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Exploration has always been a function of transportation. The first men who approached the Antarctic continent came by sea. They did not land because their wind-driven vessels could not easily penetrate the ice, but occasionally they set foot on an offshore island which they could approach by small boat. Today, transportation is still the key to Antarctic exploration. Logistic support for U. S. year-around scientific studies on the continent is the over-all responsibility of the U. S. Naval Support Force, Antarctica, established in February 1955, in preparation for the International Geophysical Year program. Since all but the highest priority items must still reach Antarctica by sea, ships are vital to Antarctic support. Those that carry building materials and other supplies to the Antarctic have for the most part been standard types run by the Military Sea Transportation Service. They have included Victory-class cargo vessels, attack cargo ships (particularly useful because of their amphibious capability), and standard fleet oilers. Most of these ships have received strengthening to resist the ice. The Navy has also employed Eltanin-class cargo ships and Alatna-class tankers, which have a limited icebreaking ability, having originally been designed for support of the DEW line in northern waters. The USS Glacier, only icebreaker added to the fleet since World War II, has participated in every operation since Deep Freeze I (1955-1956), and leads the way each season in breaking a channel into McMurdo Sound. Seen above with the USS Edisto, the Glacier is considerably heavier and more powerful than the older Wind-class icebreakers. The Wind-class ships are still very much in use, escorting cargo ships through the ice, exploring isolated coasts, and performing oceanographic and other scientific surveys. All of the Navy’s icebreakers have been or soon will be transferred to the U. S. Coast Guard.
McMurdo Station, located on the sound of the same name, is the center of the U. S. Navy’s Antarctic logistics operations. It is to McMurdo that the cargo ships and tankers annually deliver their loads of food, fuel, building equipment, and supplies, and to which Air Force and Navy aircraft bring personnel and high-priority cargo. It is from there that men and material are flown inland to the South Pole, Byrd, Plateau, and Hallett Stations and to such summer camps and scientific field parties as may be scheduled. With a winter population in excess of 200, and a summer population of about 800, McMurdo has acquired a complexity unprecedented in the Antarctic. Runways for wheeled aircraft are established annually on the sea ice, as seen at left, becomingjunusuable about mid-season, while ski- ways for ski-equipped aircraft are used throughout the summer season. Experiments are being conducted with year-around snow-compacted runways capable of supporting both types of aircraft, and present plans call for regularly scheduled winter flights to McMurdo in 1967. A quay has been carved from the ice of Winter Quarters Bay and a hard-surface road, the first in Antarctica, constructed to join the ship unloading area with the main station. Snow-compacted roads are also being developed to connect the station and runways, permitting increasing use of wheeled vehicles. To supply heat and power to McMurdo, a nuclear power plant was installed in 1962. Heat from the reactor will also operate a desalinization plant, expected to go into full-time operation next season.
Original Deep Freeze plans called for two permanent stations on the polar plateau, one in Marie Byrd Land and the other at the geographic South Pole. For the first, named Byrd Station, building materials and supplies were delivered by tractor trains over a 750-mile trail from the coast (left). No tractors, however, could haul supplies and equipment up the glaciers and through the mountains for the second, the Amundsen- Scott South Pole Station. For this, and subsequent Antarctic operations, the United States placed a heavy and almost unique dependence upon aviation. Personnel and delicate scientific instruments were flown in by the Navy (below), while structural equipment and supplies were delivered by the Air Force by its time-tested technique of air-drop (above). The Air Force C-124 Globemasters used for this contributed greatly to Antarctic operations from 1956 to 1964, not only within the continent, but on the air route from New Zealand as well. To fulfill its own wider responsibilities, the Navy established Air Development Squadron Six (VX-6), assigning to it a great variety of aircraft for the support of stations and field parties.
By I960, snow had drifted so high around the Byrd Station that it was threatened with imminent collapse. In redesigning the installation at this scientifically and logistically desirable location, the Navy adopted a technique first developed by the Army Corps of Engineers at Camp Century in Greenland. Long trenches of such dimensions as to house standard T-5 buildings were excavated in the snow by machine and then converted into tunnels by bridging them over with steel "Wonder Arches”. Snow was then blown back over the arches, presenting a level surface over which the wind-driven snow could blow without mounding into crushing drifts. Above-surface structures were held to a minimum, and these placed on towers. In 1963-1964, similar measures against the accumulation of drifting snow were carried out at the South Pole Station.
A limitation of Antarctic operations was the inability of cargo aircraft to land on unprepared snow surfaces, although the airdrop had proved a reliable means of establishing and maintaining inland stations. The Air Force overcame this limitation when it developed a ski-equipped configuration of the C-130 Hercules for use in Greenland. A new version of the aircraft, with longer range, and a better ski assembly was adopted by the Navy in Deep Freeze ’61, and designated the LC-130F. The Hercules eliminated parachuting of dry cargo, which had been expensive because of the unrecoverable drop gear required, and time consuming because dispersion of the cargo made recovery difficult for the limited number of personnel at inland stations. By 1964 the use of fuselage fuel tanks (above) enabled the Hercules to deliver fuel as well to remote locations, thus ending the employment of Globemasters, which had been indispensable to the original program.
With the introduction of the Hercules, it became possible to place parties in the field complete with equipment, supplies, and local vehicles, including helicopters, and to support them during the summer season. From this, it was not too long a step to establish a station by means of ski-equipped aircraft. In 1963 a year-around station named Eights was installed 1,500 miles from the logistics base at McMurdo Sound. The great innovation at Eights was that the buildings were vans, each equipped for its intended function and designed to fit into the cargo bay of an LC-130F. At that time the fuselage fuel tank had not yet been introduced, and fuel for the station was dropped by Air Force Globemasters. Early in 1966, when Plateau Station (below) was established in one of Antarctica’s most remote locations, everything—buildings, scientific instruments, supplies, vehicles, and fuel—was delivered by the Hercules. When Plateau Station has outlived its usefulness it can be removed in the same way it came, by air.
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Not long ago, men spent much of their time in the Antarctic hovering about a stove. When the summer released them from their inadequate shelter, they crawled across the ice shelf or climbed laboriously to the plateau, their energies consumed by the struggle for survival. In return for almost two years of suffering and toil, they had relatively few hours of profitable scientific labor. Today, a man can fly to Antarctica in October, do three months’ research in the field, and, if he is a teacher, return in time to conduct his second semester classes. He lives more comfortably, works more efficiently, and contributes more effectively to the increase of knowledge, owing to the wonders of modern transportation as adapted to one of the earth’s most hostile environments by the U. S. Navy, assisted by its fellow military services.