Dr. McKim Malville

3 October 2000

Brian Shoemaker

Interviewer

(Begin Tape 1 - Side A)

(000)

BS: This is an oral interview with Dr. McKim Malville taken as part of the Polar Oral History

Project conducted by the American Polar Society and the Byrd Archival Program of the Ohio

State University on a grant provided by the National Science Foundation. The interview was conducted at Dr. Malville's home in Boulder, Colorado, by Brian Shoemaker on the 3rd of

October in the year 2000.

Dr. Malville, you were a scientist in the field during the International Geophysical Year and you went there - it's important to know why you were selected and how you were selected and why you went. And what you did when you were there. So if you could take us from where you were educated and who your mentors were and bring that forward to what your experience was that took you to the Antarctic and what happened while you were there. Personal experiences, professional and then your observations. And then afterwards, how it affected your later career.

1

McKM: Why, as you know, I had gone to the Antarctic just after graduating from college which was Cal Tech and the idea of going to the Antarctic and the idea of applying Astronomy

Department Cal Tech - one of the world's great astrophysicists. And I had, at Cal Tech, had a degree in . . .

BS: Sorry, I interrupted you.

McKM: So anyhow, I headed to the Antarctic after graduating from Cal Tech in physics and . . .

BS: Are you from California?

McKM: From San Francisco, yeah. And at Cal Tech, I had been interested both in astronomy and physics and in mountain climbing and I had been, I think, president of the Cal Tech Alpine

Club for a couple of years and the faculty had known me for my interest in being outside and having adventures outside and I think that was the major reason that one day Jesse Greenstein suggested that the IGY was just starting up and that might be a good opportunity after I graduated from Cal Tech.

I had, initially, thought I would be working in cosmic ray measurements. That's what I knew something about because of my interest in physics and I think my initial iinquiry to the

IGY was about a possibility of doing cosmic ray work in either the North or the South Pole. And it turned out there were more opportunities for people who were going to work in auroral studies than cosmic rays, so I ended up in a group of, I think, six of us who were the auroral specialists

2 at the Antarctic bases during the first IGY - during the IGY. I think I had really been drawn to the Antarctic because of my background in mountaineering and climbing and I really was fascinated by that kind of landscape. I had also read a lot of material - the books on Scott and

Shackleton and Byrd, so I knew something of the history and romance of these great people who had been to the Antarctic earlier. So it was a very, very inspired suggestion for me to consider the Antarctic.

When we first started in Boston, at the Air Force Cambridge Research Center in it probably was June of 1956, the person who was organizing the auroral project was Norman J.

Oliver who was at the Air Force Cambridge Research Center and I think we were . . . a number of us had just graduated from college. There was a couple of guys who were, one fellow had a

Ph.D. in physics.

(50)

We all were given a choice of where we wanted to go, and I think I had read about Finn Ronne being one of the leaders of the Antarctic bases and I think I had said that I would prefer Finn

Ronne.

BS: You chose Finn.

McKM: I think I chose Finn. So, Finn Ronne, of course, at that time, was next to Admiral Byrd in terms of experience of an American in leading exploration of the continent and I liked the idea of the Weddell Sea. It was of all of the bases, probably the least explored area. Much of the area

3 where we sailed along the edge of the what we called then the Filchner Ice Shelf, had never been

sailed along before, and the initial sites of the base which was the Beaumont Peninula had been

picked by Finn Ronne on the basis of his expedition ten years earlier, but it was a, I think like

many parts of the Antarctic at that time, it was a remarkably unexplored, unknown area. And it

seemed like the Weddell Sea was the least known of them all and so that really intrigued me. So,

I think it was the combination of here was the person who had a lot of experience and the

Weddell Sea and the Ice Shelf and all of that possibly very fascinating scenery made that

particular base, Ellsworth Station, more interesting than going to the Pole, which I thought would

be very flat and not having many opportunities for exploring the way I like to explore things, like going on skis or hiking or snowshoeing, or climbing rocks of anything like that. So I think my initial choice of Ellsworth Station was because it was being led by someone who was known to me, who had a reputation of being an experienced Antarctic explorer, and the remoteness of the station, the remoteness of the area.

We spent the summer of 1956 largely at Yerkes Observatory after spending our

introductory sessions at Boston at the Air Force Cambridge Research Center. We spent most of

our time working with Dr. Joe - Joseph Chamberlain who was probably the most experienced

scientist in terms of auroral physics, of studying the nature of the phenomena.

BS: Where's Yerkes?

McKM: Yerkes is in Wisconsin. It is an observatory that is run by the University of Chicago . .

. the Astronomy Department of the University of Chicago. A rather remote part of Wisconsin, it's

on the shore of Lake Geneva, an hour's train ride west of Chicago and Yerkes had a number of . .

4 . besides a 40" telescope which was the largest refractory telescope in the world, it had a series of instruments that were being used by Joe Chamberlain to study the aurora. So, the spectrograph that we had which had been built just for the IGY to measure the. . . to determine the elements that were responsible for the colors of the aurora - the radiation - had been built and designed at the Yerkes Observatory. So much of the preparation time was spent during that summer at

Yerkes using this equipment that had been designed and built by Joe Chamberlain and his colleagues.

BS: Was that spectrograph sent to the Arctic or the Antarctic?

McKM: Every one of the American bases had a spectrograph. . . had that . . .

BS: Had this same one?

McKM: Had the same spectrograph and it was a very sophisticated piece of equipment. I often think that I and my colleagues were handed a research project much more advanced than we deserved. I had just graduated from college and I was essentially given sole responsibility for running a number of fairly sophisticated pieces of equipment for observing the aurora.

(100)

And the project itself was fairly ambitious. And I suspect that people who were more experienced and more deserving, qualified to do this kind of work were not willing to spend . . .

5 were not willing to venture over in the Antarctic and so that's . . . I feel like it was a wonderful gift at this time of my career to be given this opportunity for this kind of work. The spectrograph had just been built and designed for the IGY and we used it for the first time ever and like all complex pieces of equipment, it had a whole series of bugs that needed to be worked out.

Unfortunately, they had to be worked out by us in the field rather than ahead of time, so we were given a piece of equipment that was probably 80% functioning and we were sort of, you know, given a handshake and we were told good luck with this piece of equipment.

I also thought, somewhat naively, that it would be interesting for me, in addition to the science that was formally our responsibility, to have a couple of projects of my own. And so, during that summer, I also built - designed and built - an optical photometer for measuring the radiation of sodium when it appears in the aurora and so with a lot of help from the Air Force

Cambridge Research Center physicists, I still, almost on my own, built my own amplifier and receiver and telescope and put together a little research project all of my own to study the radiation of sodium. I think I was the only one of that group who was so, sort of, carried away by the idea of doing something extra in terms of research.

BS: Now this is radiation of sodium from the sun?

McKM: No, in the atmosphere. The aurora is produced by high energy particles, protons and electrons, that excite the atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere and it primarily, once the hydrogen and nitrogen and oxygen, but there's also at certain times a very intense sodium glow.

BS: Sodium chloride?

6

McKM: Just sodium. Sodium. Ionized sodium. And I had been reading. . . I had been immersing myself in the research literature of the aurora during that summer and I think I ran across someone's comment that this seemed like a great puzzle - the nature of sodium emission in the aurora - and someone should study it. And so I said, "OK. I'll do it." And it seemed like here I had a chance to go to the Antarctic to study this unknown, this largely unknown phenomenon in the aurora, so I had this photometer.

Let's see. You know, much about the day to day details of our experiences going to

Ellsworth Station from John Behrendt's diary and I don't know how much you would like to know.

BS: Well, the tape doesn't know anything.

McKM: Yes.

BS: And that's what we’re really interested in.

McKM: How much material, recollections do you want in terms of . . .?

BS: Well, I think your trip down there, certainly. Getting through the ice pack is important. Talk a little about the busting through the ice. I understand there were some major problems with holes in the ship and what have you. And then the building of the base and the science facilities.

Personal relations with others. Not just the leader.

7

(150)

McKM: I think I . . . yeah. I think on the ship going down, we had very little experience intereacting with Finn Ronne and I think that was probably intimation of things that were to come. He was not gregarious with people of our sort. We were people beneath him, I think, and he was certainly very personable, I'm sure, with the captain and the commodore, but not with civilian scientists. And so, he never really went out of his way during that long period of time - three months on ship - to learn about what we were doing and who we were. We were at different places on the ship.

BS: Which ship?

McKM: This was theWyandot.

BS: And you had an icebreaker with you?

McKM: We had the Staten Island as the icebreaker, yeah. So I think that was the first hint that it was not going to be a . . . but we never drew any conclusions at that time.

BS: He wasn't out there team building.

8 McKM: He was not out there team building. He was not interested in us as individuals even though we were going to spend a whole year with no more than 40 people. He had other things that he was doing and I think much of it was writing press releases. That was a big thing in his life and there was a constant stream of press releases that would be produced from the ship on what we were doing in the Antarctic. So, on the ship, it was a . . . you know, we were civilians on a Navy ship. Sandcrabs, as the Navy called us at that time.

BS: They still do. Any civilian on a Naval base is a sandcrab.

McKM: Yeah. And . . .

BS: That's not a derogatory . . .

McKM: I appreciate that , but we were certainly . . . well, I guess we were, we were just bored.

Everyone else on the ship had responsibilities to do and we were, of course, passengers on a working professional endeavor. So, we did a lot of reading. We played a lot of bridge, I think.

But, we were outside the mainstream of what was going on on board a Navy ship at that time.

BS: Who was the captain?

McKM: Captain Dan McCorda.

BS: Captain McCorda was? McDonald?

9

McKM: McDonald was the commodore of the task. . . of the

BS: Where did he ______? The Staten Island?

McKM: He was on board the Wyandot until we entered the ice cap - ice pack - and then he moved to the Staten Island.

BS: And who was the Skipper of the Staten Island?

McKM: I don't know. But, in the sense that not only did we not come into contact with Finn

Ronne, we certainly never came into contact with Captain McCorda or McDonald and that's understandable. They had their own responsibilities, but I think it was a little bit lacking of Finn's leadership style, not to get to know us during that period of time.

BS: I'm surprised the others didn't - the captain of the ship - usually you guys have officer status, did you not?

McKM: Yes. Well, we ate in the officer's mess. And that was it.

BS: Was he there, or did he eat alone?

McKM: He ate alone.

10

BS: In the Old Navy, they ate alone. Not anymore.

McKM: He ate alone and we would see him only when he would come down for the movies.

And the Executive Officer on the ship ate with us, but not the Captain and Finn Ronne never ate with us. He ate with Captain McCorda. So, our only glimpses of Finn Ronne were at the nightly movies when we would all stand when the Captain was on deck.

BS: Dufek used to eat in the quarters down at McMurdo, but he got out. He knew everybody. I had the same quarters, but I ate in the chow hall. I ate alone. I had formal dinners in my _____.

That's the old Navy. Captain was a very lonely person. That's part of the job.

(200)

McKM: So, when we entered the ice pack, I think all of us were really excited about coming into contact with ice. I had grown up in San Francisco and was certainly snow and ice deprived. I had been to the Sierra Nevadas, and done some skiing, but I think the whole experience of being surrounded by snow and ice was much more exciting to me than if I'd grown up in Northern

Wisconsin or Idaho or something like that. There was a newness and excitement that I really felt strongly. So, I think I should refer to my diary if you want the details, but I think we were frozen in for a period of two or three weeks. I think there was one period of two weeks when we were . .

.

BS: You were locked in the ice.

11

McKM: Completely beset, yeah. And the ice . . . it was essentially when the winds were blowing from the north and pushing the ice against the ice shelf and the ice breaker couldn't do anything at all. During this time, there was some damage to the Wyandot. I think the tips of its propellers had been sheered and screws, and there were cracks such that it was taking on water and I think that they had to . . .Unfortunately, this is something that we would never . . . we would only hear about because, again, we were passengers, but they would shore up the sides of the ship to minimize the intake of water and so it limited the speed through . . . once we got out of the ice, we couldn't travel as fast as we would have.

The original intent was to sail all the way along the Filchner Ice Shelf to the Antarctic

Peninsula and once we got next to the Ice Shelf, I remember there was a fair amount of open water and things looked pretty cheerful and promising, but there were periods when rumor came down from Captain Dan McCorda or the Executive Officer that he was quite worried about losing his command. And we were quite worried about getting taken away from the Antarctic before we had a chance to do any work there and so there was a fair amount of tension that we would be prevented from our year in the Antarctic because the ship was unable to reach our destination. And it seemed as though he was very, very eager to leave as quickly as possible and we had the idea that maybe he was a little bit premature in wanting to leave, but we could certainly understand why he did.

So, we sailed a fair distance along the Ice Shelf until it was clear that we couldn't establish a base at the initially intended spot, mainly the Beaumont Peninsula, and then sailed back looking for a portion of the Ice Shelf where it was low enough where the ships could be off loaded, where the materials could be off loaded directly onto the Ice Shelf. I think we set up the

12 base in record time. As I remember, maybe we had 10 days in which the Seabees built the base and it was a wonderful experience for us because we changed from being passengers to participants, and so at the very first chance, we went ashore and began to participate fully in construction of the base.

(250)

BS: So your location was really determined by the physical elements of the Ice Shelf dipping down so that you could get up on top.

McKM: That's right. And it was quite a different location than the original intended. It was on the Filchner Ice Shelf, not too far from where Filchner himself had tried to land and had been prevented because it had broken off.

BS: So he landed, hum?

McKM: He landed.

BS: And it broke away.

McKM: And it broke away.

BS: You could have too.

13

McKM: Yes, right. And I think the whole scene was one of incredible excitement because of the newness and the adventure of doing something for the first time. When we first started building the base, of course, it was . . . we were working with everyone else in constructing buildings and building the tunnels and it was . . . well, when the ships left, we had a very modestly completed space. At least we had buildings and we had some of the tunnels were constructed, but I don't think all of them were built. It was some time before we actually got on to getting our scientific equipment ready. And I remember a fair amount of concern because we knew we had, oh I personally, and everyone else had a fair amount of work to get all of my equipment up and running and tested. Again, a lot of the material had never been used in the field before and I had a tower that was built above the snow surface, the auroral tower, that was designed to be free of snow throughout the year. And I had to install, I had essentially to build all of the features of the aurora tower after it's structure had been put up. So I remember a great deal of personal concern that I was having to spend time on base details as opposed to doing science. And, of course, I was young and very eager to do science and that was a feeling like we were being prevented from doing what we really had been intended. . . had been sent down to do because of work around the base. It was perfectly natural and I really had nothing to complain about at all, but this is our . . . I remember a very intense feeling of worry that I couldn't get stuff done in time.

But eventually we were . . . the scientists were taken off base detail by Finn Ronne and each of us had our . . . each of us began to set up our own equipment. Is this the kind of detail you want?

(300)

14

BS: Yes. It's great. So, here you are. Winter's approaching, right? You're scrambling, all the scientists are scrambling to get their equipment up and running to do their research. So it wasn't just you. Everybody was in the same boat, really. What did the other scientists do? Did they dig a snow pit?

McKM: During this period of time, in the first place, I was sort of unique amongst the scientists because I was the only one who had sole responsibility for my own project and while everyone else like the John Brown and Don Skidmore were a team for studying the ionosphere, and of course, the glaciologists and the geophysicists were all a team, I had all of this responsibility myself, which was wonderful. But, there was a sense of which I could have benefited from someone to discuss problem-solving as the problems came up.

BS: You described your personal project with the optical photometer, but what was your job as far as auroras went? Was it visual observations?

McKM: The aurora was . . . we had three. . . we had a number of domes on the top of this aurora tower that had been built and one of the domes contained the spectrograph in it, so it was all by photographic recording. Another dome contained a Walsky camera which was essentially a convex mirror and a 8 mm movie camera that took pictures of the sky every minute throughout the winter. And then there was another dome in which I took visual observations throughout the night of the aurora, so we had spectrographic, we had movie coverage as well as visual observations. The visual observations were essentially to cover the features of the aurora which

15 would be captured by these other more automatic processes such as the color and the very rapid changes and the fine details that you could pick up by these other devices.

And then I had another dome in which I had my photometer that was there for observing, for measuring the sodium, which was my project. My understanding, of course, quite rightly, was that my first responsibilities were to the IGY Antarctic - I mean the auroral project and if there was time left over, that I would do my photometer, photometric measurements of sodium.

One of the problems that I discovered very early was that the inside of the building, the laboratory, had to be kept at 60 degrees or 50 degrees, in order for the instruments to run, but then, of course, we had 30 or 40 degrees below outside and the Plexiglas domes through which we had to make our observations would frost over quite easily, quite readily.

(350)

So, I remember that was one of the first challenges I had in terms of how to - no one had told us that this was going to be a problem. So, essentially, I had to string some heat ducts from the heater in the building beneath to blow forced hot air across the domes. That sort of worked, but there was some oil fumes which would deposit themselves on the . . . which would discolor the inside of the plastic domes, so it was a constant battle between frosting on one hand and the deposit of oil on the inside of the domes to keep them clean.

So while I was solving and working on these problems, the glaciologists, and the traverse party were testing their equipment and in particular the crevasse detector which they eventually discovered really was not a very. . . didn't give them enough advance warning to help them at all.

16

BS: All over the continent.

McKM: Yeah. And the Sno Cat that . . . they had some experience driving Sno Cats, but not an

immense amount of experience. And on one of their drives down to the edge of the shelf, the

clutch on one of their Sno Cats burned out. And that was a source of great stress between the

traverse party and Finn Ronne. For some reason, he did not want to ask for a replacement clutch

and did not even want to admit that we had that problem or that the traverse party had that

problem. And for them, as for all of us scientists who were youthful and idealistic and eager to

do science, the thought of not being able to complete their traverse because a Sno Cat clutch

wasn't functioning was just a horrible, horrible thought to contemplate. So, we were very upset

about having . . . about not being allowed by Finn Ronne to send out messages asking for either

advice on how to repair the clutch or a special flight in to bring in a replacement clutch. He would tell them that we were too isolated a base for a special flight and that he did not want to

endanger the lives of anyone else by setting up situations such as that someone would have to fly

in to Ellsworth to bring the clutch. That may or may not have been true, but the net effect was to

raise the degree of tension between him and the traverse party to quite a high level.

(400)

During this period of time, and I think it was probably the Sno Cat clutch issue, we were

kicked out of the officer's mess and ate thereafter with the enlisted men. We had, when we first

arrived on the continent, Finn Ronne did not want to eat with the enlisted men at all and so he

decided he would eat only with the officers and the civilian scientists. And so we had a table of

17 the scientists, the officers and Finn Ronne sitting at the head of the table - an incredibly awkward time because one couldn't speak unless Finn addressed you and you had to laugh at his jokes and you know, he was an imposing person. He certainly had charisma and he dominated the scene and it was a very, very difficult time. I mean very, very difficult time eating meals. There was no chance for any small talk amongst us, of course, in that scene. And it was during that time that he discovered that the traverse party were more determined to force the issue with regard to the Sno

Cat clutch than he would have liked and rather abruptly decided that he didn't want to eat with us and so we ate with the enlisted men from then on. And he had a table, a special mess set up with him and his, I think, four officers.

BS: He was tremendously tough on his junior officers.

McKM: That's right.

BS: Because they were in between him and . . .

McKM: Yes. So, for us, of course, we found meals with the enlisted men much more relaxed, much more lively than it had been with the officers and so it was . . . aside from our initial outrage at having been rejected by the Captain as dining companions, the whole scene was much happier than it had been before. But, the Sno Cat clutch tended to devour an enormous amount of time. The topic of discussion often was what are we to do? Wringing of hands, you know. How can we complete our scientific work if we only have one Sno Cat? Eventually, Hugo Newberg who was the glaciologist, had radio contact with the nearby Chilean base.

18

BS: Chilean or Argentine?

(450)

McKM: Argentine base. Argentine base. And I think they gave him advice as to how to retemper the clutch. I'm not absolutely sure about this, but anyhow, Hugo did repair the clutch and so in a sense, all of this fuss was unnecessary. But it still also seemed unnecessary that Finn

Ronne would refuse to arrange for a flight with a spare clutch.

BS: Could you visit with the Argentines?

McKM: Yeah. After the winter was over, I was able to go out on a visit to the Argentine base,

General Belgrano. But another. . .

BS: Now most of your work was in the winter, was it not?

McKM: Yeah. Yeah.

BS: So you were busy during the dark.

McKM: I was very busy during the dark and unfortunately, the base was on Greenwich Mean

Time and the aurora appeared at midnight Greenwich Mean Time, even though it was dark for

19 24 hours of the day. I still ended up working 12 hours out of synchronization with everyone else

like astronomers normally do. So, my evening. . . the aurora would begin to appear around 8 in

the evening, our base time, and would continue until 3 or 4 in the morning, so I was working

while everyone else was asleep.

The other great tension that was sort of connected with the Sno Cat was that Finn Ronne

did not want to allow any of us to have any radio contact with anyone outside the base. And that

led to, again, a feeling of imprisonment, I suppose, of not being able to communicate with other

scientists as well as our friends. And whenever we wanted to send out . . . the Navy circuits were

the ones that were first up and running, and to send out any messages over the Navy circuits, we

would have to write it out and it would have to be approved by the Captain before it would be

sent out, just so that it was clear that we were not sending any material that was critical or him or

of the IGY or of the way the base was being operated. And, of course, by that time, there was a

lot that at least the traverse crew had to complain about in terms of. . . they felt the Sno Cat

clutch was one of several other items where there was not sufficient support being given to them

by Finn Ronne.

(500)

And, of course, our working . . . I shouldn't say of course, but one of the very nice things about eating with the enlisted men was that we had very close relationships with them and . . .

BS: They can do things for you.

20 McKM: They could do things for us, but they couldn't do things for us unless it was officially approved by the Commander of the base, and so. . .

BS: Unless he didn't know about it.

McKM: Yeah. And there was some of that going on, I think, but there was also a sense that things could have been moved along much more rapidly had he been a supporter of the scientific program. The other funny experience I had with him and most of the time I had been on the sidelines rooting for the traverse crew and their need to repair the clutch, but I had decided that we needed to tell each other about what kind of science we were doing and I had suggested to probably Ed Thiel that we organize a once a week presentations by each of us about the kind of science we were doing. None of us really had had a chance to learn about the other research projects that were going on. And so I may have been the first. I'm not sure. I think I was probably the first, but I arranged for a couple of evenings of lectures in the science building on the nature of the aurora. And I posted this on the bulletin board and Finn Ronne was outraged that I had gone ahead to do this and done this without getting his permission first and I think that was my first negative face-to-face encounter with him where he said I should not have done that without getting permission. And I didn't show proper respect for authority. I thought that was . . . the whole thing was rather silly. I was trying to educate people about what science I was doing and shouldn't have to go through channels of authority I thought.

Then there were a number of other provocations and other problems going on in the base at that time.

21 (550)

I think one of them that caught our attention was during one of the nightly movies, someone had stuck a knife in his door, pinning a notice, I think, "Beware of the phantom," and there was some ketchup on the knife and he was at that time watching a movie in there, in the galley, and was quite upset over this. I think he was concerned about his position as the Captain and that he receive proper respect for that and this was an indication that he was not being treated by the men as he thought he should be.

BS: That was an enlisted man did that. That's what sailors do.

McKM: Um-hum.

BS: Another thing they do. It's a signal to the captain that, you know, you're not doing your job.

McKM: That there's a breakdown of communication, or . . . So you know that an enlisted man did that?

BS: I only know it by pattern. Because that happens with others out in the fleet. Usually the word gets out real fast and the captains are brought up and saying what's happening?

McKM: Something is going on, yes.

22 BS: If the men don't like you . . . they'll put up with a lot of abuse from lots of captains where the Skippers are, we call them, ____JG, but namely the captain. And that type thing happens.

That's a signal that ____ too much.

McKM: And his response was, of course, that he kept the base up until two or three in the

morning. And everyone had to come into his office and the Executive Officer, McDonald, and

this was another personal contact I had with him and I forget whether it was before or after our

little flare up over whether I should give a talk on the science of the aurora, but one by one we

were ushered into his office, and it was maybe twelve o'clock at night or something like that and

he was sitting behind his desk and McDonald was standing and there was this knife on his desk

and he waved the knife in my face and said that we have put talcum powder on it and we

discovered there are fingerprints and we are going to take the knife to the FBI when we get off

the ice and if you're the guilty one, you're in pretty serious trouble.

(600)

And I don't think anyone confessed, but it was just like the Caine Mutiny and that kind of

silliness and again, it was just the reaction that someone who was interested in annoying him

could hope for. But it was absolutely the worst thing he could have done. And as I say, I have no

idea who put the knife on his door.

BS: It's never found out anywhere when that type thing happens. Another . . .

23 McKM: In ______Island.

BS: I hadn't heard that. I've interviewed a couple of them.

McKM: And when . . .

(End of Tape 1 - Side A)

______

(Begin Tape 1 - Side B)

(000)

BS: OK, so you had a lot of incidents with Finn Ronne. Personal incidents, and everybody did I

assume. How about some of the men? Did they have incidents? Did he threaten them? I'm

talking about the enlisted Navy personnel.

McKM: Not that I know of, no. There may have been that kind of stuff going on, but they were

very careful and the chiefs were very careful and, you know, we grew to admire and respect the

chiefs for their skill in the things they were doing, but the only problem we had that we knew of

was the McCarthy, who was in charge of the flight program, resigned from being his Executive

Officer partway through the winter. That was the only thing that I picked up on in terms of problems.

24

BS: You mean he didn't fly any more?

McKM: He was not his Executive Officer. He was not second in command.

BS: Did he fly though. He was ___ a pilot.

McKM: I think he flew because he was still in charge of the flight group, yes.

BS: But, he resigned as his XO.

McKM: Yes.

BS: Because of personal differences?

McKM: Yes. Because he disagreed with . . . I think probably what Ronne was . . . demands that he was making on the flight group.

BS: I think he was protecting his men.

McKM: Um-hum.

BS: How about your chief? The other chief there? Chief Petty Officer?

25

McKM: We never saw any tension between him and Ronne.

BS: He would get in between them and the men. Between Finn and the men. He'd never allow

Ronne to personally lambast them. But he'd take the lambasting. I don't know if that happened, but that's what would have happened with a good chief.

McKM: The only time that we . . . or I think one of the first times that we felt close to the men in terms of our battle with Finn Ronne was a radio contact that he had with Admiral Dufek in

Little America that had been set up ahead of time by the radiomen and Ronne had set this up very secretively and he mostly wanted to have confirmation from Dufek that he was in charge and that whatever the scientists wanted was entirely to be approved or not approved by him. And they, of course, had their differences of opinion as to how the traverse should be operated. This was after the Sno Cat clutch had been repaired. And so, he had arranged this secret radio contact with Little America and it was essentially, primarily going to be to complain about the scientists, but in general and, in particular, Ed Thiel and Hugo Newberg who were in charge of the traverse party. And we were informed by our friends, the enlisted men, that this was going to go on ahead of time and Ronne did not know that we knew about it before then. And I think . . . I don't know exactly who did it, probably maybe it was Hugo Newberg and Paul Walker had, they had, I think their living quarters were in the radio building as their living quarters were in the radio building, and they left a tape recorder running during the time that they knew this communication was going to take place and they had been ejected from the building during this period of time because of this secret communication. But the enlisted men, without our knowing it, had strung a

26 wire from the zip cord from the radio room down into the mess hall. I don't remember whether

John has this in his book.

(50)

BS: And everybody listened.

McKM: And everyone listened. And we had gone into the mess hall after having set the tape recorder up, feeling very, very guilty. We had no idea what proper behavior was for us as junior scientists in the Navy situation. And he had a number of times told us we were under the universal code of military justice and could be prosecuted.

BS: He told you that?

McKM: Yeah. And he said he had a letter in his safe that indicated that we were, but he never showed it to us. But anyhow, I do remember . . . you know I was just out of college. Twenty-one, or something like that. And he had already threatened me about . . . and I think it partly was a result of this difference of opinion we had about my giving a lecture on the aurora. He threatened me that he could destroy me in terms of my scientific career, if I were to continue this mode of behavior which didn't show proper respect for him. So I didn't know whether this was true or not.

It was conceivable. I didn't know.

BS: It's not the truth.

27

McKM: I know it wasn't true, but I had no idea at that age that he could have done anything.

BS: If you're at sea with a Navy ship, there's rules for law at sea for civilians. A captain on a tourist ship, you know if you're having trouble on an airline - it's what we do with drunks and things like that and how do you handle them? There's no body of laws to take care of that, but there's a strong body of law at sea. It goes back hundreds of years. He can put you in irons if you misbehave. Now on the other hand, he's got his limitations.

McKM: He's got to document it, for one thing.

BS: Oh absolutely, that . . . but he can't do it for frivolous things.

McKM: That's right.

BS: And you probably . . . it's questionable . . . a civilian ashore a Navy base whether you come under the law of the sea or not. There's nothing really written, even today. In McMurdo, we had lots of things. Of course, when I was down there, we were transitioning when I was commander.

McKM: So anyhow, I'm just relating my own personal feelings of guilt of having been involved in setting up this tape recording and then walking into the mess hall and having all of the enlisted men sitting there with great grins on their faces listening to this whole thing going on in real time. And then of course, he said terrible things about us. Big old rotten eggs and we would

28 never obey authority and the people on the traverse crew couldn't identify a crevasse if their

noses were pushed into it. A bunch of amateurs and he was the only one who had any experience

in the Antarctic traverse work, which was true. And the traverse crew refused to accept his

advice. But a bunch of bad eggs, I remember, he said that several times. And, of course, the

enlisted men were just rolling in the aisles to hear Finn Ronne call us a bunch of rotten eggs.

BS: They wouldn't set that up if they really respected him.

McKM: That's right. They wouldn't have.

BS: A good captain. His men . . . they'll brawl in the bars if somebody says something bad. They

will go out of their way to protect him from themselves. Bad decisions from . . . excuse me sir, I

think that's lies. But they let him go on.

McKM: Yes. Yes. No, I think they had probably at times - I know McCarthy had warned him .

I think he had been warned, but never paid any attention to his own self-destructive behavior. So,

and then of course, we had a number of incidences involving, or two incidences involving penguins and he had beginning of the winter, had said that well, there's a Emperor rookery that had been discovered soon after we had arrived which was one of the . . . there’s not very many

Emperor rookeries in the Antarctic and this had never been known before.

(100)

29 And after it had been detected, located, he said, "Well, next spring, we'll have R & R. We'll take everyone over to the rookery because, you know, you haven't really been to the Antarctic unless you've had a chance to see Emperor penguins close up. And so we looked forward to that. And then things got very sour throughout the winter and he decided he still needed penguins to get to his daughter, and so he flew over there in the Otter with minimal flight crew. Lots of room for other people, but it was almost as though he wanted to show us that he was almost getting back at everyone else in the base. And brought two penguins back - terrible mess. Broken, rotten penguin eggs scattered all over the inside of the plane. Essentially decommissioned, put the plane out of operation for several days while the interior had to be cleaned from the rotten eggs all over it. And then he proceeded to kill the Emperors and I think you know about some of the details of this. But it was a very bad scene. And he eventually ended up by breaking their skulls, breaking their neck and addling their brains with an ice pick and the . . . it took many hours to kill the penguins and all of us were aware of what was going on. I have a picture of him dragging the dead penguins behind him. So, he laid these penguins in the puddle outside his office, outside the administration building, and they were stolen and hidden. And this is a time I should consult my diary. I forget how long they were hidden. But they were hidden for a fair number of days. And this was, again, a terribly impossible insult for him as the captain to have experienced.

Tremendous activity to every corner of the base to find these hidden, buried penguins. I think they were buried out in the snow. Practically impossible to locate them. And then the day before the traverse crew was going to leave, they reappeared beheaded. And I think they were . . . the heads were in his personal vehicle that he drove.

BS: That's where he found them.

30

McKM: Where he found them, yes. And that was very worrisome. This seemed like the level of opposition to him had ratcheted up to a new level of physical violence. It was difficult to know where that would go. To take an ax to a penguin, small step to do some bodily harm to someone.

It did seem possible. My own personal experience with that was that the traverse crew left without me. I had had . . .

BS: You were the only scientist on the base.

McKM: No, no. There still were others, but I had . . . I was probably of the group, the most experienced person in terms of mountaineering technique. I had done a lot of snow and ice climbing in the Pacific Northwest and I think everyone sort of acknowledged me as being more experienced at rock climbing and mountaineering than most of them, although both John and Ed

Thiel and Hugo had done a lot. And early in the year, I had raised the possibility of joining them on the traverse as a sixth member of the team.

(150)

And I would have loved to have done it. And by the time they left, the sun had come out and the aurora was over. And on a number of other bases, the auroral observer did, indeed, get involved in glaciological research during the spring.

BS: Went on traverses.

31

McKM: That's right. Yeah. But, the whole scene was so poisoned by all of these problems that we had had with him that he wouldn't even consider that at all. Since I was really . . .

BS: Did he do it out of vituperativeness towards you, do you think?

McKM: No, I think it was . . . no, I don't think it was too much directed against me as not wanting to accede to any special requests on the part of the traverse group. I mean, he didn't want to do any favor for them.

BS: So it's vituperative . . .

McKM: Yes, right. And they had asked him if I could join. They said they felt I could assist.

They had to do enough stuff digging pits and things like that. They could have used another hand, but no, he didn't want to do anything to help them. At least that's our impression. He didn't want anything . . . to do anything to help them in their scientific mission. And so he was just inflexible in that regard. So anyhow, I felt really sad that I was going to be cooped up in this base with a hatchet wielding, someone with a hatchet while my slide? scientists were out going across the Ice.

BS: Well, you know it wasn't Finn.

McKM: Um-hum.

32

BS: The hatchet wielder wasn't Finn.

McKM: Oh, that's right, that right. But. . .

BS: It was a sailor.

McKM: Yeah, it was probably one of the scientists was involved in that also. But anyhow.

BS: It's a sailor trick. It's a sailor. . . it's a signal.

McKM: Again, another one of these symptoms that something was going wrong with his leadership. Then at this time, I was also doing mess duty and . . .

BS: Was your work over? You still had work, summer work , I mean your personal project?

McKM: When the penguin incident occurred, I was washing dishes in the galley and that was one of the strange and unfortunate distances that we had allowed to build up between ourselves and the enlisted men - that we had not helped out with mess duty. And I think we got started on that because of Finn Ronne believing that all officers and gentlemen shouldn't do anything like having to wash dishes and do that kind of work. And so we had not done any work in the kitchen at all, and I think all of us would have considered it no big deal if when we had started the winter, the captain had said, we're going to, I and maybe not even he, but the officers and the

33 civilians are going to work in the galley. But we didn't. And he. . . before the winter was over, used it as a way of punishing some of us civilians. And essentially getting sentenced to wash dishes.

(200)

And so I was sentenced and I forget the exact reason, but it was because I hadn't shown proper respect to him for some reason or another. It wasn't a very big deal. And I was, at first, annoyed at having to do this. But then, it turned out to be another way of being a member of the community and so I rather enjoyed it.

And so, even though I had a certain amount of scientific work to do. I had all the film that

I'd taken over the winter that needed to be developed and analyzed. And I had all the data that really needed to be put together in such a fashion that it could be turned back into the IGY. Yet, he asked me to do full time galley work for several weeks. Not an unfair request, but the tradition had been against that and it was, as I say, unfortunate that we should have, I think, perhaps taken a more assertive role earlier in the year and said that we would like to participate in this responsibility of camp maintenance. We could. We didn't. But anyhow, I was washing dishes and would see him on a regular basis coming in to eat and I began to be friendly to him. None of us really had much of a chance to . . . there were very few situations where we could have any kind of informal interactions with him since we weren't eating with him. But during this period of time while I was in the galley, I was friendly. More friendly than I had been in the past, and it was sort of because I wanted to go back to the rookery. And after his two penguins had been

34 beheaded, the word got out that he had to go back to the rookery a second time to get the penguins.

So, I decided I might as well bury the hatchet and see if I could get on his positive side to be invited to go on the plane. And in the library, there were a number of books on penguins so I read every book I could find on penguins and wrote him a memorandum about what kind of observations should be made when one is visiting a rookery, this particular one never having been studied before. So he got my memo and said, "OK, Malville, you can come." So I was overjoyed. And so I went back on the second trip to the rookery and ended up writing a little report that I turned in to the IGY on the number of birds and the number of chicks and photographs and some of the details of the rookery.

The other interesting bit of science that I was doing was looking for micrometeorites in the ice. No one had done this before in the Antarctic and I invented a little device where I would collect ice at various levels of the snow pit which the traverse group had dug.

(250)

Would melt it, and then search evade it over an electromagnet and then count the small spherical magnetic particles that were captured by the electromagnet placed underneath a microscope slide. And so I was interested in the variation of the influx of very small meteoritic particles that enter the earth's atmosphere constantly.

BS: Dust.

35 McKM: Yeah, dust.

BS: Had this been done in the Arctic?

McKM: Never had been done before, no.

BS: Nowhere. It's been done on land, though.

McKM: Oh, it's been done . . . micrometeorites have been collected on land, but no . . . the

Antarctic is, after all, ideal because there is the least amount of contamination any where in the world. And here there is this ice pit that had been dug very deep and so there was a time line that you could presumably develop with the variation in these influx of particles with time. I sort of did the initial study of this project, but never . . . I collected micrometeorites, but I never did carry it out to become a completed study that . . .

BS: Wrote a paper on it?

McKM: Yeah, I turned a report in to the IGY. Never published a paper on it. So, that was sort of an example of the kind of science that one can do in the Antarctic. It seemed like it was totally new, virgin scientific territory, you know, and no one had ever . . . that example of micrometeorites in ice was just sort of a prime example of what you can do.

BS: They've got big ones now.

36

McKM: Yeah. I know.

BS: I've flown . . . back in the sixties, I flew guys up to do it, up behind the Allen ___.

And other places. Flown across the continent where we would see the blue ice.

McKM: Right.

BS: The Japanese did more than we did.

McKM: Well, these are micron size particles that I was interested in collecting and . . .

BS: They're basically the same thing. They fall out and are captured. The one that they found recently - the two that NASA speculates, you know, came from Mars with apparently indications of life.

McKM: That's right.

BS: I flew that group up as the co-pilot when I was commander of ____ as something to do one day and Bill Casby showed up with his team and ______because I did it 15 years before, almost 20. So I went up. That's when they found that one. I went back after we left . . . But you were the first looking at meteorites.

37 McKM: These are micro meteorites. A different kind of beast. Most of these micrometeorites are produced by meteorites getting very hot as they go through the atmosphere and bubbling and the surface ablating off. And then they cool as sort of very, very tiny shiny ball bearings, but nickle-iron. So they're sort of a product of meteorites entering the earth's atmosphere.

BS: Yeah, interesting that you were first on that. Tell me about your other research. Was it successful? Did you publish papers on it?

(300)

McKM: Oh, it was extremely successful. It was just the terrific thing for me at that time of my life. The data that we collected was pretty high quality and after I got back into the States, I started analyzing some of the material we collected and I think within a year, I had published three papers, which was more than most people had done at that time in their careers, you know.

This was before I was even a graduate student, I was publishing papers in Journal of

Geophysical Research and Journal of Planetary and Atmospheric Sciences and things like that.

BS: ___you go to graduate school.

McKM: And I came here for graduate school. I had initially thought I'd go to the University of

Chicago because that's where we were trained, as I mentioned, at Yerkes Observatory and I thought that would be a wonderful way to continue studies of the aurora which, by that time, I'd gotten so fascinated in, I thought I'd do this for graduate work. But then I discovered that the

38 University of Chicago, at that time, was mostly a men's college. I had gone to Cal Tech which was a men's college and I had just spent a year in the Antarctic which is a "men's college."

BS: Not any more.

McKM: And I had sort of lost my nerve, you know. And then I saw a catalog at the University of Colorado and they had just started a new program called Astrogeophysics and it was focused on the effect of the sun on the earth and the aurora and the atmospheric sciences and I got a hold of a catalog and, you know, the way college catalogs do it, there was a color photograph of some suntanned co-eds lying on the lawn at Boulder and I said, "Why go to Chicago when I can go to

Colorado?" So I came here for my graduate work.

BS: I didn't mean to get you ahead there. You were still on the ice and you're studying micrometeorites and publishing papers. So this evening you're getting ready to leave and you're buddies with Finn. Is that what I hear you say?

McKM: Oh, for a very brief period, yes, yes. I was buddies with Finn for a brief period of time.

And I sort of decided that we had to learn to live together and even though I disliked what he had been doing as a leader, I might as well try to get along with him. And I don't think that lasted too long because he was a difficult person to appreciate - to get along with. I never got very much a buddy of his, but the person who did get to be his buddy was Don Skidmore and I think he probably . .. he is documented in John Behrendt's book.

39 BS: What was his role?

(350)

McKM: He was atmospheric, ionospheric physicist. But he would go hot and cold with regard to

dealings with the captain and would do things that I would never have the courage. He would

play darts with Finn in the rec center and ping pong and bridge and for a period of time, Don was

the only buddy, really, that Finn had amongst the scientists. It was difficult to be his buddy,

because Finn had to win every game whether it was ping pong of bridge or darts. He would always have to win and Don would come back with stories about how Finn finally would cheat on some of these so that he would win. But, then Skidmore got, sometimes, too relaxed and would make insulting remarks about the way the base was being run criticizing the Captain's way

of running the base and that soured their friendship very rapidly.

BS: Larsen came down there. He was not part of the IGY. He made . . . John asked me. He said,

"Do you know if he was CIA?" And I said I had absolutely no idea. But, I do understand the

relationship of other nations and the IGY was not supposed to be spying on ______scientists.

And we couldn't do the type things that he suggested that he was doing.

McKM: In photographing certain aerial surveys.

BS: Aerial surveys, leaving _____ markers.

40 McKM: Oh yes. Dropping markers.

BS: A lot of Navy guys did on the other side, too, but that was totally not a part of the national program. They just thought they ought to do it because Admiral Byrd did it.

McKM: So he was a great mystery to us. And . . .

BS: Helped out, Larsen.

McKM: Helped out the traverse, taking fuel, making fuel runs for them and because he was helping the traverse on occasional and John came back to the base and got to know him much better than any of us did. I think his . . . because of the relationships between him and Finn

Ronne and between Finn Ronne and the rest of us, he had advised his crew not to have anything to do with us at all. And so they lived in a separate building and really, we had no connections with them whatsoever.

BS: Well, he was with them in '47.

McKM: Right, right.

BS: He knew Finn.

McKM: That's right.

41

BS: And he probably knew you were having problems and he didn't want his men to get involved.

McKM: That's right.

BS: With . . . unless . . . how many were in Ronne's crew?

McKM: I'm afraid I don't know.

BS: Did you do any flying?

McKM: Oh, I had this one flight to the rookery.

(400)

BS: Oh, that's right, that's right.

McKM: And then I had another flight over to the Argentine base, Belgrano. And that was a very nice flight because it was the first time ever, you know, in a whole year, had contact with anyone outside of our own group. And I was particularly interested in climbing Aconcagua, which is the highest peak in the western hemisphere. And so a member of the Argentine crew knew all about

Aconcagua. I don't know that anyone had climbed it, but I had a good time getting all the details

42 about how to climb the mountain. So that was a very nice experience in terms of going down to their . . . I remember going under the snow, through a hatch, and they had pitchers of red wine all on the tables and we had a nice relaxing visit to the Argentine base. That was it. Just those two.

BS: They actually had good relations with the Brits during that period of time even though both countries had claims to the area.

McKM: Well, Fuchs was nearby and I think . . .

BS: I knew some of the Fuchs' . . . well, I know Bunny. Knew him. He died about last June, wasn't it?

McKM: Um-hum.

BS: But, I spent a year at the University of Cambridge at Scott Polar after I retired just as a sabbatical. I'd been invited by the Brits and I became friends with Bunny and some of the people who were with him. But they had good relations. And more relations than they had with

Americans or Americans had with the Argentines at your base.

McKM: Things had been coarser, physically.

BS: Yeah. They went out of their way to have parties back then.

43 McKM: Yeah, well, and that was, at least at the beginning of the year, it would have been completely prevented by Finn Ronne. He was very much afraid of anyone saying anything critical about him or I suppose of losing control.

BS: Well, here you are. You're getting ready to leave. How did you get out of there?

McKM: Well, the . . .

BS: Who came to get you?

McKM: Well, I guess it was the Wyandot. I have such an anticlimactic sense that I really forget those details. I do remember that there were certain rumors that flew around that the ships couldn't reach us that year and we'd have to spend another year. I remember there was a real battle with Skidmore and his penguins. I forget whether John talked about this in his book or not.

(450)

But during this period of time when Finn was missing his penguins because they had been beheaded, two Emperors by mistake came ashore and they were found by the enlisted men and were killed by carbon monoxide - much easier than what Finn Ronne had attempted to do. And

Skidmore, who was at this time the arch enemy of Finn Ronne after earlier having been his ping pong buddy, got one of the penguins and when Finn heard that Skidmore had a penguin and he didn't have a penguin, and again, this was another one of these insults that he was very, very

44 sensitive to, Skidmore was put under house arrest for not revealing the location of his penguin.

And people were ordered by the Captain to go out and find where Skidmore's penguin was hidden, which they never did. The penguin eventually resurfaced after the ships returned and

Skidmore wanted to take his penguin back as a gift for his children, I supposed. And as soon as the ships came in, Ronne sent Skidmore, still under some kind of arrest, on to the ship and prevented him from returning onto the base to keep him from finding his penguin, presumably.

This issue was raised with McDonald and the whole thing is so childish it's hard to believe that this was going on. And McDonald told Ronne that Skidmore must be allowed to return to the base to get his penguin, which he did. And so he put the bird together with Finn's two birds in the refrigerator of the ship and sailed home with them.

BS: The beheaded birds? Oh no, the ones from the second trip, OK.

McKM: No, two more birds. And these birds were somewhat painlessly killed by exhaust from the Weasels.

BS: So, you sailed home. Did you sail home all the way on the ship or did you get off?

McKM: No, we sailed home to our - our first stop was in Buenos Aires. And then we went to

Sao Paulo, Brazil, and flew out of Sao Paulo to Washington.

(500)

45 We had been visited on the base by the IGY representative who was a physicist at Dartmouth

and was interested in Whistlers. Do you know Whistlers? And part of our . . .

BS: Was it Katzafrakas?

McKM: Pardon me?

BS: Was it Katzafrakas? Dr. Katzafrakas?

McKM: No. I can look it up in my diary, but he had been the person for whom the study of

Whistlers were being done in the Antarctic by Jack Brown and Don Skidmore. And Whistlers

are, you know, are these decreasing sphew, sphew, sphew and they're also, well, a series of

different sounds that were given colorful names to like "wagon wheels," and I forget what are

they besides whistlers, and so one of the first times we ever felt that we had gotten word out that

things were not what they should be in the Base was a message to this physicist at Dartmouth

that we were observing Caligula's Rain, which they had spelt Rain, but the intent was that this was Reign and so I think it was Jack Donner who came up with this message and it had to first go over Navy circuits during the winter and was going to ask Jack what it meant and you know, he said, "Well this is a well known identification of whistler activities like wagon wheel whistles, but they also speak of Caligula's rain like coming down from the sky." And so, we were just immensely amused that this was the first hint that there was a somewhat demented Roman emperor-type person who was running our base. So, with this message, because the guy at

Dartmouth knew perfectly well there was no such thing as Caligula's Rain in terms of what was

46 going on in radio physics at that time, I think he sort of volunteered to come down and see what was going on at the time. So he came down as the civilian representative of the IGY.

(550)

BS: Well, who relieved him? Naval officer?

McKM: Yeah. Well, no, it was a . . .

BS: Didn't a Naval officer relieve him? I'm curious as to who was the Chief Scientist then.

McKM: I forget who it was.

BS: Must have been some other civilian that came, in other words, two guys showed up.

McKM: Two guys came to replace him. Right. So, this guy from Dartmouth whose name escapes me, arranged for us to meet with the IGY in Washington to relate to them. . .

BS: All of you, all the time?

McKM: Yes. And so we spent a day in Washington with Harry Wexler, and Merle Tuve, Bill

Smith. Do you know him? He was sort of the . . .

47 BS: I know him. I know of him.

McKM: And this was . . . it was good therapy for us because this was the first time we had ever been able to tell anyone who knew about what we were supposed to be doing, all the unfortunate things that had gone on because of Finn's leadership at Base. And I think we had a day of interviews.

BS: So they knew there were problems.

McKM: Oh yes, right. Because a number of these radio . . .

BS: If you ever get a chance to go to Washington, talk with Mort Rubin. He was one of the guys who knew there was something wrong over there.

McKM: That's right.

BS: He was head of Weather Central over at Little America, but he was . . . Bert Crary, of course, Bert was Chief Scientist. But, Mort was, in fact, he picked the Little America site, you know, in '54. He went down in a _____ as the IGY rep and picked the site, but anyway, he eventually wintered with the Russians at Mirny in '59.

McKM: So there's some interesting tapes there and I don't know anything about the disposition of those tapes.

48

BS: Tapes of . . . ?

McKM: Of our sessions for that day.

BS: OOhhhhhh.

McKM: And they were taped.

BS: They were delivered to the IGY Committee?

(600)

McKM: They were present.

BS: Oh, tapes of these. Oh, I thought you meant the tapes that you took of Finn.

McKM: No.

BS: Oh, OK.

McKM: No, the debriefing of us by the Committee. And I think they were all most interested in just laying everything to rest. Finding out what the facts were, but not to have any great

49 embarrassing situations that would come out of it. It would be wonderful if those tapes existed.

They could be entered into your archives.

BS: Somebody has them. I would wonder if they're over at the National Archives.

(End of Tape 1 - Side B)

______

(Begin Tape 2 - Side A)

BS: So anyway, you're debriefing with Harry Wexler.

McKM: Yes. And Merle Tuve. Pretty interesting.

BS: Too. . .

McKM: T-u-v-e. He was at the Smithsonian. A great earthquake man. So that helped. . . that did a lot of healing for us, you know, because for a good part of the time we felt like we were sort of outlaws in terms of our interactions with Finn Ronne. He was the leader and we had been told by him that we had to . . . we had the feeling that we really should, everything being equal, should do what he told us to do. And I had never, of course, none of us had ever had an experience of living and dealing with a martinet such as what he developed into. So, the experience with the

50 IGY Committee was a nice healing experience in terms of other people . . . they were appropriately outraged at what he - his lack of support for the scientific group.

BS: They were pretty frustrated and they knew that something was wrong and they knew of the book that Jenny Darlington put out. And they knew that it was a mistake. They probably should have read the book before they ever signed him. And the Dufek thing, from what I understand.

He was told to give him a call, was he not? Or did he set this up himself? Was there no . . .

McKM: All of that was done so secretively.

BS: Yeah. So,

McKM: And Crary. It was Crary that he was trying to get permission from. Or both of them,

Dufek and Crary in terms of that ____ communication.

BS: Crary was so tremendous background in working with the military on T3, you know. He spent 2-1/2 years out there. Of course, he had been with the Air Force and with the Navy. He was out to manipulate the Navy and the Air Force to do what he wanted. And, of course, he was over there with Pat Mayer wintering over. He used to be the Skipper of the Glacier. There's your lead scientist and lead base commander. Anyway, the debrief was a healing. You had a lot of

_____. You don't lay awake at night.

51 McKM: No, and I think it was partly because I had been so successful in my science, you know.

I didn't rely upon Finn to support, to . . .

BS: You could have gotten better support from Finn without question.

McKM: No, I don't think so. The whole intellectual atmosphere at the base would have been much better and we would have spent our time on other things rather than on worrying about how to deal with him. Personally, I think the greatest loss to me was that I didn't get on the traverse. That would have been wonderful. That wouldn't have been part of my scientific mission, but it would have been nice. So that was, I think, my loss. But I think that the traverse group didn't do as much as they could have. They probably could have gotten more done if there hadn't been this constant battle with Finn Ronne.

BS: On a personal basis, had you planned to go to post-graduate school before you went, or was this something that came as a result of your research in Antarctica?

McKM: I think that I had been . . . I think the summer that I had been at Yerkes Observatory, I sort of fell back in love with astronomy. I had gone to Cal Tech initially with an interest in astronomy and ended up in civics and so that . . . before I went to the Antarctic, I was convinced that I wanted to continue doing this kind of science. And so, and it was a kind of science that I didn't know anything about and it was my first experience, really, with research. And so the

Antarctic experience was a major influence upon the kind of going back to graduate school and doing research in atmospheric sciences and astrophysics.

52

BS: Well, you were interacting with researchers who had been in the field, you were living with them.

McKM: Pardon me?

BS: You were living with guys like Ed Thiel and Hugo and. . . they must have had some influence on you.

McKM: Yeah, yeah.

BS: Seeing what their lifestyle was like and . . .

(50)

McKM: Yeah. So I think coming back from the Antarctic, I really was convinced that I really wanted to go on and do research in this area. And the other positive experience was that having several years away from grades in school meant that graduate school was a considerably more agreeable experience than if I had just gone right on after graduating from undergraduate school.

My graduate experience was so much better for having been away, but also been away in a challenging, intellectually challenging situation such as doing research in the IGY. So, that was pretty good. And I have very, very positive feelings, a great deal of gratitude for having had the opportunity to do this kind of work in the Antarctic.

53

BS: Did you ever go off to the Arctic to do anything?

McKM: No.

BS: So you never got back to the polar regions.

McKM: Other than on . . . I've been to Alaska, but . . . no.

BS: Not professionally.

McKM: No. But I have done a lot of field work since then. I've done a number of years of expeditions to study solar eclipses and these turned out to be sort of like going to the Antarctic because one goes to very remote parts of the world and performs some very sophisticated, complex observations to study the sun on and those turned out to be sort of Antarctic-like, but wonderful experiences of doing . . .

BS: Where did you go?

McKM: Oh, I went to Tahiti and Kenya and Bolivia, Alaska, Mexico. So, five different successful solar eclipse expeditions at which it was clear on every one of those eclipses. And so those were field science like the Antarctic and I really enjoy that kind of science.

54 BS: Well, that's nice. So, your Antarctic experience did affect your life.

McKM: Oh definitely.

BS: It gave you thoughts about what kind of science and how scientists work in real life, rather than just the university atmosphere.

McKM: Yeah. And I had, when I started to graduate school, I already had experience doing scientific research and had published some papers and so I went through graduate school much faster than I would have if I hadn't done that.

BS: Yeah. Well, anything else? Would you do it all again? Would you go back again on that trip?

McKM: You mean with or without Finn Ronne?

BS: Uh. . . without Finn Ronne.

McKM: Oh yes. I don't think I'd volunteer to go down there having been married. I think. . .

BS: Well, Behrendt and Charlie Bentley were some of the great traversers. They never quit.

McKM: But I think John never wintered over again.

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BS: No, I don't think so. Charlie wintered twice during IGY.

McKM: Yeah. I wouldn't hesitate if it had been related to my scientific work, I would have gone. I would have liked to have gone back.

BS: Well, a lot of guys made a career . . . Charlie, John . . . well, John had other things too. But

Charlie Bentley, that's about all he did. I knew him in the 60s, I knew him in the 80s. He'd been there in the 50s. So, he's got the traverse record, I'm sure. John's second.

McKM: The record for what?

BS: Miles of travel.

McKM: Miles traveled? Un-huh? And John has the second?

BS: Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's it. I think John's only the . . . Bentley had a lot of big traverses.

McKM: But John . . . he did a lot of . . . he did most of his stuff eventually by aeromagnetic survey.

BS: Yeah. And ship surveys.

56 McKM: Yeah.

BS: Bentley did a lot of camps and stuff later on. Well, I think that's good.

(100)

(End of Interview)

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