CDR. Edward Frankiewicz USN (Ret) 23 February 2000
Brian Shoemaker Interviewer
(Begin Tape 1 - Side A)
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BS: This is an oral history interview with Commander Edward Frankiewicz, taken at his home in San Diego, California, on 23 February 2000. The interview is being conducted by Brian Shoemaker as part of the Polar Oral History Program being conducted by the American Polar Society and the Byrd Polar Archive of the Ohio State University supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
EF: Born 1919, in the most beautiful town in the world, Rutland, Vermont, and the population of 17,000 people then and it's still 17,000 population. And it was a great place for a youngster to grow up in. We had skiing and tobogganing and sliding and fiShinng through the ice. And in the springtime, we'd go trout fiShinng in the brooks and streams of Vermont. And, of course, in the wintertime, fiShinng through the ice was great. And then, of course, camping out, and hiking, and climbing mountains in the summertime. And in the fall of the year, shuffling your feet through the beautiful leaves that would accumulate on the ground. I was graduated from the high school in Rutland, and then went to a coeducational business college called Bay Path Institute in Springfield, Massachusetts, at the completion of which I got a job in a chemical factory in Waterbury, Connecticut, where I found out that the American Legion in Stratford, Connecticut, was sponsoring this CPT Program - Civilian Pilot Training Program. And I entered that and there were about 200 of us students. The object of it was to be instructed in navigation, aeronautics, aerodynamics, airframe, radio and the like to prepare you for the private pilots written exam that was sponsored by the FAA, or CAA at that time. And of the 200 students, most of them were engineers from Sikorsky Aircraft Plant at Bridgeport (Stratfort) Airport, right across the street from Bridgeport Airport. And the 10 top grades in that course were given flight scholarships that would give you your private pilots license. And I was one of the ten. So that's how I became interested in aviation. And then they followed, the next course came unexpectedly. It was called the secondary course which we flew in bi-planes - twin cockpits, goggles, helmet and the scarf around the neck - and we did aerobatics. That course was 20 hours about of aerobatics.
BS: Which year was this?
EF: Oh, that was 1940. And then the third course that the government sponsored in that CPT Program was a cross-country. That was in a Stinson Reliant, beautiful aircraft. And we flew all over New England on cross-country navigational courses. And then the final course - the fourth course - was a flight instructors course. At the completion of it, we were checked, written, by FAA and thus we were able to be qualified as flight instructors. At the completion of that, we were given commercial pilot's ratings for FAA. So I not only had a private pilot's license, but a flight instructors rating and a commercial rating. And at that time, we found out that Pan American Airways, this was now in late 1941 - Pan American Airways was interested in accumulating pilots for their African Division that they were going to open: Pan American Airways Africa Limited. And we went down to the Chrysler Building in New York City and yes, the four of us from Bridgeport Airport, we were hired as pilots.
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And we went to Miami in early January of 1942. And we went through their Pan American pilot training program and were sent to Africa and were stationed at Accra on the British Gold Coast. And we flew up and down the coast, the west coast of Africa, and across Africa of course, and to Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and to Egypt, Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and India. It was a glorious experience for us youngsters. In very late '42, our forces invaded Northwest Africa and it became too dangerous for us to fly because of German activity. And so I resigned from Pan Am and my buddy and I, we went to join the United States Navy. We wanted to become fighter pilots and the Navy said, "Yes, we sure need pilots already trained." But they said that, "If you want to become a fighter pilot, we've got to send you through extensive training. But we desperately need transport pilots and you already are a transport pilot." So we joined the Navy on that basis and became early members of Naval Air Transport Squadron VR-1, the first air transport squadron. And very rapidly, I became a plane commander in an R4D type aircraft which are DC3s and then early, I became as a very young lieutenant junior grade, I was flying four engine aircraft across the North Atlantic and that's where I got my first real experience on cold weather flying because those North Atlantic storms were pretty vicious.
BS: Icing?
EF: A lot of icing, a lot of snow. One thing that we used to do when, say, a senator or admiral came up into the cockpit, on night flights and if it were snowing or on instruments we would have a powerful hand held Aldis light in the darkened cockpit to check on the amount of snow falling or ice buildup on the windshield and leading edge of the wing. We would place the Aldis light against the windshield or side cockpit window and press the "on" switch. The light reflected by the snow, accentuated by the speed of the airplane was a startling sight, scaring the dickens out of the uninitiated. Incidentally, throughout all of World War II, we never had an accident in our four-engine aircraft across that North Atlantic.
BS: What aircraft was that now?
EF: Pardon me?
BS: Which aircraft was that?
EF: R5D - DC-4.
BS: R5D.
EF: Douglas DC4 - a wonderful, wonderful airplane. Just like the DC3 was a wonderful airplane. So, that was where I got indoctrinated into cold weather flying was in VR-1. Although in the United States, in the wintertime on a lot of the flights in New England, you got plenty of icing and snowstorms and instrument flying and instrument landings and the like. So . . . I was stationed at Hutchison, Kansas, in the Advanced Training Command on PB4Y2s - four engine Convair patrol aircraft because I had just come back from the Korean War with VP-28, flying the same type of aircraft. So it was a pretty easy tour for me when I heard about VX6 wanting pilots and so I flew to Washington, DC, was interviewed by Lieutenant Commander Pendergraff, I believe it was. One of Ed Ward's assistants.
BS: Which year was that?
EF: 1955. And when we landed at Anacostia on the outskirts of Washington, DC, it was in a mild blizzard. But then the blizzard intensified while I was being interviewed by Pendergraff, and he asked what was our intentions about going back with regard to the blizzard and I said, "It's a blizzard, you know. There's nothing new about those. We're ready to go back, we'll go back." And so I think I made an impression upon him so we were indoctrinated into VX6 - got my orders very shortly thereafter. And we reported to Naval Air Test Center at Pautuxent River, Maryland, where VX6 was being formed?
BS: Had you flown to Thule before that?
EF: What?
BS: Had you ever flown to Thule or any of the northern bases - the DEW-line?
EF: No. I never had. But I had flown many times to Nova Scotia, Newfoundland,
Scotland.
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BS: You weren't involved with any of Ed Ward's work up in Alaska.
EF: No. Never had that.
BS: So you didn't know Ed 'til then.
EF: No. But I did meet him in the squadron.
BS: And when did you get married?
EF: 1946.
BS: Right after the war.
EF: Yeah, to a Texas gal - Fort Worth, Texas, gal. Best thing I ever did, 53 years ago. Anyway, it was very hectic forming VX6 because we had several aircraft to get ready and all of them were specially configured. The deHaviland Otter - the UC-1 ski equipped and the helicopters and the HO4Ss and the R4Ds were specially configured with skis and dump chutes and fifteen stations for JATO bottles and the radar and so on. And I was assigned to the aircraft maintenance department. And that is always a hard working outfit of any squadron. And anyway, I think it was October, 1955, that we departed for New Zealand and Antarctica. And we made it in stages. We flew from Pautuxent River to Sioux Falls, Iowa. Spent the night there then into Whidbey Island and because the winds were so strong that we could not fly from San Francisco, Alameda, to Hawaii, so we had to take the circular route, so we went from Whidbey Island, Washington, to Kodiak, Alaska, to Adak, Alaska, and then down to Midway and then over to Barber's Point on Oahu, Hawaii. From there to Canton Island, to Fiji - landing in Fiji - Auckland, New Zealand, and Wigram Field in Christchurch, where we regrouped and gathered everybody and prepared for the launch south.
BS: All the R4Ds flew that route?
EF: Yeah. No, we had only in Deepfreeze I, we had two R4Ds and two UF Grumman, UF Trifibian aircraft. They were sea planes with hulls and of course, the wheels that made them amphibious. And then skis on them, so they were Tri-fibs. The four of us had to go that long route around. The R4Ds had more range than the UFs. Not too much more, but a certain amount. And then the two R5Ds and the two P2Vs, they were able to fly Alameda to Barber's Point, Oahu. And we then tried to deploy to Antarctica. The short legged aircraft - R4Ds and UFs- went down to Taieri on the South Island of New Zealand which is just outside of Duniden - beautiful country. And we took off from there. And the winds were very much against us. The UFs definitely could not make it to Antarctica. And it would be probable that the R4Ds might be able to get to McMurdo, with about 5 minutes of fuel remaining. So Admiral Dufek who was in a ship, and his staff, aboard a ship below us three-quarters of the way down to Antarctica from New Zealand, ordered us to return to Taieri, New Zealand.
BS: You remember which ship he was on?
EF: No I don't. I probably could look it up in my records. So we then returned to the United States when the squadron did return - the two R5Ds and the two P2Vs that were down in Antarctica. When they returned to New Zealand, all of us then returned to the States, which was in February of 1956.
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And we found out that our home port was to be changed from Naval Air Test Center, Pautuxent River, to Naval Air Station, Quonset Point, Rhode Island. And so then we went up there and prepared for Deepfreeze II.
BS: You didn't make it down there at all that year?
EF: No. We sure didn't. We tried, but we couldn't do it.
BS: But the R5s did?
EF: Yes, they had the range and the P2Vs.
BS: And the P2Vs.
EF: Four aircraft went down. And then the supply ships were able to offload one, two, three Otters - UC1s. And one of them crashed on take-off down there and injured the assistant aircraft maintenance officer and he had to be evacuated.
BS: Who was flying it?
EF: Lieutenant Whalen. But it wasn't his fault. Trigger Hawks was in charge of the thing and he ordered the loading of the aircraft and the aircraft was not loaded properly and it was unstable which caused the crash. That's the unofficial version as I understand. Under protest of Lieutenant Whalen. He didn't want the plane loaded that way, but it went that way. And so then we prepared for Deepfreeze II.
BS: The Trifibians- they never went to the Ice either.
EF: Pardon me?
BS: The Trifibians never made it to the Ice either.
EF: No, no. They had shorter legs than we had.
BS: Did they ever make it to the Ice?
EF: Never.
BS: They never took them again?
EF: No.
BS: OK. So they never really got down there.
EF: That's correct. Now the summer in preparation of Deepfreeze II, we did go to Greenland - Sondrestrom, Greenland - and the R4D, one R4D and one UF and the R4D we made four touch and go landings at about the 8100 foot elevation on snow. That was our first experience with ski operations and one full stop landing. And then the next day we went to about another area of Greenland interior that was 10,100 foot elevation and we had a bit of trouble taking off from there because of the snow and the extreme elevation and the heavy weight of the aircraft. But using JATO (jet assisted take off), we were able to take off okay.
BS: Who else was there? You said two aircraft went?.
EF: My co-pilot was Harvey Speed. Have you heard of Harvey Speed? A most wonderful person who is regretfully no longer with us. And Captain Cordiner (USN) who was our Commanding Officer - a hang of a nice person. Very well liked.
BS: And the other aircraft ?
EF: Was a UF.
BS: Um-hum.
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EF: Curtis, Lieutenant Commander Curtis was the Skipper of that UF. And he did not land on the snow. He landed at Sondrestrom, but he accompanied us. I think it was a very wise move. I don't think that plane could ever get off from the snow. As Aircraft Maintenance Officer - that's what I was in Deepfreeze II - I came across a pair of R4D skis that had teflon coating on the bottom whereas all the other R4Ds had polyurethane on the bottom which was a sheet like thing that was held in place by aluminum strips. And mine was melted on and glued on to the bottom. And we found that the coefficient of friction was very, very light on the teflon as opposed to the polyurethane which would also flake off and pretty soon, after a few landings, you're just landing on the bare aluminum of the skis. And I was scheduled by Captain Cordiner to be the pilot to land at the South Pole first for whatever reasons. But Gus Shinn's co-pilot was Trigger Hawks, and the two of them had been in High Jump together, and Gus had a lot of experience and Gus is a good pilot and so, because Trigger Hawks was a member of the staff, on Dufek's staff, and Captain Cordiner was Commanding Officer of the Squadron, the staff delegated who was to fly the first polar landing and it was Gus Shinn - Admiral Dufek, Trigger Hawks as co-pilot, Captain Cordiner as passenger and my function was to be the back-up crew and I was at the Beardmore Camp which was at the bottom of the Liv Glacier and we stood by for the first polar landing by Gus Shinn.
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And I do have in my - for about 45 minutes after they got to the Pole and maybe it was even longer than that, nobody heard from Gus Shinn, and a C-124 was also circling. And we heard nothing from either aircraft and we were really concerned. So I told the crew, "Let's go out to the South Pole and go rescue them. Something's happened." And just then, we got a transmission from Gus Shinn and I copied it down as it came in. It said - Gus's transmission was: "Navy 418 to Generate - (Generate was the code name for McMurdo) - Airborne South Pole at 09:23 Zulu. Position at 09:41 Zulu 89.22 degrees South latitude and 170 degrees West longitude. Altitude 12,000' - (see, they had just taken off). The flight conditions - zero. Estimating Beardmore Camp at 11:53 Zulu. Fuel remaining 3 hours. Temperature -38 degrees Fahrenheit. True air speed, 130. Ground speed, 123. Track 190. Wind, 250 degrees at 15 knots." And Gus landed at the Liv Camp and, gosh, his airplane was a mess. A lot of oil leaks. As a matter of fact, his oil breather line on both engines had huge icicles coming out of them. His horizontal stabilizer was all battered in because he fired his JATO and it hit the snow and it flung it right into the leading edge of the horizontal stabilizers and dented it badly. The JATO bottles were
15KS1000 delivering 1000 pounds of thrust for 15 seconds, and weighed 140 pounds each. And also the skin underneath too. But we refueled him and he took off and then we followed shortly afterward flying escort for him.
BS: Tell me when they set up the Liv Glacier Operation, what was the purpose of it?
EF: The R4Ds were to establish the camp at the South Pole. And we wanted to carry as much passengers, cargo, food and the like. So we established this base camp at the foot of the Liv Glacier so that when we left the Pole, we could land at the Liv Camp and refuel and maybe get more JATO bottles and all that. But we needed several flights to resupply the Liv Camp before we established the South Pole Base.
BS: How many men were there?
EF: At Liv Camp? Only about 5 to the best of my knowledge.
BS: Sailors?
EF: Yes, uh-huh. Squadron personnel and Seabees - mostly radio operators.
BS: I see. Did any other aircraft land there, like the R5s?
EF: Where?
BS: At Liv.
EF: No. Only the P2Vs and the R4Ds. The C-124s would fly over and parachute drop supplies and petroleum and the like - food.
BS: Now you're at Liv and you're taking off with Gus back to McMurdo. You flew together?
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EF: No, not together. Gus took off and then we started our aircraft and we were maybe 15 minutes behind, but we kept in radio contact with each other.
BS: Did you fly some of the people back that he took to the Pole?
EF: Yeah. No, when he landed at the Pole. Nobody was left there. It was just an exploratory flight.
BS: No, I mean after he landed at Liv Glacier.
EF: No, he took out everybody. He was real light, so it was no problem in that respect. We could have, but there wasn't any need to.
BS: OK. What happened at South Pole after that? Did they immediately start flying shuttle flights?
EF: Shortly thereafter we started flying R4Ds. I happened to be transferred to Little America to establish the refueling of the tractor train petroleum requirements from LA to Byrd Station, and so I was not in on the immediate landings at the South Pole. But the R4Ds did take the people there. Dr. Paul Siple and Dick Bowers and the like. And that was a hairy experience. Good gosh. They were sure brave people because all they had was tents. But just to backtrack a touch, Gus Shinn and I - Gus had Trigger Hawks and I had my regular crew - we flew two planes from McMurdo to Beardmore Glacier at the foot of the glacier where we wanted to establish that interim camp. But it was total white- out. We couldn't see the ground at all. We knew there was a lot of glaciers there - crevasses in that area at the foot of the Beardmore, so we just kept on going North and it was still just a terrible condition of white-out. We couldn't see anything. And then I started praying real good. I happen to be a Polish Roman Catholic and believing in the Lord and sure enough, up ahead was a small patch of sunlight appearing on the ground. Why? No where else was there any sunlight but there was where we landed. And it lasted long enough for Gus to land there and for me to land there. And then it disappeared. And I thought I believe in God.
BS: And that was Liv Camp then?
EF: Pardon me?
BS: Was that Liv?
EF: That was Liv Camp. That was at the base of the Liv Glacier, but we call it the Beardmore Camp.
BS: Yeah. Well that's interesting.
EF: And we also called it the Bert Crary Camp later on. But that didn't become too popular. So we thought those four or five guys that we dropped off to establish that camp were pretty brave people. Mike Baronick was the petty officer in charge of the group.
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Then in Deepfreeze III . . . at the completion of Deepfreeze II, that camp was abandoned
because there was no need for it. Everyone was returning to McMurdo and the States. And then in Deepfreeze III, one of my chores was to go to the Liv Camp, recover whatever we could and establish a camp at the foot of the Beardmore Glacier which we called the Liv Camp.
BS: I understand. Well that's quite interesting. So that was blue ice where the sunlight
hit? Was that blue ice where you landed?
EF: No, it was white snow.
BS: White snow, OK.
EF: It was white snow. Yeah.
BS: OK. So well, quite interesting on that. Why would they call it Crary Camp?
EF: Bert Crary was a very popular person. He was at Byrd Station a lot and was a wonderful scientist and person. Dedicated, devoted and he was very well liked among the people. And so it was just called Bert Crary Camp.
BS: OK.
EF: But like I say, it didn't become very popular. So it was Liv Camp or Beardmore Camp.
BS: You flew a lot of scientists around.
EF: I wouldn't say a lot of them. Just as required, yeah.
BS: I see. And you flew Crary?
EF: Probably did, but I don't remember exactly. I do remember at the end of Deepfreeze II, Larry, Dr. Larry Gould came to Antarctica with the incoming ships to evacuate everybody. And I was to fly him to Byrd Station and he wanted - he had a huge amount of cargo to be taken. And I told Dr. Gould there's a limit to what we can carry. And I had 15 other duties to perform. I was the ONC at that Little America Camp for VX6. And when this plane was loaded, I went out and we started it up and tried to taxi and we couldn't even take off. The most I could get was about 50 knots airspeed. I couldn't even get off the ground. So we had to turn around and come back and off load when we got the word that Lieutenant Bob Anderson in an R4D made two, three GCA approaches to Little America and couldn't get in so he went out to Ocuma Bay - to the east - and made an emergency landing there. And I got Herman Nelson heaters and fuel and we took off and we located them and gave them Herman Nelson heaters and some fuel and we were able to take off and return to Little America because the weather had improved.
BS: Tell me about life in McMurdo and then we'll move over to operations out at Little
America. You lived there how long?
EF: Two, three months. But that time was spent between McMurdo and Little America. I spent as much time at Little America as I did at McMurdo.
BS: I see. What type buildings did you live in?
EF: Quonset hut at McMurdo.
BS: Metal ones?
EF: Yeah. Metal Quonset huts. And very comfortable. Plenty of heat.
BS: Food?
EF: The food was good. The food was good.
BS: Chow line type?
EF: Pardon me?
BS: Chow line type?
EF: Yes:
BS: All hands?
EF: All hands, un-huh. Enlisted, officers, scientists, we all sat intermingled. No problem whatsoever.
BS: How about the runway, skiway?
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EF: Poor McMurdo had only two D8 Caterpillar tractors. These are 80,000 pound jobberdos - great big blades on them. I think four foot wide treads. And they built - they excavated the snow down to the sea ice at sea level so that we could land on the ice. And just before . . . couple weeks before we were to get down there, a blizzard came in and filled that runway completely up with snow such that it made it impossible for wheeled aircraft to land on. So they decided to build another ice runway right next to the original one. And they were able to complete that in time for us to - they were night and day, night and day, night and day. Whereas Little America had, gee I guess, at least eight D8 Caterpillar tractors.
BS: Did the Air Force fly in with their Globemasters? Was that the first year?
Deepfreeze II?
EF: Yeah. Deepfreeze II. Yes. They came in right after we landed.
BS: Did you meet General McCarty?
EF: Ha, ha, ha, ha. Yes. We met him. Yes. He was strictly - we wrote some very interesting poems and songs about General McCarty. The only reason he came down there was for publicity. And the first thing he did was fly over the South Pole from McMurdo 800, 900 miles away and at 17,000 feet and he took every available correspondent - LOOK Magazine, NY Times, LIFE Magazine, and so on. . . reporters. And there was only three oxygen bottles aboard the airplane, I understand. And everyone was passing out from lack of oxygen. But then he calls his wife while circling over the South Pole on ham radio and told her what he was doing, and all that. So we made a lot of fun of poor General McCarty. Jim Waldron has written that book - "Flight of the
Puckered Penguins - The Story of VX6" and he's reproduced two or three of the stories that we composed about General McCarty. Much of our effort out of Little America during Deepfreeze II was to support the tractor train establishing a trail from Little America to Byrd Station which was, as I remember, 120 degrees west. . . east and 80 degrees south.
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And they had to send an exploratory team out first to establish the route and they did this by, every quarter of a mile, if I can remember - sticking a bamboo stick in the ground with a red flag on it. And they would line up the flags such that they were going in a straight line and then when they got to where the Ross Ice Shelf joined the mainland, where the land started going up - the train started going up, there were many crevasses there, so it was very treacherous for those heavy loaded tractor trains and their sleds and wanagans and the like.
BS: How many Cats did they have at Little America?
EF: Little America had at least 8 D8 Caterpillars and several Sno-Cats and Weasels. So our chore . . . VX6 and R4Ds and also we used the Otters and even the helicopters for the short runs to establish fuel depots every ten miles. The tractor trains would establish a cairn every ten miles and we would establish a fuel dump right there using rubber tanks and then the R4D could carry at least 800 gallons of diesel fuel in the cabin and we had discharge lines and we would fill those tanks up and as the tractor would come up, they would refuel from those.
BS: So the tractor trains were dependent on fuel supplied by aircraft.
EF: Yes. And also spare parts, mail, food, medical supplies, exchange of personnel and the like. And what they did when they got to this crevasse field, we would fly explosives up to them. They would set the explosives off and blow the crevasse clean. Usually they used a sway bridge across the crevasse - very insecure. And so they'd explode those away and then with the D8 Caterpillars, shovel snow in and fill the crevasse and then using reins like on a horse team, to the D8, they would stand behind the D8 and back the D8 and lower the blade and shovel snow into the crevasse and then back it back and forth. Nobody aboard the D8 Caterpillar - in fact, Max Kiel during Deepfreeze I - he lost his life when his Caterpillar went through one of those snow bridges. They couldn't rescue him at all. So that's what they learned. (500) BS: He's still there.
EF: Pardon me?
BS: I think he's still there.
EF: He's still there, down in that crevasse, yeah. And also the D8 Caterpillar - 80,000 pounds of Caterpillar. And so that's what we did. We supplied . . . and sometimes during white-outs it was very hazardous. We could locate a tractor train by radar and we would make a descent, controlled descent until the skis hit the snow, we didn't know where the snow was. And land and then with radar, turn around and taxi back to the snow Cats or tractor train and refuel them and the like and then take off again. So that's one of the first, at least my only opportunity ever to make a zero-zero landing and a zero-zero take off. Some of that sastrugi was rough. Douglas made a sure strong airplane. When we'd land on that sastrugi, which is wind carved little ridges of snow anywhere from four to eight inches high on a slope. And if you landed right into them, it was really-really rough. And I can remember many a time landing - the instrument panel would just jiggle up and down, you could not read it. And your ear-phones would fall off your head. And so would your sunglasses. And your teeth would go like that (Eddie make a rapid clicking sound). And you wonder why the airplane didn't fall apart. The first time I tried to make a zero-zero landing, I established a 300 foot minute descent and this was at Byrd Station and Byrd Station is supposed to be at 5100 feet elevation. Well, descending at 300 feet a minute, I hit the ground at 5300 feet elevation by my altimeter and it was a hard landing. Why the gear didn't give out, I don't know. (550) So from then on, my descents were 50 foot a minute to 100 foot a minute and they would be rather gentle when the bottom of . . . when the rear of your skis would touch the snow, you had a split second or two to flatten out your descent and that would usually result in a pretty good landing.
BS: Did you scout trail for any tractor trains?
EF: Oh yeah.
BS: How did you mark the trail for them?
EF: Oh we did, we'd take the leaders of the party - Palle Mogesen - Major USA, wonderful person. Palle Mogesen and I forget his partner - we would take them out ahead of the tractor train in the direction that they wanted to go toward Byrd Station and we would scout what the terrain looks like underneath.
BS: Phil Smith involved? Did you meet Phil Smith?
EF: Phil Smith was involved. Sure. Yeah.
BS: So they would basically scout the trail to figure out where they were going.
EF: Yeah, to see what's the trail like. Were there any mountains in front of them, hills, crevasse areas? or anything like that. And usually it wasn't. It was just where the Ross Ice Shelf met the mainland and the mainland going up would be crevasses. After that it was pretty good, yeah.
BS: So you met them at the tractor train where they were stopped, picked the scouts up, whoever . . .
EF: And go ahead . . .
BS: And then fly a scouting flight . . .
EF: Yeah. Un-huh.
BS: And then put them back down.
EF: And bring them back home, yeah.
BS: And you operated out of Little America?
EF: Little America.
BS: OK. Did they establish Byrd Station by air. In other words . . .
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EF: The tractor train took most of the stuff and then with the C-124s, parachute dropping established Byrd Station. We would take the mail, the food, the personnel, repair parts and things like that - high priority items rather than leave it to . . . .one interesting thing, going back to the South Pole. The Air Force dropped a small Sno-Cat tractor and the parachute didn't open. And I think it ended up at the North Pole.
(End of Tape 1 - Side A)
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(Begin Tape 1 - Side B)
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EF: The site for Byrd Station was selected in Washington, or by the task force, certainly by the scientists - where they wanted the station to be and it was selected at 80 degrees south latitude and 120 degrees east longitude. And it was very interesting how these tractor trains would go. They - like I say - every one quarter of a mile they would stick a split bamboo probably 5, 6 foot in height into the ground with a red flag at the top of it and they would line themselves up with the rear vision mirror lining up every quarter of a mile two previous flags and then they would use their speedometer odometer on the vehicle and they would stick a bamboo rod in. Now the lead vehicle was a Sno-Cat made by a Canadian concern and on the front of it it had a rake that went out 45 degrees on each side with about four dishes that rode on the ground and electrical currents were transmitted and received and they could calculate whether they were approaching a crevasse area - a crevasse. And if they did, they could stop and this was a beautiful safety feature. That was the lead vehicle and the driver of that or the passenger of that - one of the crew - would stick these bamboo poles. And we got so that when we tried to follow that trail, we could spot those red flags even though we're 100 feet in the air, 200 feet in the air. I had the plane captain, and I'd be looking out the side window and the co-pilot would sort of, kind of be monitoring the airplane and I'd have the plane captain stand right behind me and he would hit me on the shoulder whenever my altimeter got below a certain altitude - less than 100 feet, let's say. And we also had radio altimeters in there which weren't too good because they would send a signal down and then the reflected signal would be measured. But you didn't know how far down through the snow it was going. On ice, yes, it would be reverberated right back or over rock or something like that. So . . .
BS: Did you land at Byrd Station and go inside?
EF: Oh yeah. I've spent a couple of nights there.
BS: What was it like?
EF: This was very interesting. They organized the kitchen duties. Rank, rating, IGY civilian or military had no bearing. Everybody took their turns washing dishes, setting the table, clearing the table and the like. I can remember Bert Crary cleaning the tables off and washing the dishes when it was his turn and nobody bitched or anything because it had to be done.
BS: Did you meet Dr. Bentley there?
EF: I might have. The name is familiar, but I don't remember him in particular.
BS: You met Bert Crary though.
EF: Yes. Good gentleman.
BS: Did you meet Admiral Byrd?
EF: Yes, unhuh.
BS: And where did you meet him?
EF: At the mess at Wigram RNZAR - Royal New Zealand Air Force Station in Christchurch. And he was a really an old man and he did get down to McMurdo and then he wasn't there very long and then was flown out.
BS: Flew out on what type of plane?
EF: Squadron VX6.
BS: R5?
EF: R5D, yes.
BS: What did . . . did you get to talk to him?
(50)
EF: No. Never had a chance. He was surrounded by too many people. Except that when we were flying down on Deepfreeze I. I may back off about him getting down to Antarctica. Deepfreeze I - we spent the night at Nandi in the Fiji Islands and he came in with a Navy Captain Chief of Staff of his and the plane - their commercial flight was delayed due to mechanical and we were getting ready to go and we were refueling and everything and the Navy Captain came over and introduced himself and we had a nice chat. So that's as close as I came to Admiral Byrd. But I did see him at the mess in Wigram.
BS: You met Dr. Gould at Little America.
EF: Um-hum.
BS: How did he come to Little America?
EF: By ship.
BS: Do you remember what ship?
EF: No, I sure don't. No because there were several ships down there. Probably the Curtis if I can remember correctly. The Curtis was an AVP - an aviation sea plane carrier, a large ship. I remember at the end of Deepfreeze II, I was evacuated, I left my airplane there at Little America and went back to New Zealand aboard the AVP - the
Curtis and gosh that water was rough. And easily 40, 70, 100 foot waves - well, I wouldn't say 100 foot - at least 50 foot waves when the stern would come out of the water, you could hear the screws churning in the air and nobody was allowed out on the open deck except I snuck out and went on the top deck behind the smokestack, the funnel, and I just enjoyed myself tremendously watching as the ship would plunge and raise, then rock back and forth, and when I got back to my bunk, I was dead tired. It just put me to sleep. It just rocked me to sleep.
BS: An AVP?
EF: AVP - aviation sea plane tender.
BS: And you were in a storm.
EF: Just normal weather down there. It's horrendous I understand. Screaming 50s, roaring 70s and all that.
BS: Did you fly any support for other traverses that traversed from Byrd to out over the
Ice Cap doing geophysical work?
EF: Yeah. Bert Crary out of McMurdo - I think this was in Deepfreeze III. He went from McMurdo toward the South Pole and the figure? of about 100 miles due North of the South Pole we made one of these landings on radar at 50 to 100 foot a minute descent and as soon as the rear of our skis touched down, we chopped power and then using radar, we turned around and we came back and replenished them with food, fuel, spare parts, whatever, personnel probably change.
BS: He was already up on the plateau?
EF: No, he was not up. This was on the Ross Ice Shelf. Where he went from there I don't know because I probably went back to Little America.
BS: Were you involved with the search for Bob Streich and the Otter that was crashed?
EF: Yes, I had just gotten back to the United States from Deepfreeze I when the word came in that Streich had crashed - didn't know exactly where he was and there were no airplanes available to assist because everyone had evacuated.
(100)
So Ed Ward and I loaded up my airplane and we started out and we weren't going to go the long way. We were going to go down South America on to the Antarctic Peninsula - Palmer Peninsula and then search for Streich between Byrd Station and Little America and when we got down to Trinidad, we got word that the P2V with Jack Torbert as pilot and Charlie Otti as co-pilot, had crashed in the Orinoco River wetlands in Venezuela and so now we had two planes to go look for and while they were attempting to rescue the P2V which landed in such a manner that both wings were ripped off but nobody was injured - it was a remarkable rescue. And the Venezuelan, or I think it was an oil company that was exploring down there with a helicopter, brought the guys out and they got back to Trinidad, Port of Spain, Trinidad. And that's where we met them and we took them back and while we were there at Trinidad, we got the word that Streich had finally been located by either a helicopter that they put together or another Otter aircraft. I can't remember exactly what.
BS: Did you go to Antarctica and help search for him?
EF: No. We only got as far as Venezuela.
BS: I understand.
EF: Because we then had to try and locate and rescue the P2V people. They lost an engine and very shortly thereafter, they lost their other engine and they were going to land in the Orinoco River and a Pan American pilot heard them and he said, "Do not land in Orinoco River. Piranha! Piranha! Piranha! Land along side in marsh." And that's what they did and it was lucky that they did. Piranha are those voracious flesh-eating fish.
BS: OK. That's Deepfreeze II. You went back a third season?
EF: Um-hum.
BS: What was special about Deepfreeze III?
EF: Well one thing, we now had the Super DC3 - the Super C-47, R4D-8 and that was a remarkable aircraft. Although it's pretty dad-gum hard to beat the old Gooney Bird. The DC3 and the C-47 R4D which had a great tail on it - rudder on it and could land in cross winds and down winds and the regular R4D was a great ice machine. It could carry a load of ice whereas the R4D-8 - Super DC3 couldn't carry an ice load at all. You could get a tracing of ice on it and you'd lose 25 knots of air speed. But it was considerably faster and it could carry more weight and had longer legs and could go a considerable distance further than the R4D, so we enjoyed the airplane. The R4D-8 had Wright Ri820 single
bank of cylinders. The R4D-5 had Pratt and Whitney R1830-92 double row cylinders engines, 20 cubic inch greater displacement and was rather reliable. The smaller R1820 engine developed greater horsepower, but was not as reliable.
BS: Did you fly them down?
EF: Yes, uh-huh.
BS: From . . . ?
EF: From Quonset Point, Rhode Island. That was our new base. After Deepfreeze I, we were transferred from Naval Air Test Center, Pautuxent River, to Naval Air Station at Quonset Point, Rhode Island.
BS: And then you went via Wigram?
EF: Yeah. Just about. We went and made a stop someplace in the mid-United States - Lincoln, Nebraska, for instance. And then Alameda to Barber's Point, Oahu, Canton Island, Nandi, Fiji Island, and then directly from Nandi to Christchurch, Wigram Field, where we regrouped there and waited for everybody to catch up with us. And we all straggled in.
BS: You took off for Antarctica from..?
EF: Yeah. We took off . . . I'm trying to remember what we. . . yeah, we either took off from Harewood Airport - commercial airport in Christchurch, or from Taieri down at - though we had the legs so we probably took off from Harewood if I remember correctly. All the airplanes took off from Harewood.
(150)
BS: So how many DC3s did you have on the Ice then?
EF: We had our original R4Ds down there and then the two Super DC3s - R4D-8s that we brought down so that made a total of six.
BS: OK. It was a DC-3.
EF: It was a DC-3.
BS: Super DC-3. OK. All right. I just wanted to clear that. And what did you do that season. What was special about Deepfreeze III?
EF: Pretty much what we did in Deepfreeze II. One of my first chores was to go to the Beardmore Camp that was at the base of the Liv Glacier and collect whatever we could of the gear that was left behind and take it down to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier which was now called the Liv Camp. And one thing we did was recover the Sno-Cat. This was a 4000 lb. piece of Caterpillar - small Caterpillar and oh, about 1100# fuel pump and take it down to the new Liv Camp from the Beardmore and establish that Camp there. And I was sort of kind of glad I did because on one of my replenishing trips to the . . . Well, the Skipper of that squadron, V.J. Coley, Commander V.J. Coley, landed at the South Pole, the temperature was, I think, -58 degrees Fahrenheit and I had just come in from Little
America at six o'clock in the morning and I find him in the operations filling out a flight plan and I asked him where he was going and he said, "Oh, we're going to South Pole." And I says, "Skipper," I said, "I want to make a suggestion to you, you take it or leave it." I said, "Don't secure your engines up there. Too dad-gum cold." And I said, "What I do is I leave one engine turning over and when the other engine, oil temperature and cylinder head temperatures are getting down low, I start that engine using the power from the good engine then I secure the good engine - you know, the engine that was running." And he looked at me like I was a kindergarten student and sure enough, he went to the Pole and secured his engines and that's all she wrote. And then two or three days later, he lost at least one engine up there. Couldn't get it started at all. And so I got the crew of engine change personnel and all the tools it required - the prop tools and other special tools - engine hoists, whatever would be needed to change the engine, but I didn't take the engine up there because we had to take the old engine off first. And as I was going up the Beardmore Glacier, about three-quarters of the way up, my starboard engine quit on me because I was climbing at almost take-off power to get up there. And so we made a 180 degree turn to the left and going down the glacier and the glacier, of course, elevation was decreasing all the time, but our descent, rate of descent on a single engine, was greater than the glacier descent, and so I ordered Captain George Pullman - Marine Corps - a "maniac" from Maine - I said, "George, lighten ship, but don't toss anything overboard that we don't have a duplicate back at McMurdo."
(200)
And he said, "Right," and so that's what he did. And my navigator gave me an ETA of, I think it was 23 minutes after the hour and exactly 22 minutes after the hour, we passed over Beardmore Camp or Liv Camp or whatever you want to call it and made another 180 degree turn and landed along side and they sent a plane up from McMurdo and they evacuated us, but they also brought the equipment needed to change the engine and our crew changed the engine and when it was ready, I was flown back to that camp and flew the plane back to McMurdo. But it was very interesting. I did have four JATO bottles on my airplane coming down that glacier, so I was just holding those in reserve that if we - because that glacier was just - and we were only 100 foot above the terrain going down. You could see those crevasses in there. Did we ever hit the panic button? No.
BS: Did you - when was your first landing at South Pole?
EF: Deepfreeze II.
BS: Deepfreeze II? How many landings did you make there?
EF: Remember, right about that time - probably two or three in Deepfreeze II. Maybe four. I was sent to Little America to establish their big fuel thing for the tractor trains. And we couldn't do too much landing at the South Pole, but we made at least one flight a week - the squadron did.
BS: Did you get inside South Pole?
EF: No. I never did. I had too much to do on the outside, off loading cargo and the like. It never interested me to go in.
BS: Did you meet Paul Siple?
EF: Yes. I met him at McMurdo.
BS: Tell me about Paul.
EF: Wonderful, wonderful person. Nice smile on his face and very well liked.
BS: How about Tuck? Frank Tuck?
EF: Yeah. Good man. He was the first Commanding Officer of the South Pole Station. He set it up - he and his crew. Charlie Bevilaqua was one of the Seabees, I remember. And then Dick Bowers came and relieved him once the station was established. Dick Bowers and group went up there to continue building the South Pole Station - the permanent station there.
BS: Who was in charge of building the station?
EF: The Seabees.
BS: You mean the OIC was Dick Bowers.
EF: Dick Bowers, yes.
BS: But there was a group there before they built the permanent station.
EF: Yeah, that was Tuck and his people. They lived in tents and established, got things going. I don't know how long they were there, but the Air Force would drop gear and we would fly supplies in and they would get things established pretty nicely. Dick Bowers, I know what it was - before the wintering over group, that's when the change took place. Dick Bowers was the Officer in Charge of the South Pole Station and Dr. Paul Siple was the Scientific Leader at the time. Incidentally, I was stationed in Washington, DC in '67 or so, '68 when Paul Siple died. And I went to his funeral and it was quite a group. Went to his funeral in Washington, DC.
(250)
BS: Did you meet Dave Baker? Fellow that drove dog sleds, Deepfreeze I.
EF: I probably did, but I don't remember him off hand. Remember this happened 55 years ago. Jack Bursey, have you heard of Jack Bursey? The Canadian Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander and United States Coast Guard Reserves - he wintered over in Deepfreeze at Little America and wrote a book, "Antarctic Night.". And I've got to tell you about Speedy. Harvey Speed who was a magnificent pilot and a wonderful person and a great sense of humor - a pipe smoker and he had these witticisms about him and when you'd ask him an obvious question that required a "yes" answer, he'd say, instead of saying, "Yes," he'd say, "Is the Pope Catholic?" Now this is back in '56, you know. Today that's a common expression, but back then it was rather unique. And when he was ready to take off, he'd say, "Hit her in the shitter. Let's go!"
BS: This is Bursey, now?
EF: No, this is Harvey G. Speed. But he'd say about Jack Bursey, with a good smile on his face, "Jack Bursey is so dad-gummed old, when the Lord said 'Let there be light,' Bursey threw the switch."
BS: This was Canadian now. You say he was Canadian?
EF: I think he was born in Canada.
BS: But he was in the Coast Guard.
EF: Coast Guard, yeah, Jack Bursey. He was on Byrd's first expedition, I think and on this one.
BS: Um-hum. He wrote a book.
EF: Yes. And another one about Jack Bursey was, "Hell, he's so old, he was mess cooking at the Last Supper." And another one was, "Up your ass with Mobile gas. Happy motoring!"
BS: Now your first year that you're in VX6, the Commanding Officer was Gordon Ebby.
Second year? Cordiner?
EF: Yeah, Captain Cordiner. Douglas Cordiner, Doug Cordiner. Then V.J. Coley, Commander V. J. Coley who was an enigma.
BS: How so?
EF: At the start, he was a real nice guy, but then when he got the problem with losing his engine at the South Pole through his own stupidity - at least I thought that - he changed. He was on the defensive from then on. And he was bitter and . . .
BS: Pilots didn't ride him? Did they ride him when they came back after that?
EF: No. He was a pretty big boy and he was stern and like that. No he was in control of everything. Matter of fact, he was too much in control. I remember at Quonset Point, one day when he went out for lunch and it was raining and a big wind, and we had one of the Otters right there on the sea wall and the waves were coming, splashing against the sea wall, and splashing up and drenching that Otter with sea water. And so I ordered it to be moved, you know, for protection. And he came back and he looked out his window and he saw that the Otter wasn't there and he called me up and he said, "What did you do with the Otter?" I said, "I put it on the other side of the hangar in the lee so it wouldn't get drenched." And oh, he gave me hell. "You didn't ask for my permission to move the that airplane."
(300)
BS: Who followed him?
EF: I don't really know. I wasn't there because at the end of Deepfreeze III, I was transferred to flying jets out of Kingsville, Texas.
BS: Tell me about Gordon Eddy.
EF: Good man.
BS: Good leader?
EF: Yes. Good man. Quiet type and didn't get rattled or anything.
BS: How about Cordiner?
EF: Good man. Good man. Yeah. Sometimes he would say, "No," in a special manner. He smoked cigarettes in a holder, you know. And he'd listen to your request, then he'd reach up with his right hand, take that cigarette and holder out of his mouth, blew the smoke out, look you right in the eye and say, "No." Then he'd put it back in his mouth and that was it. No arguing or anything. Sometimes I didn't know why he would say no, but he must have had his reasons. That's why he was Commanding Officer and I was his Maintenance Officer.
BS: Didn't do it often did he?
EF: No, not often.
BS: Well Coley was a different . . .
EF: Totally different.
BS: After Deepfreeze III, you flew back out of Antarctica or did you take a ship out?
EF: Yeah.
BS: OK. All the way back to Quonset in the new Super . . . ?
EF: Yeah.
BS: And when did you transfer from the squadron?
EF: Couple of months later, I was transferred to Kingsville, Texas, and became the Aircraft Maintenance Officer there and got checked out in the Cougar F9F8 jet and I instructed students as well as having my own job. But since I was already qualified for R4D, everybody got a hold of me to fly the R4D - the station R4D when they had things to go and do.
BS: Tell me, when you were gone, you were married. Did you have kids?
EF: Yeah. Three kids.
BS: Tough on the family? Problems when you were gone six months out of the year.
EF: No, because I had duty in French Morocco. I was gone for six months and during the Korean War, I was in Korea for six months and then the second tour of the patrol squad flying out of Okinawa for 6 months. So, the family was accustomed to me being gone for six months and actually, on Deepfreeze, we were gone only four months, so . . .
BS: I see.
EF: We had to get out of McMurdo when the weather got real warm, because the sea ice was melting and they couldn't operate off of that. The ice runway would have holes in it and sea water would pour out.
BS: You didn't move up to the ice shelf and work from skis in those days when the weather got too warm?
EF: Well, see when we evacuated from McMurdo, we left our skis there and flew to
New Zealand, so we had to use wheels to take off.
(350)
BS: I see. But you didn't . . . later on when I was there, we - when it got too soft for operating inland from the ice runway, we moved up onto the ice shelf and operated from skis. Reduced our loads, but we could still operate for another two months.
EF: Remember, at McMurdo at Deepfreeze II, we had two runways there. One was all snowed in and we used that to take off on skis and the other one on wheels. Matter of fact, we got so that we removed the wheels on the R4Ds to make them lighter so we could carry more. And so we operated from skis. But before we did that, out on the field, in the sastrugi area, I'd land with the skis up - you're familiar with that, aren't you? And just land on the wheels because it was a lot softer landing when you hit the sastrugi.
BS: Did you find any of the blue ice areas to land on out in the continent?
EF: No.
BS: OK. That's an area where the snow's blown away and it's just ice on the glaciers.
EF: Saw blue ice at dry valleys when we'd go out on a test hop or something. We would see them across from McMurdo.
Bs: Yeah.
EF: That's about the only place that I ever saw blue ice that I can remember.
BS: Did you fly the Otter there at all?
EF: Only as co-pilot. Let me get ahead - Deepfreeze III. One evening I was to take my R4D-8 from McMurdo to Little America, with Admiral Dufek, Father Linehan, the world renowned seismologist, reporters from LIFE Magazine, LOOK Magazine, NY Times and some of the top Seabee people - two Navy Captains, and CDR Coley was a passenger aboard. And since he was my Commanding Officer, I asked him if he would like to fly the left seat and he said, "Sure would." So he made the take off and we're pushing it toward Little America, then I asked him if, "Would you mind if we asked the Admiral Dufek if he would like to fly?" He said, "No, not at all." And so Admiral Dufek came up and flew and I was going to be in the co-pilot seat with Admiral Dufek for the landing at Little America and so when we went through the check-off list when we dropped the gear, oooh, the right ski went vertical and had to put on full power just to stay airborne because that's a big dad-burned ski. And I asked the Admiral if he wouldn't mind getting up and let Commander Coley get in the seat and the Admiral said he wouldn't mind and Commander Coley checked - we couldn't see the ski from the co-pilots window, but you could from the after station. He said, "Yeah it sure is vertical." The heel of it was right up against the bottom of the wing and nose almost at a 90 degree angle and so when Coley got in the pilot seat, I got up to check it out too and verified that and I asked the Admiral who was sitting in a seat right back of us, "Would you mind please going into the back of the airplane?"
(400)
And he says, "Why," and I said, "Well it's safer back there." And he says, "I'm sitting right here." And so just about then, the starboard engine - it just exploded. Flames and all of that because we had full power on and so the only way we were going was straight down and so I feathered the engine and put the mixture off, gas off, throttle adjusted and RPM and the fire extinguisher and then when I looked out, we were at a very steep angle and we were going into the ground and I grabbed the yoke and pulled back. That's the only thing I could do. And at that time, the ski caught the snow and we rolled left aileron in and left rudder and the plane slowed down gradually and the wing tip caught in the snow and we were going very slowly and we did a 90 degree right hand turn in the snow.
BS: And where was this, where you came down?
EF: Pardon me?
BS: Where was this?
EF Little America.
BS: Right at Little America.
EF: And so now I was stranded there without an airplane, so when you asked me, did I ever fly the Otter? Yes, I flew it but only as co-pilot because the regular pilot, I didn't want to take time from him and hell, I'd flown ten thousand hours in the air. I didn't need any more time and let them get it.
BS: So this was, how many people in that plane then? You had all the VIPs, sounds like.
All the heavies.
EF: Yeah. Well, I've got a list of them here. Somewhere I've got it here. Rear Admiral
George Dufek, Commander V.J. Coley, Jr., Captain Hedbloom, Medical Corps, Navy, Commander Witherow, Seabee, Commander McBane, Seabee, Commander Flynn, Seabee, Bill Beckey, NY Times, Reggie Taylor, Associated Press, Reverend Father Linehan, seismologist, Chief Warrant Officer Conger - he was a photographer, I believe, Lieutenant JG George Porter, he was the Admiral's Aide de Camp and Lieutenant Commander Robinson - I don't know who he is, but all of the others, I did know.
BS: Interesting. Tell me about George Dufek.
(450)
EF: He was well liked, respected Commander. Everybody liked him. Nobody disliked him.
BS: Did they use the term Byrdmen for any of the old Byrd guys? Dufek was an old Byrd . . .
EF: Not that I know of, but no . . . that's a . . . But at Little America, on Deepfreeze III, I went over in a helicopter when I was without my airplane, to Little America IV which was located just above Little America III and one of the radiomen on one of the early Byrd expeditions said, "I used to stand here, looking south and I'd look at those three radio towers that were just sticking up above the snow, and," he says, "Right about here was my radio shack." And he says, "There's the main building right behind us," and he says, "we had escape hatches on the roof." So they got one of the Caterpillars, D8s or whatever, maybe a smaller one, and they scooped the snow away - maybe ten feet of it, or so - and then using long poles, they were able to locate where the building was, and they could determine where the escape hatch was on the roof. And so they got shovels. They dug it away, and we went down below into Little America IV and then down into Little America III. And it was very interesting being down. Were you able to get down there? Flashlight batteries were in great demand and there was a couple of cases of flashlight batteries there, so I stuck some in my pocket and sure enough they worked like they were brand new. And in the galley, on the chopping block, there was roast beef, turkeys, hams, hams especially in canvas wrappings that were tar covered, you know, for preservation. Jars of honey and jams and anchovies and shrimp, so we just loaded up a lot and took it back to Little America and we ate it. Apricots, I remember.
BS: And this was how old then? This was from Deepfreeze IV? I mean Little America
IV?
EF: IV and III. Probably III. And we got a big kick out of the pin-ups girls that they had had. They were all clothed. Whereas at Little America, most of the pin-up girls were nudes.
(500)
BS: Well that's interesting. How about, did you know Captain Hedbloom well?
EF: Yeah. He was a character. He was an absolute character. He says, "You can't freeze to death down here. When you start getting cold, you start shivering so badly, it'll keep you awake." Yeah, he was OK. He had a great sense of humor and the like.
BS: Dick Conger? Was he Warrant Officer then?
EF: Conger?
BS: Photographer?
EF: Yeah. CWO Conger, yeah.
BS: You know, he's the one that the first aircraft accident in Antarctica was in High
Jump and he hiked in and brought those people out.
EF: Ummm. Really? No I didn't know that.
BS: He was quite highly decorated for it.
EF: Ummm.
BS: Still alive. His wife just died. I have to do an oral history on him. Anybody else we
should talk about or anything else?
EF: I had two experiences down in Antarctica that I know the good Lord was sitting on my shoulder. OK, the first one was when the patch of sunlight hit the snow when we went to establish the Liv station at the foot of the Liv Glacier. The second one was out of McMurdo and I was to fly to the South Pole with the R4D-8 and I didn't want to go because the Liv Camp, Beardmore Camp, was reporting zero-zero white-out conditions and the South Pole was reporting the same dad-gum thing. And I just figured that the odds were against us if we went. And so I went to Commander Coley and I told him, "You don't have to worry about me flying. I fly anytime, anywhere as often as I can. But this flight just seems to be against us. It doesn't make sense." He says, "You're going." And I was really, seriously thinking about turning in my wings at that time. But anyway,
I went out to the airplane and talked a little with the co-pilot and anyway, we started the engines and I think it was the starboard engine, but I can't quite remember, the prop would not change pitch at all, and so we had to cancel out.
(550)
And Commander Coley had this George, "maniac", Captain George Pullen in the Marine Corps, go out and start the engine to see if it was true what I said that you couldn't change the pitch on the starboard prop and he reported, "Yes, that was correct." And then Coley asked him, "Well, what did he do to make it not work?" And Pullen said, "There's nothing you can do. There's a malfunction in it someplace." And that shows you how Coley had changed his attitude from being a real nice guy to something was bothering him. So we did have to change the propeller control.
BS: Any regrets about your experiences in Deepfreeze?
EF:: Only that I was a real good - Commander Coley and I got along real good both at home port and en route and in New Zealand and down on the Ice until I suggested to him not to secure his engines when he went to the Pole - 58 degrees below zero. I said you're just going to run into trouble. I said, "I'm your maintenance officer. I'm telling you my honest opinion." And no, he secured the engines and that was all she wrote. And he couldn't get them started. Then when I attempted to bring the rescue crew up and evacuate him, I lost the engine. I had to dump everything overboard and he thought I did it on purpose, or something, I think because from then on, he - I was nobody from then on. Matter of fact, Admiral Dufek asked me for a report on what happened on my flight and I made a report. And with, of course, a copy to the Commanding Officer and when he got back and saw it, he gave me, oh, you know, "You should never have written that without my permission." I said, "Well gee. Admiral Dufek asked me to." Kind of a small thing. That's about the only regret that I have, but our relationship turned sour and I don't think it was anything that I did.
BS: I assume other pilots had problems too.
EF: Pardon me?
BS: Other pilots had problems with Commander Coley as well?
EF: Yeah. Gus Shinn particularly. Coley couldn't stand him.
BS: That's too bad.
(End of Tape 1 - Side B)
______
(Begin Tape 2 - Side A)
(000)
EF: One incident involving Commander Coley, I remember - we were short on fuel at McMurdo and I had a South Pole flight and I couldn't take enough gas for me to go to the South Pole and back to McMurdo. I'd have to land at the Beardmore Camp and refuel there and then go to Little America and refuel there and then come through McMurdo. A long roundabout route. And when I was enroute to Little America, Coley was flying
Admiral Dufek from McMurdo to Byrd Station with a P2V - two turning, two burning - both jet engines going, consuming fuel to set a speed record for that distance. Consuming fuel that, gee, I could have gone twice to the South Pole on. And I just thought it was a stupid gesture to accomplish nothing except to burn fuel that we badly needed.
BS: How did you fuel aircraft at McMurdo? Did you have fuel tanks?
EF: They were drug by a small Caterpillar tractor and refueled.
BS: I see. Did they have them - did they take them out of main tanks up in town.
EF: Yeah.
BS: So they built those big tanks then.
EF: Yeah. Well, about that time. Where they really got the fuel was out of the YOG - small tanker that was self-propelled but was really drug by that - by one of the ships from the United States down to McMurdo and it was moored right on the shoreline right by Hut Point and it's probably still there. And that's where we got a lot of the gas from for our aircraft.
BS: I see.
EF: And then we built those big tanks up on the hill above McMurdo.
BS: Did you know that the YOG eventually blew away? They lost it somewhere. It sank.
EF: No, I didn't know that.
BS: Eventually it did. It didn't happen in your time.
EF: No.
BS: So it was there for several years.
EF: At least during Deepfreeze III - I through III it was there.
BS: Are you in touch with any of your old shipmates from that era?
EF: Regretfully, too many of them have died. Jack Torbett, Charlie Ottie, Dutch Gardiner, he's the one that killed himself in the Otter over there in the Dry Valley across from McMurdo. I never could understand that. He made a landing there and then instead of turning right to go to the bay ice, he turned left into the incline of the mountain and smacked right into the mountain. I never could understand that. Except that when I was without my airplane at Little America, I went flying with him once and we went exploring the area. And went on the ice shelf and took a look at the seals - hundreds and hundreds of seals down there. And he was only 10 foot above the snow and there's a white-out and I was very uneasy about his flying. That was very dangerous and sure enough, he got clobbered. I went to his funeral, too, up in Alameda.
BS: I see, he got clobbered after Deepfreeze III?
EF: After Deepfreeze III if I remember correctly, yes.
BS: In the field . . . did you work directly with any of the science parties that were traversing, supplying them with services in the field for other than scouting trails.
EF: No, I didn't work with them at all. I just resupplied them. That was all. And on the ground, along side the tractor trains, long enough to transfer whatever we had to transfer and then get the dickens out.
BS: Did you explore any areas? Did you discover any mountains or anything like that as you were flying about that hadn't been charted before?
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EF: No, not that I know of.
BS: I'm just covering cat and dog things. You got a geographic feature named for you?
EF: No.
BS: You didn't?
EF: No. Maybe you could arrange it.
BS: I just might. I mentioned Paul Siple and Dr. Gould. Did you know any of the other
scientists that wintered over at Little America?
EF: I probably did, but I don't recollect off-hand.
BS: Dr. Grays. . .
EF: There was one real nice reporter for the NY Times, very well known. He wrote a book.
BS: Walter Sullivan?
EF: Yes. Walt Sullivan. He was a quiet type, but very hard working. Good gosh he worked writing his books down there. And articles for the NY Times.
BS: He died a few years ago.
EF: Yes, so I understand.
BS: Larry Gould had just died and he was helping write his obit with me and he got pancreatic cancer.
EF: Oh goodness.
BS: And was in the hospital. And I wrote it and he asked if he could proofread it from his hospital bed and he did and he died.
EF: Ummmm.
BS: So Gould was a very good friend of his.
EF: Gee, there's another scientist that we got to know pretty dad-gum well out of Little America. He became president of Stanford or UCLA.
BS: Jim Zumberge? Zumberge?
EF: Zumberge. Yeah. What's his first name now?
BS: Jim.
EF: Jim. Zummie, we called him. Zummie Zumberge.
BS: Tell me about him.
EF: Dr. Zumberge. Yeah. He had a station on Ross Island . . . Roosevelt Island out of Little America, down in the crevasses, and so oh, when I was without an airplane, one of the helicopters had to go over and resupply him, so I rode along as co-pilot in the helicopter. And I got the biggest kick going down into those crevasses, rapeling down by rope down to the bottom where he was doing research work there. Hang of a nice guy! Yes.
BS: Did you meet Dr. Rutford there? Bob Rutford? Little America?
EF: I don't recollect the name. I probably could have, but I don't recollect the name.
BS: Well I can't think of anything else that I should ask you. Tell me about the people in
New Zealand.
EF: The people in New Zealand are the world's greatest by far. And New Zealand is such a beautiful place, both North and the South Island. And I met so many friends there that sort of kinda adopted us Yanks. You couldn't do anything without their helping out or wanting to entertain you or feed you or buy you a drink or whatever it was. I think I told you maybe . . . no, I guess maybe I didn't. . . when we went down to Taiere the first time on Deepfreeze I to investigate the airport there, at lunchtime, Hugh Skilling, I can even remember his name, who was the operator of the Otago Aero Club on the other side of the field called up and says, "I'm going to give you Yanks a show." And so he got into his bi-plane, Gypsy Moth airplane, and performed aerobatics - terrific aerobatics, then he landed, taxied over to our side and he asked for me by name. I don't know how he got my name. And I says, "Here I am!" He says, "You want to go for a flight?" I says, "Sure!" "Well jump in!" and we went up and did some more aerobatics.
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He was quite a pilot. And then a couple of days later he calls up and says, "I've got to go down to Queenstown. Do you want to go down?" I says, "Sure." And so we went and landed at the airport at Queenstown and he called somebody up who came over in a Citroen - first time I've ever ridden in a Citroen - who took us up into the hills where he had a cherry orchard there and I just love cherries. So he said, "Help yourself, help yourself." And I did and when we got ready to depart back to Taiere, he brought over two, three crates of cherries for the mess hall there.
BS: Wow.
EF: Yeah. And then another time, Hugh Skilling asked if I wanted to go down to Invercargill I said, "Sure." And we went down there and he said, "I've got to go see the
mayor, Your Worship." And the reason for the flight was to take a building contractor who had a proposal, a bid for construction work down there at Invercargill to turn it in to the Mayor and it had to be in by 2 o'clock. Well we got to the Mayor's office at quarter before 2 and the Mayor invited us in. And he says, "You're going down to Antarctica, huh?" And he started asking me all sorts of questions about it and 2:30 comes around, coming up on 3 o'clock and here's the poor contractor. He had to get that bid in by 2 o'clock and finally the Mayor turns to the contractor and said, "Don't worry about that bid. You got it here before 2 o'clock." He says, "It's all right." And then when we got ready to leave back for Taiere, what should be meeting us at the airplane, but two, three crates of lobsters, crayfish, for the mess up there. So we had lobster that night for dinner. They're such wonderful people there.
BS: They still are. Tell me, that makes me think. Were you when they built Scott Base?
The New Zealand Base?
EF: Scott Base?
BS: Next to McMurdo.
EF: Oh yeah. Yeah.
BS: Did you meet Ed Hillary?
EF: He wasn't there when I was there. No.
BS: Tell me how they got the base there? How did the New Zealanders get the base there?
EF: Doggone if I know. But I did go there in Deepfreeze III. I visited there one evening. You know they were very hospitable people. Because it's just an easy walk over the hill to Scott Base.
BS: Did we have any exchange officers with us in any of the Deepfreezes with any other nations?
EF: I know at Cape Hallet, the Kiwis were there with us.
BS: Yeah. Bob Thompson?
EF: I can't quite remember. That was an interesting base, incidentally. Interesting story about that. I flew there Deepfreeze III in the R4D-8 and en route there, it was instrument weather and my radioman had the radar on and he says, "We've got land dead ahead," but he says, "it's real low." And just then, the clouds opened up and there was a huge mountain directly in front of us. We only had time to bank out and around. Again, God was our co-pilot. We landed at Cape Hallet. The runway that they had there was marked with oil drums on both sides with at least 300 feet wide and at least 8000 feet long on glare ice. Just great. But that basin of ice was at least 8 miles in any direction. This ice was white, not blue ice.
BS: Was it sea ice?
EF: Sea ice. Well, yeah. I think it was sea ice. And you could land any which way you wanted to. But we were the first plane ever to land there. And we went into Camp and the radio operator asked me to come into the radio shack. He said, "The C-124 coming back from the Pole has lost an engine and has just made two GCAs at McMurdo and he can't get in."
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And I said, "Let's tell him to come here." So I got on the phone and called McMurdo and I said, "Gee the weather here is great. Send the C-124 here. 8000 foot runway, wide open, good visibility and all that." So they diverted the C-124 to Cape Hallet and I went outside to go down to my airplane so I could talk the plane coming in when I saw there was now a vicious blizzard, like that. So I turned around and went inside and said, "Don't let that C-124 come here, it's awful here." Make a couple more GCAs at McMurdo and he did - I think he made three more GCAs and got in on the third one. Gee, I had quite a few interesting passengers aboard on that flight.
BS: This was on that flight to Cape Hallet, right?
EF: Right. I had Father Darkowski on board and a couple of Navy Captains and an old Antarctic explorer from Australia.
BS: Was it Douglas Nelson?
EF: Nope. Sir . . .I think it was Deepfreeze III. The interesting thing about that Cape Hallet flight was I kept a couple of men in the airplane to keep the engines running one at a time. When one got cold, we got it started by using the power from the good engine that was rotating and then secure that good engine and this famous Australian explorer . . .
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BS: Was it Dick Smith?
EF: No. Elderly guy with a beard, it was Sir Hubert Wilkins! He didn't want to come into Cape Hallet Station or anything. He wanted to stay right there in the airplane and he spent the night there sleeping in a sleeping bag on the airplane. And he just loved Antarctica so much. He wanted to get with it. And the next morning we were ready to take off, but the wind was, as I remember, was 40 to 50 knots and I had to take off downwind, which was nothing because I had plenty of power and 8 miles of runway in front of me. But there was a mountain upwind and I couldn't take off into the wind. I had to turn around, but it was glare ice and I could not turn around using maximum power and full rudder and aileron control, I couldn't turn around. So we got a Weasel, tied a line to our tail wheel to the Weasel and he pulled me around and now I was facing downwind when I told him, don't let go because I'll weather cock again. And I told him that when my engines are revved full power, then release the line. And so we took off downwind in about 40-50 knots of tailwind and we got off OK. But it was an interesting experience. If that Weasel wasn't there, I'd still be there.
BS: So you were the first pilot to land at Hallet.
EF: Yes.
BS: You know we made it an abort field for flights coming from Christchurch.
EF: Really?
BS: Yes. We never used it much - couple times we did. But you know we got some 180 knot headwinds a couple of times with the C-130s and they only have about an hour of fuel when they get there anyway.
EF: How strong was the winds?
BS: 180 knots.
EF: Holy smokers! Good gosh!
BS: And if you're past the point of safe return . . .
EF: Yeah.
BS: Yeah. You couldn't feel it, but you get some real flow off that continent - katabatic wind! OK.
END OF INTERVIEW