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Antarctic Heroes



 

Hubert Wilkins


1888-1958



 

               Sir Hubert Wilkins
      Born at Mount Bryan East, South Australia, on October 31, 1888, Hubert Wilkins was the thirteenth child born to a South Australian sheep-farming family. As a young student, Hubert studied engineering part-time at the School of Mines in Adelaide, however his passion was photography and cinematography. An official biography would list his career as war correspondent, polar explorer, naturalist, geographer, climatologist, aviator, author, balloonist, war hero, reporter, secret agent, submariner and navigator. This was an extraordinary man.

     In 1908 Wilkins stowed away on a ship from which he later abandoned in Algiers. The next thing he knew, he found himself in a gang of criminals involved with gun-running, kidnapping, drug dealing and spying. At 24, Wilkins was hired by the Gaumont Film Company to join the Turkish side of the Turko-Bulgarian War of 1912 and shoot footage of the war.

     In 1913, Wilkins became second in command of Vilhjalmur Stefansson's expedition to the Canadian Arctic. He went on to learn how to fly and in 1917 Wilkins returned to his homeland of Australia and joined the Australian Flying Corps at the rank of lieutenant. Although an aviator, his primary duty was to photograph the gruesome fighting in the field. His superior officer was none other than Captain Frank Hurley, the famous photographer of Mawson's and Shackleton's Antarctic expeditions. Wilkins was presented with the Military Cross for his efforts to rescue wounded soldiers in the Third Battle of Ypres, where at Passchendaele allied forces suffered a quarter million casualties. He received a Bar for his Military Cross for temporarily leading a company of American soldiers, whose officers had been killed in action. Australian General Monash described him as "the bravest man I have ever seen".

     Once the war ended, Wilkins turned his attention once again to aviation. He entered the England -- Australia Air Race of 1919 only to crash into a fence at a lunatic asylum in Crete. He went on to Russia for more photographic work where he reported on the upheaval and famine inside the country which was still in the grips of the great revolution of 1917.

     Oddly, Wilkins also earned a good reputation as a naturalist and ornithologist. In 1923-24 the British Museum sent him to North Australia to collect rare native fauna and report on Aboriginal tribal life. However, the time spent with Hurley only peaked his interest in an expedition to the Antarctic where he felt a combination of the airplane with aerial photography could lead to extensive exploration and discovery. In 1925, Wilkins proposed the Australasian Polar Pacific Expedition to fly from the Ross Sea across King Edward VII Land to Graham Land. The South Australian branch of the Royal Geographic Society attempted to raise funds for the expedition but the money was not forthcoming.

In order to gain financial support for his Antarctic adventure, Wilkins turned to the Arctic where together with his friend Ben Eielson, Arctic sojourns between 1925 and 1928 earned both of them a place in the aviator's Hall of Fame. Wilkins received the Patrons Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, the Morse Medal of the American Geographical Society and a knighthood from the King of England. Wilkins was introduced to Carl Ben Eielson by his former Arctic comrade Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Known to the Eskimos as "Brother to the Eagle", 26 year-old Eielson, a former pilot for the U.S. Army, was now an Alaskan bush pilot who flew through treacherous weather and topography on nearly a daily basis. Together with Wilkins, they survived numerous crashes and forced landings. Thier Arctic adventures culminated in a great journey in April and May of 1928 when their tiny Lockheed Vega monoplane flew from Point Barrow, Alaska to the Norwegian island of Spitzbergen, in a flying time of 20 hours and 20 minutes across a distance of 2,500 miles, most of it above uncharted territory. Thus, they became aerial pioneers as the first to fly from the New World to the Old.

The First Wilkins-Hearst Antarctic Expedition


     Wilkins was now ready to turn his attention to the Antarctic. Fame earned from the northern polar regions now propelled him into a position to finally accomplish his original dream of being the first to fly an airplane across the Antarctic continent. Hubert approached fellow Australian Major R.G. Casey, an official at the High Commission office in London, for financial backing from the government. Wilkins pointed out that his expedition could assist in accomplishing an early foothold on the Antarctic rim where meteorological reporting stations could subsequently be established. As much a supporter of Antarctic exploration as Casey was, his efforts nevertheless failed. Fortunately, the United States was interested. Endorsements came from the American Geographical Society and the Detroit Aviation Society. Millionaire publisher William Randolph Hearst pledged $25,000 for the exclusive press and radio rights.

With Australia dropping out of the expedition, Wilkins now prepared to concentrate his operation from Graham Land, or Palmer Peninsula as it was known to the Americans. From Deception Island in the South Shetlands, Wilkins hoped to launch a flight across the Weddell Sea in an attempt to possibly achieve a major flight, perhaps across Antarctica at a tangent to the coast. Wilkins intended to use the same plane which achieved Arctic fame, renamed the Los Angeles in honor of Hearst, but his backers insisted on a second plane for safety's sake. A second identical Vega of Jack Northrop's design was built and delivered at cost from the Lockheed Corporation. The second plane was named the San Francisco. The Vacuum Oil Company of Australia donated $10,000 worth of products. The N. Bugge Hektor Whaling Co. of Norway volunteered to take the expedition to the ice which suited Wilkins just fine . . . no expensive shore or winter bases would be needed! Heintz and Kaufman, of San Francisco, California, supplied a short wave radio for the aircraft. The radio served both as a long distance communication device and as a radio beacon (by holding down the morse key). Ben Eielson joined the expedition as chief pilot along with another experienced Arctic pilot by the name of Joe Crosson, who consequently was the first to fly an open-cockpit plane between Fairbanks and Point Barrow, Alaska.

                 Carl Ben Eielson
    The Wilkins-Hearst Expedition sailed from New York on September 22, 1928. In October they left Montevideo with the two aircraft aboard the whaling vessel Hektoria, which would serve the men with living quarters for the next five months. Before leaving their final port, in the Falkland Islands, Wilkins received a secret message from the British governor authorizing him to make territorial claims to the Falkland Islands Dependency, of which Deception Island was a part, on behalf of His Majesty's government. Obviously this did not sit well with Argentina who believed this region of Antarctica rightfully theirs.

     On November 4 Hektoria tied up at the whaling station at Deception Island. The Norwegians immediately set to work to open the dormant factory while Wilkins, Eielson and the others began to ready the aircraft for the forthcoming flights. Wilkins planned to explore along the peninsula as far south as fuel and good weather could take him. His ultimate dream was to fly across the continent to the Ross Sea and the vicinity of Framheim, Amundsen's camp in his 1911 South Pole Expedition. This plan would require two planes with one used to refuel the other for the final push to the Great Ice Barrier. Meanwhile, rocks were cleared and holes filled on the sandy beach.

On November 16 Eielson took the Los Angeles on a twenty minute flight. Hardly a noteworthy flight in Wilkins mind, but historical nevertheless as this was the first flight in Antarctica. Within a week, the twin Vega San Francisco was ready to fly. Joe Crosson flew the aircraft on a few short excursions and on November 26 both planes took to the air: Eielson from the bay ice aboard Los Angeles and Crosson from the beach aboard San Francisco. What a public relations stunt for the stunned Norwegians watching below! But a moment of terror befell Eielson as he came in for a landing. The wheels on the Los Angeles skidded on the bay ice and rushed Eielson and the plane dangerously towards the edge where the ice was thin and brittle. Sure enough, the horrified onlookers witnessed the aircraft nose over, splash into the water and sink up to its wings in the icy water. It took eighteen hours to haul the plane safely back to land.

     December's unseasonably warm weather, once reaching 50°F, turned Deception Island into a prison for the aviators. Steam rose along the shoreline with no sign of thickening bay ice. Skis would be necessary equipment for the aircraft if there was any intention of exploring the interior. Without the thick bay ice, it would be impossible to lift off with skis attached. They tried to tow an aircraft to open water and fly away on floats, but a mass of sea birds surrounded the plane, flying into the propeller thus making a liftoff impossible. It would have to be wheels or nothing!

Borrowing picks, shovels and wheelbarrows from the Norwegians, the men set to work clearing a long strip of beach from rocks, boulders and deep potholes. When all was said and done, Deception Island's airstrip was 2300 feet long and 40 feet wide with a couple of 20 degree bends. After the sinking of Los Angeles, San Francisco was the preferred plane for the long flight ahead. They filled the fuel tanks with enough fuel to carry them 1400 miles at a cruising speed of 125 MPH. Their emergency rations consisted of biscuits, pemmican, chocolate, nuts, raisins and malted milk tablets. In case of a forced landing, a block and tackle was loaded aboard to help pull the aircraft from danger, particularly from a crevasse. Crosson stayed behind to fly Los Angeles in case of an emergency. At 8:20 a.m. on December 20, 1928, Wilkins and Eielson took to the air in San Francisco signaling the start of a new chapter in the exploration of the last unknown continent from the air. Griffith Taylor, explorer with Robert Scott's Terra Nova Expedition, said that "Just as 1841 and 1903 were wonderful years in Antarctic exploration, so 20th December 1928 was the most wonderful day, for in ten hours Sir Hubert Wilkins settled more problems and sketched more new coastlines than any other expedition had accomplished in West Antarctica".

     The plan was to fly east across the Bransfield Strait and then head down the Antarctic Peninsula. Flying parallel to the mountains, Eielson took San Francisco to an altitude of 6000 feet. The plateau behind the mountains continued to rise ever higher so the plane continued south. Wilkins made notes for the press and photographed the area with a hand-held Kodak 3A camera and two movie cameras. In a 20-minute period Wilkins sketched a map covering 40 miles knowing it would have taken three months to do the same had they been sledging.

I "felt liberated," he said. "I had a tremendous sensation of power and freedom". They flew above Hughes Bay, crossed Gerlache Strait and neared the Danco Coast where Wilkins instructed Eielson to take the Vega up to 9000 feet and cross the peninsula from west to east. A magnificent scene of pure natural beauty unfolded before them prompting Wilkins to enter a note in his diary that "For the first time in history, new land was being discovered from the air". Beyond the Antarctic Circle at 67°S, they dropped closer to the surface and discovered a group of small, thin channels twisting their way deep between the mountains. Wilkins theory (seven years later disproved by fellow Australian explorer John Rymill) was that the peninsula was actually divided into three major islands, making it an archipelago rather than an extension of the mainland. Wilkins named one of the channels Casey Channel, after his friend R.G. Casey at the Australian High Commission in London. Another was named Stefansson Channel, after the man who had introduced him to the Arctic, and to these he added the Crane and Lurabee Channels. Wilkins freely named other distinguishable topography in honor of those who assisted with the expedition: Hearst Land, Mobiloil Bay, Scripps Island, Lockheed Mountains, and Cape Northrop after the Vega's designer. As a tribute to themselves, the map was also marked with the Wilkins Coast and Eielson Peninsula.

Fighting gale-force winds, Wilkins opened the hatch and dropped the territorial proclamation on behalf of the British government. Mountains and plateau continued to loom southward, far into the horizon, but at 71°20'S, with their fuel gauge close to the half-full mark, Wilkins reluctantly ordered Eielson to turn the plane around. They headed north across the Larsen Ice Shelf filled with satisfaction from exploring 1000 miles of previously unexplored Antarctic territory. Storm clouds hovered above and around the vicinity of Deception Island upon their return. With fuel running short, the clouds suddenly parted to give them a glimpse of the airstrip on Deception Island below. Eielson quickly put the San Francisco into a steep descent to get through the low ceiling before the clouds once again closed in. In short order, San Francisco was safely landed.

     The account of Antarctica's first exploratory flight is best summed up in Wilkins final entry in his diary following the historical event: "We had left at 8:30 [sic] in the morning, had covered 1300 miles -- nearly a thousand of it over unknown territory -- and had returned in time to cover the plane with a storm hood, go to the Hektoria, bathe and dress and sit down at eight o'clock to dinner as usual in the comfort of the ship's wardroom".

     Wilkins made one more exploratory flight before the aviation season came to an end. On January 10,1929, his aircraft flew 250 miles south, following part of December's route in order to confirm their earlier sightings. Both planes were soon dismantled and stored in a shed at the whaler's station. The men said farewell to the Norwegians and joined a patrolling British warship, HMS Flerus, to take them back to Montevideo.



The Second Wilkins-Hearst Antarctic Expedition


     The Second Wilkins-Hearst Expedition returned to Deception Island aboard the factory ship Melville in late November 1929. The British government once again authorized Wilkins to make territorial claims on behalf of the Crown. To assist with the expedition, the Colonial Office voted £10,000 and the services of the Discovery Committee's research vessel, William Scoresby. This time their equipment included a boat with an outboard motor, a caterpillar tractor and a Baby Austin automobile fitted with eight wheels and chains. With one plane loaded aboard William Scoresby, they sailed just below the 67th parallel in an attempt to find a more suitable takeoff and landing area for the plane. However, floats were used and by this manner a number of successful flights were completed between December 1929 and January 1930. A trans-Antarctic venture was never within their grasp. The most rewarding flights were those of December 27-29 when an area then known as Charcot Land revealed itself to be a large island, over which Wilkins dropped a flag and document proclaiming the land in the name of King George V. The final flight came on February 1 and reached 73°S, in the vicinity of Peter I Island, but no new discoveries were made.

     The pilots of the second expedition were both experienced Arctic pilots. Al Cheeseman and Parker D. Cramer came with Wilkins while Eielson remained behind, preferring to fly in Arctic skies where he obtained a mail contract. As the team on Deception Island reorganized, a radio message arrived informing Wilkins that Eielson had taken off on a mercy mission to locate a stranded fur-trading vessel and had not returned. Shortly afterwards they heard that Joe Crosson had found the wreckage; Eielson had flown into a Siberian hillside that had been shrouded in fog. Eielson was dead and Wilkins said he felt the loss of a brother -- a "Brother to the Eagle".



Other Ventures


     In a pause from his Antarctic expeditions of 1928-30, Wilkins purchased a surplus World War I submarine for one dollar, renamed it Nautilus, and attempted to cruise beneath the ice to the North Pole. The old ship broke down and the expedition failed which earned Wilkins some adverse publicity. Actually, he was just a man well ahead of his time. The submarine adventure, in 1931, represented his last individual and private expedition. From this point he accepted a post as manager to his friend and supporter, American millionaire Lincoln Ellsworth, in an Antarctic association which lasted until 1938. Lincoln Ellsworth went on to become the first to successfully fly across the Antarctic continent. In each of the three attempts, between 1933 until success on November 22, 1935, Hubert Wilkins was a participant. But this story is Ellsworth's story and will be included on this website in the near future.


Signed cover from the Nautilus North Pole adventure


     Wilkins last trip to Antarctica came in 1957 as a guest of Operation Deepfreeze. Wilkins always carried a miniature of the Australian flag in the cockpit of his airplane. He settled in the United States and worked in World War II for the American government, but never surrendered his Australian citizenship of which he was intensely proud. Wilkins died of a heart attack at the age of 70, in 1958. His body was cremated and the ashes taken on the nuclear submarine Skate and scattered at the North Pole.