Antarctic Antic

Even an extraordinary newshawk, obliged to send a story a day from the Antarctic, must resort to much journalistic bilge. The newshawk with Byrd's Second Antarctic Expedition, Charles John Vincent Murphy, is not extraordinary. But last week aboard the Jacob Ruppert as she crept through the drift ice toward Little America, Reporter Murphy was unexpectedly handed the ideal Byrd expedition story of sudden danger, a narrow escape and a happy ending.

Hero of this Antarctic antic was Chief Airplane Pilot Harold June. With two others he took off in the expedition's big Curtiss Condor, equipped with ski landing-gear, for a reconnaissance flight. In the take-off the wind whipped the skis back until they hung vertically from beneath the plane. Someone had forgotten to attach restraining wires from the toes of the skis to the wing struts. Pilot June was told by radio from the Jacob Ruppert what was wrong. Co-Pilot B. M. Bowlin crawled out on the wing, lost his cap and a glove in the icy blast, saw that the skis indeed were dangling, that nothing could be done about it.

A score of the Ruppert's crew scrambled out upon the ice with fire extinguishers, bandages and iodine ready for a bad crash. In less skillful hands than Pilot June's the plane probably would have gouged her skis into the ice, somersaulted into a heap. Coolly he pulled his Condor's nose up almost to the stalling angle, squashed the ship's tail into the snow. The skis bounced up into a near horizontal. In that split second Pilot June set the ship down safely.

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