snow’s density and its hardness. Their reports varied greatly. As late as January, 1956, Marine Lieutenant Colonel Hal R. Kolp had dropped several objects on the Pole and watched them disappear immediately, leading him to report the snow was “very fine, soft and powdery.”
Lieutenant Commander Shinn knew, too, that the flight was being made in this plane as a second choice because the new P2V-7 Neptune with its turbo-jet power plant had not arrived in the Antarctic because of a bug in its ski-assembly. In his official report for Operation Deepfreeze One (1955-56), Shinn, the same pilot who had flown the same plane to New Zealand, then had been forced to turn back to New Zealand at the halfway point to the Antarctic because of headwinds, had written:
“R4D Bureau Number 12418 is a very old and weary craft. The crew is to be commended for getting the airplane down (to New Zealand), and back (to the United States) with no serious incident. In straight, level flight, when heavily loaded, she flies with six- to eight-degree aileron tab correction; a slight change in nose position makes her fall off in unbalanced flight. She is in a perpetual skid and especially so when slowed down for landing. We should put this old lady out to pasture and bring up one of the young 20-year-olds.”
But somewhere along the line a painter had lettered this prophetic name on her nose: “Que Sera Sera”—whatever will be, will be.
With all observers and cargo aboard, the R4D was taxied into take-off position. Her gross weight was 34,000 pounds; seven thousand pounds above recommended maximum. She streaked down the 6,000-foot sea-ice runway to build up speed, then took off at 12:55 P.M. without jet assist so that her JATO bottles could be hoarded for the more difficult take-off at the Pole.
Lest you question the presence of three senior officers on so hazardous a flight at this point, Rear Admiral Dufek wanted to see what conditions his planes would have to operate under and what conditions his Sea- bees would face when they were landed in force to construct the science base at the Pole. Captain Cordiner was bent on learning as much as possible about the landings and take-offs at the Pole before launching subsequent flights there with men and non-drop- pable equipment. Captain Hawkes, the copilot, is the Navy’s most thoroughly experienced pilot in polar surroundings. It had been his planning and his tests on the Greenland ice cap which insured that the planes were ready for the South Pole missions. He, like Shinn, had flown an R4D off the Philippine Sea’s decks in Operation Highjump and landed at Little America.
Que Sera Sera gained altitude enroute to the Liv Glacier where a small support camp (Beardmore Station) had been manned three days earlier so polar flights would have radio homing signals, weather information, and fuel for planes returning to McMurdo Sound. As the plane got further from base, Cumbie streamed longer and longer radio antenna wires. Throughout the flight, until he shifted to high frequency near the Pole, his voice signals could be heard clearly at McMurdo Sound, 730 miles to the northward.
Lieutenant Swadener navigated by gyro and sun lines as the plane headed for the Pole. “Navigation in the Antarctic is no different from navigation anywhere,” he said later, “except that the land is so desolate. There are few landmarks, no trees or highways or other visual aids.”
Strider said, “When the plane reached the polar plateau and climbed to twelve thousand feet, she groaned and moaned and my percolator just wouldn’t work. That old plane is older than I am, you know.”
The R4D’s speed was only eighty knots, so the R5D and the Globemaster which would fly cover for the landing didn’t leave Mc- Murdo Sound until the smaller plane reached the Beardmore camp. The R5D developed engine trouble and returned to McMurdo Sound, but the Globemaster, with Major Cicero J. Ellen as plane commander, overtook the slower Navy plane and reached the Pole about 7:30 P.M. The big plane orbited for a half-hour, determining the best navigational fix of the Pole
Forty minutes before the R4D reached the Pole, the breather line to the starboard engine froze and started to pump oil out of the top. The oil leak caused such a streak on the wing that Strider thought the engine had lost all its oil. Later he learned that only five or ten gallons had escaped.
Navigators of each plane agreed that when the R4D reached the site about 8 P.M. both planes were over the Pole. Major Ellen then flew a tight 360-degree circle to leave a con trail (a condensation of the engines’ hot exhausts that freezes and becomes a fixed cloud when it strikes the cold air) so the R4D would have a target area to land in.
Shinn circled the Pole several times at low altitudes to learn which direction the sastrugi (blown snow) ran and to see if he could find a level spot.
“It might have been the lack of oxygen or maybe our nerves, but we couldn’t tell the wind direction,” he said later. Then, with the sun behind him so he could establish depth perception by his plane’s shadow, Shinn landed at 8:34 P.M.
Blowing snow, churned upward from contact with the plane’s skis and fanned by its propellers, obscured the R4D from view. Momentarily the Globemaster crew feared the worst; that the snow was so soft (as Lieutenant Colonel Kolp had reported) that the plane had been swallowed on contact. Then the blown snow subsided and they watched the R4D glide to a smooth stop.
At two thousand feet above the Pole, the R4D thermometer registered the temperature as minus 35 degrees. When Admiral Dufek, first out of the plane, stepped to the snow, he said, “It was like stepping into another world. The air was so cold it almost took my breath away.”
The temperature was fifty-eight below.
Cumbie, meantime, had kept the Globemaster in his radar scope constantly; partly to help the pilot avoid collision in the vapor trails left by both planes, partly to test the performance of his radar and partly “to keep my mind off what we were about to do.” Captain Cordiner stood with the Admiral on the hard, crusty snow trying to plant the Crewmen load JATO bottles on the R4D previous to departure for the Pole. The aircraft left McMurdo Sound air strip without jet assist so that her JATO bottles could be hoarded for the more difficult take-off at the Pole. At 58° below zero, the plane was frozen solidly to the snow-ice surface. United States ensign with its brass capsule attached to its staff containing a certification that the first group of Americans had occupied the Pole. They found the snow so hard that they had to use an alpine axe to penetrate its surface. Within three minutes Captain Cordiner’s exposed nose and cheeks began to go white with frostbite.
Captain Hawkes, aided by Cumbie in getting radar reflectors planted for future Pole flights, made the same observation. Earlier, all had agreed to work in pairs to keep constant watch for evidence of frostbite in their companions. Cumbie’s hands froze to the shovel handle as he worked and he had to kick the handle free.
Strider corrected the oil leak and replenished the lost oil, then joined Swadener and Shinn on the ice. Each tried to get a few snapshots as they had promised the owners of the cameras.
Swadener took a series of sun lines which indicated the landing had been made within four miles of the exact pole in the direction of South America. Considering the fact that Que Sera Sera flies “with a six-to eight-degree aileron tab correction,” this was considered outstanding navigation.
Meantime the Globemaster orbited overhead, prepared to drop tents, stoves, food or any and all other survival necessities to keep the seven men in reasonable comfort for fourteen days if the smaller plane couldn’t take off. The big plane, said Major Ellen, could have returned to McMurdo Sound, picked up a weasel and several tons of drummed fuel, then dropped the weasel to the men and the fuel drums along the path to the Beardmore camp if they had to walk out from the Pole.
The oil leak repaired, all seven returned to the plane for take-off and return to McMurdo Sound.
Shinn turned his engines up to full throttle and the plane didn’t budge. He fired a bank of JATO bottles and still the plane stood fast. He fired another bank of four and the plane grudgingly broke free of the ice and slowly lumbered forward. He fired a third bank of four and picked up some, but not enough, speed for take-off. He fired the final three and the plane was airborne at 9:23 P.M.
Air speed was sixty knots.
The windshield was heavily frosted inside and out, so Shinn was forced to fly by instruments. Every danger signal on the panel flashed on. Strider said later, “I threw the circuit breaker so I wouldn’t have to look at that Christmas tree.”
The danger signals could be acting up because they, too, were affected by the extreme cold and the rarified atmosphere at the Pole’s 9,200-foot elevation. On the other hand, they could be truthfully indicating loss of oil pressure, an engine fire, or several other casualties. It was impossible to see how high or low the plane was above the surface until the defrosters had time to cut the frost off the windshield, but Shinn knew he was having trouble retracting his landing gear.
Meantime, Major Ellen was calling the R4D frantically by voice radio. The JATO bursts, abetted by blown snow and con trails left by the orbiting Globemaster, obscured the R4D. The major feared the smaller plane had crashed on take-off.
Then, when Shinn managed to drop his empty JATO bottles and increase his airspeed to eighty knots, the R4D came out of the fog and everyone’s mind was relieved.
But the excitement wasn’t over. The higher-speed Globemaster flew “S” curves at 115-120 knots behind the R4D all the way back to Beardmore station so the Air Force pilot could keep the small plane in sight. Then, on landing at Beardmore, the R4D encountered rougher snow than it had at the Pole and the oil leak recurred. Strider said later, “I believe the take-off from Beardmore, where we refueled for the return to McMurdo, was hairier than the take-off from the Pole. There the board again became a Christmas tree and I couldn’t blame it on the minus fifty-eight degree cold.”
The tired old R4D returned safely to McMurdo Sound about 3 A.M. on November 1. The Admiral declared that with the weather so harsh at the Pole he would postpone the landing of 24 Seabees in the construction party.
So confident had been the collective attitude of the men at McMurdo Sound that the mission would go successfully, only a handful of men met the returning plane.
In many respects their attitudes were justified. Any ski-plane that could make the 2,250-mile flight from New Zealand to McMurdo Sound safely should have been able to make the 800-mile flight to the Pole. And if the same plane had landed and taken off safely on soft snow in Greenland, it should have done the same at the South Pole. Besides, they reasoned, this time the R4D had a veritable freight train orbiting overhead that could have dropped almost anything the men needed to survive if they found themselves grounded.
Sure, they said, it would have been more comforting to have used the brand new turbo-prop P2V-7 Neptune for the job, but that plane hadn’t even left California.
The South Pole test landing was fifth in a series of events which led up to the building and occupation of the South Pole base by the nine scientists and nine sailors who are currently undergoing the severest temperatures ever recorded in the interest of science.
First had been the massive planning of the over-all operation whereby seven bases would be built for scientists in the Antarctic, one of them at the very bottom of the earth. Second had been the establishment of an air facility at McMurdo Sound during Operation Deepfreeze One.
Third had been to get the planes from New Zealand to McMurdo Sound for the flight. Fourth was erection of the support base at the foot of Liv Glacier (called Beard- more Station) so ski planes could take off from McMurdo with a minimum of fuel load and a maximum of survival equipment, then refuel on their way back to McMurdo.
Step five, the test landing itself, was just as necessary as any of the preceding steps, because if it had been found unsafe to land one plane, future attempts might never have been made. Polar flights and landings perhaps will never be considered routine, but the landing of the first plane for test and the landings of subsequent planes with construction men who recovered the 760 tons of cargo dropped by the Globemasters and converted it into the base went off without the loss of a man.
Captain Hawkes, who planned the landing, said: “It was not marginal. It was the result of several tests.”
Seven completed houses at the Pole bear him out.