Science: Frozen Puzzle

As U.S. Navy planes flew up & down the icebound, roaring coasts of Little America, exploration was not the main purpose. But some genuine exploring was done. The Navy’s Antarctic expedition was primarily interested in 1) bolstering U.S. Antarctic claims and 2) training Navy personnel for Arctic operations. Notable findings: great, mountain-bordered bays never mapped before (see map); a newly discovered peak, Mt. X-Ray (15,000 ft.); plenty of bare rock, of interest to mineral hunters.

So far, the Navy had not flown far inland. The blank space beyond the South Pole was still the haziest, most mysterious area on anyone’s map. It might be a featureless ice plain or it might be ridged with peaks higher than Mt. XRay.

Before the Navy gives way to the Antarctic winter, mapping planes may try to find out if Antarctica is really a single continent. Two deep indentations, the Weddell Sea and the Ross Sea, poke toward one another through its frozen heart. Are the seas connected by a strait choked with eternal ice? This, says Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, is “the world’s greatest unsolved geographical puzzle.”