| Summary: | Third Attempt To Cross Pole: Aviator-Explorer Gets To Point Barrow On First Leg. THIRD ATTEMPT TO CROSS POLE Aviator-Explorer Gets to Point Barrow on First Leg. By Associated Press. SEWARD, Alaska, March 19.— Flashing a dramatic radio message, "Going to land, going to land," Captain George F. Wilkins told of the completion at 4:30 p. m. today of his hazardous 500-mile hop from Fairbanks to Point Barrow, Alaska, the first leg of a projected flight across the "top of the world." His Third Attempt. FAIRBANKS, Alaska, March 19. (/P)— In their third attempt to explore the "blind spot" of the polar sea, Captain George H. Wilkins, Australian aviator and arctic explorer, and Lieutenant Carl Ben Eielson, sourdough pilot, today hopped off from the Fairbanks airport for Point Barrow, as the first leg of their projected flight to Spitzbergen. Make Kxylorntory Flights. Upon completion of the 500-mile flight to Point Barrow, the aviators planned, after a few flights, to make the 2100-mile span from Barrow by heading in a great circle, the northernmost point of which was to be about 300 miles of the north pole. They would fly literally over the top of the world, and Spitzbergen lies on the opposite side of the pole. The flyers' two previous attempts to explore this unvisited region, in 1926 and 1927, were thwarted by atmospheric trouble. In this, their most ambitious effort, they have prepared to combat the forces that defeated them before. Their exploration of the "blind spot" will be made by a series of fan-wise flights, centered at Point Barrow. Their plane is equipped with skis for landing on the ice and they carry a short-wave radio set for keeping touch with the outside world. To prevent compass interference they are using a Lockheed-Vega monoplane constructed entirely of laminated wood, which was built under Wilkins' supervision especially for arctic work. The purpose of the venture is to look for traces of the fabled arctic continent, which Cook, Peary, Stefansson and McMillan claimed to have sighted northwest of Greenland. They will also search for suitable places to establish stations for study of atmospheric phenomena, three of which Wilkins has already established.
|
|---|