Evening star. [volume], December 22, 1929, Page 2, Image 82

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
2
S t efan $ son’s Forecast for, Arctic Flying
■* BY CAROL BYRD.
,44 JT T HEN navigation of the air
l . Mgw / by airplanes, and especially
M/M/ dirigibles, becomes custom-
F r ary, the uninhabited Arctic
will be like an open park in
the center of the inhabited city of the world
and air voyagers will cross it like taxi riders
crossing a park.”
When Vilhjalmur Stefansson, one of the
greatest polar explorers of all time, made this
.statement seven years ago people regarded it as
a prophecy of the most visionary sort. It was
.long before the public had become air-minded,
especially about the Arctic, and the idea that
comercial routes could be successfully operated
In the Par North was startlingly new.
Today Arctic flying is one of the most im
.portant subjects in the entire field of interna
•- tional aeronautics, for the majority of authori
ties agree that the most practical air lane be
tween North America and Europe lies along a
; patch in which the stepping stones are Baffin
Island, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands
and Scotland, a route first proposed by Sir Eric
Geddes, chairman of Imperial Airways, a fed
•zrsticn of all British aeronautical manu
facturers.
"This route,”- says Stefansson, "is tire only
practical one because in order to have a com
mercially paying route you ought to be able to
pick up airplane fuel every 300 miles or so. This
can be done on the northern route and on no
other. v
ti'T'HE particular path‘forecast by Geddes
. •!, twould not' use ice flans for landings except
in the rarest emergencies. Much of the year
.there are no suitable floes, anyway, in Davis
Straits and only a narrow belt of them along
the east coast of Greenland. Most of the water
between Greenland and Iceland has no ice in it
at any time and there is never any ice between
Iceland and the Faroes or between the Faroes
and Scotland.
"However, it is not a bad idea to discuss fee
floes as possible substitutes for the elaborate
constructed floating landings that have been
proposed between Newfoundland and Ireland.
In a true-scale map of the Northern Hemi
sphere, such as included in my book. ‘The Ad
venture of Wrangel Island,’ you will see the
area which nearly always contains ice clearly
indicated. Within that area there is an emer
gency landing field of i<se on an average of 1 to
every 5 miles. Better than that, in fact, for you
can probably never fly 5 miles without a chance
to land.
“These ice floes are comparatively stable'
inany of them, but not stable enough to permit
erection of a really permanent station on any of
them. Take the case, for instance, of Storker
son, one of my own expeditions. Storkenon’s
party selected a particularly substantial floe and
remained encamped on it for six months while
it drifted 450 miles. But even that selected floe
might have broken up if the conditions had been
unfavorable.
'<<TF some multi-millionaire aviation enthusiast
.. were to arrange an air derby across the
Arctic he might well establish relay statioos by
airplane transport on a line of such floes, the
stations being, say, 30# miles apart and C or •
in number. The temporary hangars or machine
.shops would more logically be tents, although tat
Summer repair work could perfectly well be done
shelter and in Wintertime windbreaks
could be created with snow blocks Such sta
.* lions would not be of a really permanent nature.
"Siiej.'fouia not operate for ril6!re than i few
’ weeks at a time. ’ ' r t “
' f ‘There are no special weather problems. No
one has ever reported a wind of more than 40
miles an hour as blowing in the Arctic over the
pack ice far from land, though more violent
Winds are found where there is open water near
high land. These seem to be created locally by
the atmospheric differences over the sea and
2and. In the early stages most of the Arctic fly
sing will be done in Winter, for the Bummer Is
a more difficult season.
v “Fogs are rare and unlikely to be dense in
Winter. Snowstorms, too, are . rare. In fact,
there will be less need for special devices to
snowstorm or fog than there is in
‘ many territories already regularly flown. -
i “You would want radio direction beacons at
Che temporary service stations on the ice and
'corresponding apparatus on the airplanes, but
<1 believe this is about to become standard
equipment for all flying In every latitude.
• “Radio telephones would doubtless be used
on the ice no less than on land.
• "However, it seems almost childish to talk
'about stations on the ice, even temporary ones.
The flyers vho cross the Arctic will have enough
ability so that if anything goes wrong with
ithsir engine* they can come down almost any
place and have leisure to study the trouble .and
. '-to. repair it themselves. In special difficulty
they would send out 8 0 8 calls, specifying
.'what parts were broken or what special help
they neded. Planes would then come from
'neighboring Islands bringing the required ns
’aistance. In other words, flying the Arctic
1 would: ‘x much like flying an uninhabited coun
'try that Is largely prairie, the airplanes landing
'on the prairie and sending calls to frontier
. stations for assistance.
44 VOU must remember about the Arctic that
x it is a tiny sea as compared with the
• Atlantic, and that islands in it are far more
numerous. The flying problems will, therefore,
» 'fi>7 •*% y * r.-
_ TH E SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, P, C, DECEMBER 22, 1929.
Ho zv the Great Explorer’s Dream and
Prophecy for Transpolar Air Routes Is
Coming True, and Why He Estimates
That Within Ten Years Ordinary Travel
Between America and Europe Will Be by
Way of the Safe Short Cut Across the Ice
Pack at the Top of the World.
r
begin to seem very simple just as soon as you
understand the conditions.”
Stefansson believes that every flyer who
crosses the Arctic should know all the methods
of self-help which are described In “The Friend
ly Arctic,” one of the many books he has writ
ten on the North. He particularly insists that
they should know how to build snow houses.
"U a flyer crossing the Arctic develops a
- disabled engine, and is forced to land,” Stefans
son explains, “he would have to build a snow
house to provide proper shelter in the event
that it required considerable time to repair his
trouble, or to send out SOS calls for parts
from neighboring islands. With the assistance
of two men who had never seen a snow house
before I built my first one in three hours, guided
only by my memory of the house building I
had so often seen while I lived among the Cop
per Eskimos.
T built that house from principles I
learned by watching. Any Boy Scout can get
those same principles from my books and apply
them. There have been explorers who have said
in print that no white man can ever learn to
build a snow house. They say the gift is in
stinctive with the Eskimo. I say there is no
instinct and only common sense about it.
MVIfHAT we have to do for successful Arctic
- , Hying, whether it be air derbies with a
of entrants or a regular passenger and
mall service traveling on schedule, is merely to
establish such facilities on Arctic Marti as we
would have on tropical or temperate lone
Blands, and then to be thankful that nature
The Hope of the World.
By Alfred Noyes.'
The world’s great heart has burst its chain,
And music comes to birth.
* ->-• • Rivers of healing flow again ■>
‘ , ! *; v ; v ' And whisper Peace Oti Earth. ' ' ‘ •* ; •
, , Through streets tidiere mourners boused in prayer
The healing splendor rolls. .
' The faces in the darkness there •>< <
Are like immortal souls. ’ • *
From earth, till Heaven and earth accord;
From time, till time shall cease;
Praise to the everlasting Lord;
Praise to the Prince of Peace.
If thou forget what unite they shed, .
Thy sons on land and sea,
Mother of all our hallowed dead,
Shall peace return to thee?
Look on the fields they left so fair,
The hills their passion crowned.
They built a nation’s altars there,
And there Thy peace is found. •
They have not laid aside the sword.
Their warfare shall not cease.
They serve an everlasting Lord.
They serve th'c Prince of Peace.
Rise on our darkness, healing Sun,
Shine on our storm-beat coasts.
Till all the nations move as one . .
With these Thy starry hosts;
Till, as Thy zvorlds from chaos draw,
The broadening ages .find,
Bound in the music of Thy law,
The kingdom of mankind.
From earth, till earth and Heaven accord;
Front time, till time shall cease;
Praise to the ei’erlasting Lord;
1 •• • •• Praise to’the Prince of Peace.
has scattered level floes as emergency landing
fields liberally In every direction.
“It is the innumerable landing fields that
have made Arctic flying safer than any in the
tropic or temperate zones. Have you noticed
that not a single life has yet been lost in con
nection with, let us say, 50,000 miles of Arctic
flying?
“It will Jump to your mind at once that the
great Arctic explorer, Amundsen, with his Nor
wegian and French companions, was ‘lost in
the Arctic.’ He wasn’t really—at least not un
der Arctic conditions. We define (he Arctic Sea,
from the flying point of view, as those waters
which have at least a certain amount of ice
floating around. Amundsen was flying from
Norway, where there was no ice, he was
crossing waters that were wholly ice free
and his plane fell several hundred miles before
reaching the first Ice cake. He was drowned,
as many other flyers have been, in the North
Atlantic, or at least under strictly North Atlan
tic conditions. The only way you can blame the
Arctic for the death of Amundsen was that he
was on his way to it when he lost his life.
“The freedom from tragedy in the history
of Arctic flying has been due to the high safety
factor provided by innumerable landing places
Where the subsoil is frozen, there can be no
underground drainage, and where such drainage
is absent the rain waters stay where they fall,
and there are bound to be ten times as many
lakes as in any section where the ground is
unfrozen. Accordingly, Northern flyers can al
ways descend upon water In Summer with floats
and upon level lake Ice during the Winter
months with skis.
MOTHERS are few places In Northern Canada
where you can get five miles away from
a good landing, and there are similarly few in
Northern Siberia. Alaska Is to a degree an ex
ception, for it is so mountainous, but there has
been the same freedom from serious accidents
there as in'Canada. It is not as safe as the
typical Arctic, but safer than most temperate
■one routes. Landing places are even more
numerous on the ocean pack ice than on the
Arctic land.
“There have been three great Arctic airplane
flyers so far. Rather, among all the splendid
men at work in the North, three have so far
* attained enough publicity to make them famous.
These are Amundsen (with Ellsworth), Byrd
(with Bennett) and Wilkins (with Eielson).
The work of Amundsen had no bearing on the
problem of whether the landing places on the
pack ice are numerous, for he used a flying
boat and landed in water. Byrd's work is
equally without bearing on this problem, for he
was not compelled to land nor did he land vol
untarily. The most famous exploit of Wilkins
and Eielson, when they flew from Alaska past
the North Pole to Spitsbergen, tells us nothing,
for they did not land till the 2,200-mile journey
had been brought to a successful end.
“But on a previous flight, in 1927, WUklns
and Eilson had landed three times at distances
of 550, 540 and 100 miles from shore. The first
was a forced landing in good weather, the sec
ond was a forced landing in a blizzard, and the
third, also forced, had the combined handicaps
of night darkness and thick snowstorm. They
were all safe landings, the first two followed by
takeoffs when repairs had been made, and the
third without take-off because the fuel was ex
hausted. They were in line with the contention
of Wilkins that you are never out of reach of s
good landing place when flying the Arctic pack
in Winter.
“When it comes to learning, there are two
kinds of people—those who understand and
trust theories, and those who are impressed only
by what has been done. The first class were
convinced, say, live years ago, that Arctic fly
ing conditions, whether over sea or land, are
better on the rverage than flying conditions
over any lands or any seas in the tropic or tem
perate son es.
“I would estimate that the Arctic will come
into its own as the practical airplane thorough
fare between the commercial centers of the
United States and Canada on one side and
these of Europe and Northern Asia on the other
in not much less than 5 years, nor much more
than 10“
(Coprrlcht, MM.)
/
Christmas at the Hoovers\
Continued From Firtt Page
last two or three Christmases, blossomed in out
door decoration in the West, in neighborhood
gardens all illumined with glowing trees and
starry flowers—such expressions are the Hoover
Interpretation of Christmas.
I am sure they would be spending this Christ
mas day in their camp on the Rapidan it they
could. I am sure they would have all of us
spending It In camps If they could.
These lovers of out-of-doors enjoy the sur
prise element in Christinas joy-making as
keenly as any boy or girl, lluch time is spent
in preparing “Jokes.” Laughter rings as “sur
< price packages” are opened about the. tree.
. There is more laughter aa the thread of st©ry
> telling is woven through the day-—and (he First
Lady has a rare gift for unfolding a humorous
tale. Their spirit of youth is revealed in this
delight, in jokes and merriment. No two persons
•younger in spirit ever went into the White
House. .
It Is often difficult to know the inner man,
what he really likes, desires. This is not true
of the Hoovers. The kind of Christmas they
like could be described by almost any friend
of theirs. To be with them Is to know them;
so directly, so honestly, do their acts reflect
what they are. I happen to have had the
privilege, as neighbor, of spending many happy
Christmases under the Hoover roof, but I think
I could have pictured their Christinas had Z
never been with them on that day.
As I think backward, across a dozen Christ
mases, I see against a world darkness unending
lines of little children—lines of little children
. stretching miles upon miles—of Belgian and
French children, of Austrian and German chil
dren, of-Polish and Russian children. And to
each outstretched hand is given a slice of bread.
It was dark bread, but as I look back at it, It
gleams. For it reflects the rays of that same
star of brotherly love that shines on us today.
It represents that same passionate and ever
active love of little children which made Presi
dent Hoover set In motion, through the recent
White House conference on child health, the
most important investigation into the present
condition of American children—with a solemn,
obligation to Improve this condition—that has
ever been attempted.
To some, Christmas comes but once a year.
The Hoovers, through their practice of sharing
what they have and are, through their continu
ous effort to bring nearer that joy and peace
on earth which the star above Bethlehem
heralded and which Christ preached, are put
ting the essential meaning of Christinas into
every day.