AERONAUTICS: MacMillan

Last week, it was announced that the Air Service, U. S. Navy Department, would assist Explorer Donald B. MacMillan in his ninth expedition to the Arctic, upon which he intends to embark next June. Two Navy planes, of the Loening Amphibian type, would be lent, complete with volunteer pilot-mechanicians, sheltered cabins, ski-gear for landing on ice and snow.

“Blind Spot.” Explorer MacMillan’s plea for this assistance was indeed persuasive. In return for two airplanes, he would try to give the U. S. a new continent. North of Alaska and Siberia, from about 120° West Longitude to about 120° East Longitude, and from the 77th parallel to the North Pole, lies a vast region never explored by man, a “blind spot” on the most modern of maps. In 1906, three years before he reached the Pole, Admiral Peary stood on a cape of Ellesmere Land, looked northwest, swore he could discern, about 120 miles off, the peaks and promontories of what has since been called Crocker Land. In 1914, Peary’s old lieutenant, Explorer MacMillan, struck out from Axel Heiberg Land over the floes for 150 miles—and found nothing. On the way, however, and again back in camp, he had two glimpses of distant headlands. One of these visions faded away into spindrift as he watched. The other, seen on a cloudless day from approximately the spot from which Peary had sighted, remained fixed, and MacMillan noted that it was in a more westerly direction than Peary had related.*

Itinerary. Sailing out of Wiscasset, Me., nosing up through Davis Strait and Baffin Bay to a boat-base at Etah, Greenland, MacMillan will explore the ice-gap of Northern Greenland, examining and mapping the interior from the air as it has never been possible to do afoot; and from an air-base on the upper tip of Axel Heiberg Land will fly westward in search of the dubious Crocker Land.

Conditions. In 1914, it took Macmillan 33 days to cross the great glacier that is Ellesmere Land, between Greenland and Axel Heiberg Land. In airplanes, these laborious 580 miles could be traversed in less than five hours. It took him a week to push out on the floes 150 miles with dog and sledge. The planes now at his disposal will have a daily cruising range of about 1,200 miles.

Another factor in MacMillan’s favor this trip will be the weather. He made his last try for Crocker Land at the beginning of an Arctic winter. With 24 hours of daylight to work in, he expects to accomplish in a few days what it used to take months to do.

Equipment. Daylight is unfavorable to wireless communication, but the MacMillian planes will be equipped with sets for transmitting 20-, 40-, 80-and 180-metre wave lengths. It is believed that the shorter wave lengths will pierce the hitherto impenetrable belt of static between the latitudes of 55° and 75°. The Radio Broadcasters’ League hopes to be able to transmit a running account of the expedition’s adventures by stepping up its messages at a Chicago station. Eskimo folk songs are also part of the tentative program.

For mapmaking, the planes will be equipped with Fairchild cameras loaded so that they will automatically photograph strips of coast 750 miles long and 10 miles wide without adjustment.

Transatlantic

Dr. Hugo Eckener (TIME, Oct. 27), onetime German pilot of the ZR3 (now the Los Angeles (TIME, Dec. 8), before the Royal Aeronautical Society of London, last week, presented an interesting estimate of the commercial possibilities of airship travel based upon the service of three large airships for regular Atlantic crossings. The approximate cost of each trip would be $50,000, while the revenue would be something like $80,000 from 25 to 30 passengers (at a rate of about $5 for each pound avoirdupois), $15,000 from mails and $20,000 from baggage and express packages, leaving a neat profit for the operating company. The price for each passenger is estimated as about $700. When once a feeling of safety had penetrated the public, Dr. Eckener predicted a great scramble for bookings.

Amundsen

It is Explorer MacMillan’s intention to pay a brief visit to the North Pole while he is in that neighborhood next summer. If he does, he may have company. Last week, a radio despatch from the steamer Pram, plowing through cold seas for Kings Bay, Spitzbergen, reminded the world that Captain Roald Amundsen, after cruel vicissitudes (TIME, Nov. 24), had got an aero-arctic expedition underway.

Amundsen goes north under the auspices of the Norwegian Aero Club. The expedition was financed by $100,000 from James W. Ellsworth of Manhattan and has with it two Durnier-Wahl seaplanes, one to be flown by Aviator Lincoln Ellsworth, son of James W., the other by Amundsen. When he stated his plans, Amundsen announced that he would spend some 24 hours examining the Pole and its vicinity. He thought it might be possible to establish a fuel and food base at the Pole for further aerial exploration. From Kings Bay to the Pole is only a seven-hour flight. From the Pole south to Wrangel Island and Bering Strait is about 1,500 miles.

It seemed not unlikely, therefore, that Amundsen, too, might search for Crocker Land; might set foot thereon, if such a land exists, and claim it for Norway. As Amundsen plans to fly north in June and MacMillan does not leave Maine until June 15, the chance of Amundsen’s making a prior claim seemed nearly as good as the chance of anyone finding anything to claim.

Freight

With half a ton of freight born aloft by its metal wings, the Maiden Dearborn, fledgling of Henry Ford’s fleet of aeroplanes, made her first voyage. Rising from the ground at Dearborn, Mich., she flew, in a morning, to Chicago, unloaded and reloaded and returned to the Ford airport at Dearborn the same afternoon. Henry and Edsel Ford witnessed the plane’s departure. Mrs. Henry Ford was on hand to stow the first parcel of freight in the plane. “Ultimately,” said Edsel Ford, “we hope to link our plants at Chicago, at St. Louis, at St. Paul, at Iron Mountain, Mich., with air transport lines. . . .”

*Other evidence of the existence of a large body of land west of Axel Heiberg Land has been “found” in studies of ice formations that seemed to have passed over shoals; in tidal variations observed in Greenland and Alaska; in the mystery surrounding the nesting habitat of certain migratory birds. Should a new continent be discovered, its chief importance might be. 1) for the establishment of air-routes between Europe and Eastern Asia via the Pole; 2) for the land body’s influence on North American weather conditions.