Evening Star Newspaper, December 22, 1929, Page 82

f it € g % o a2Vl AR S N . r £ BY CAROL BYRD. 66 HEN navigation of the air Sk by airplanes, and especially /’ dirigibles, becomes custom- ary, the uninhabited Arctic e will be like an open park in -the center of the inhabited city of the world and air voyagers will cross it like taxi riders crossing a park.” When Vilbjalmur Stefansson, one of the .greatest polar explorers of all time, made this ,statement seven years ago people regarded it as ;& prophecy of the most visionary sort. It was long before the public had become air-minded, ’ about the Arctic, and the idea that ‘comercial routes could be successfully operated :in the Far North was startlingly new. "Today Arctic flying is one of the most im- :portant subjects in the entire field of interna= ;tional aeronautics, for the majority of authori- ‘ties agree that the most practical air lane be- tween North America and Europe lies along a ‘patch in which the stepping stones are Baffin : , Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands :and Scotland, a route first proposed by Sir Eric ‘Geddes, chairman of Imperial Airways; a fed- seraticn of all British aeronautical manu- “This route,” says Stefansson, “is the only practical one because in order to have a com- mercially paying route you ought to be able to pick up airplane fuel every 300 miles or so. This can be done on the northern rcute and on no other. : CTE : T E'Fould not use ce floes for landings except in: the rarest ‘emergencies. Much of the year there are no suitable floes, anyway, in Davis Straits and only a narrow belt of them along the east coast of Greenland. Most of the water between Greenland and Iceland has no ice in it at any time and there is never any ice between Iceland and the Faroes or between the Faroes and Scotland. “However, it is not a bad idea to discuss jce floes as possible substitutes for the elaborate constructed floating landings that have been proposed between Newfoundland and Ireland. In a true-scale map of the Northern Hemi- sphere, such as included in my book, ‘The Ad- venture of Wrangel Island,’ you will see the area which nearly always contains ice clearly indicated. Within that area there is an emer- gency landing field of ice on an average of 1 to every 5 miles. - Better than that, in fact, for you ‘can probably never fly 5 miles without a chance to land. 5 . “These ice floes are comparatively stable, ‘many of them, but not stable enough to permit erection of a really permanent staticn on any of Take the case, for instance, of Storker- son, one of my own expeditions. Storkerson’s party selected a particularly substantial floe and remained encamped on it for six months while it drifted 450 miles. But even that selected floe ‘might have broken up if the conditions had been unfavorable, ‘P some multi-millionafre aviation enthusiast . were to arrange an air derby across the ‘Arctic he might well establish relay stations by 1 transport on a line of such fices, the s weather problefhs. ‘No a wind of more thar’ 40 0 blowing in the Arctic over the ar from land, though more violent found where there is open water near . These seem to be created locally by heric differences over the sea and early stages most of the Arctic fly~ done in Winter, for the Summer i3 § E FREEgEL L £ K . Snowstorms, too, are .rare. dhere will be less need for special devices to fpmztnte snowstorm or fog than.there is in * shany territories already regularly flown. - “You would want radio direction beacons at the temporary service muommon ll':hle ice a‘.:‘\;: ‘cofresponding apparatus on airplanes, «{ believe this is about to beoomhte“s;lndnrd ' equipment for all flying in every ude. . “Rldh'telephnnu would doubtless be used s ‘“However, it seems almost childish to talk "about stations on the ice, even temporary ones. “The fiyers ‘vho cross the Arctic will have enough .‘ability so that if anything goes wrong with ‘their engines they can come down almost any ‘place and have leisure to study the trouble and .‘to. repair it themselves. In special difficulty ‘they would send out 8 O S calls, specifying ‘what parts were broken or what special help they neded. Planes would then come from {peighboring. islands bringing the required ms-- ‘sistance. Twould: ¢ much like flying an - i%ry that is largely prairie, the airplanes landing 'on the prairie and sending calls to frontier .lmfiom for assistance, . 66%0U must remember about the Arctic that - %48 it is a tiny sea as compared with the 3 'Atlantic, and that islands in it are far more numerous. ’I\'h_e flm p'rob}ems 'wul, therefore, te fmzswn particuldy* pathi“fforecast by Geddes " '3 P 4 - s "THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, DECEMBER 22, 1929.° How the Great Explorer’s Dream and Prophecy for Transpolar Air Routes Is Coming T'rue, and Why He Estimates That Within Ten Years Ordinary Travel Betzween America and Europe Will Be by Way of the Safe Short Cut Across the Ice Pack at the Top of the World. just as soon as you every flyer who all the methods are described in “The Friend- build a snow house to provide proper shelter in the event that it required considerable time to repair his trouble, or to send out S O S calls for parts in print that no white man can ever learn to " build a snow house. They say the gift is in- stinctive with the Eskimo. I say there is no instinct and only common sense about it. “WHAT we have to do for successful Arctic *" 7. flying, whether it be air derbles with a acore of entrants or a regular mail service traveling on schedule, nhhlhl;:uchhduuuonm ‘would ve on tropical or temperate zone hlands, and then to be that nature has scattered level fioes as emergency landing fields liberally in every direction. “It is the innumerable landing fields that have made Arctic flying safer than any in the tropic or temperate zomes. Have you noticed that not a single life has yet been lost in con- nection with, let us say, 50,000 miles of Arctic fiying? 2 “It will jump to your mind at once that the great Arctic explorer, Amur.dsen, with his Nor- wegian and French companions, was ‘lost in the Arctic’ He wasn't really—at least not un- der Arctic conditions. We define the Arctic Sea, from the flying point of view, as those waters The Hope of the World. By Alfred Noyes. The world’s great heart has burst its chain, And music comes to birth. Rivers of healing flow again . And whisper -Péace on Earth. h streets thére mourners bowed in prayer Thm;'q N he healing splendor rolls. 1 The faces in the darkness .there - Are like smmortal souls. From earth, till Heaven and earth accord; " From time, till time shall cease; Praise to the everlasting Lord; Praise to the Prince of Peace. If thow forget what wine they shed, Thy sons on land and sea, Mother of all our hallowed dead, Shall peace return to thee? Look on the fields they left so fair, The hills their passion crowned. They built d nation’s altars there, And there Thy peace is found. They. have not laid aside the sword. Thesr warfare shall not cease. They serve an everlasting Lord. They serve the Prince of Peace. Rise on owur darkness, healing Sun, Shine on our storm-beat coasts, Tl all the nations move as one With these Thy starry hosts; Till, as Thy worlds from chaos draw, The broademing ages .find, Bound in.the music of Thy law, The kingdom of mankind. From earth, til earth and Heaven accord; Fromi teme, till time shall cease; Praise to the everlasting Lord; Praise ‘to 'the Prince of Peace. Forecast for Arctic Flying “Tml are few places in Northern Canada where you can get five miles away from a good landing, and there are similarly few in Northern Siberia. Alaska is to a degree an ex- ception, for it is so mountainous, but there has been the same freedom from serious accidents there as in Canada. It is not as safe as the typical Arctic, but safer than most temperate sone routes. g places are even more numerous on the ocean pack ice than on the Arctic Iand. “There have been three great Aretic airplane fiyers so far. Rather, among all the splendid men at work in the North, three liave so far attained enough publicity to make them famous. These are Amundsen (with Elisworth), Byrd (with Bennett) and Wilkins (with Eielson). The work of Amundsen had no bearing on the problem of whether the landing places on the pack fce are numerous, ‘for he used a flying boat and landed in water. Byrd's work is equally without bearing on this problem, for he was not compelled to land nor did he land vol- untarily. The most famous exploit of Wilkins and Eielson, when they flew from Alaska past the North Pole to Spitzbergen, tells us nothing, for they did not land till the 2,200-mile journey had been brought to a successful end. “But on a previous flight, n 1927, Wilkins and Eilson had landed three times at distances of 550, 540 and 100 miles from shore. The first was a forced landing in good weather, the sec- ond was a forced landing in a blizzard, and the third, also forced, had the combined handicaps of night darkness and thick snowstorm. They were all safe landings, the first two followed by takeoffs when repairs had been made, and the third without take-off because the fuel was ex- hausted. They were in line with the contention of Wilkins that you are never out of reach of a good landing place when flying the Arctic pack in Winter. “When it comes to learning, there are two kinds of people—those who understand and trust theories, and those who are impressed only by what has been done. The first class were convinced, say, five years ago, that Arctic fly- ing conditions, whether over sea or land, are better on the nverage than flying conditions over any lands or any seas in the tropic or tem=- perate zones. “I would estimate that the Arctic will come into its own as the practical airplane Christmas at the Hoovers®, Continued From First Page dent Hoover set in motion, through the recent White House conference on child health, the most important investigation into the present condition of American children—with & solemn. obligation to improve this condition—that has ever been attempted. To some, Christmas comes but once a year. The Hoovers, through their practice of sharing what they have and are, through their continu- ous effort to bring nearer that joy and peace on earth which the star above Bethlehem heralded and which Christ preached, are' put- ting the essential meaning of Christmas - into