Polar Pilgrims

Wilkins. Fairbanks, Alaska, kept its radio ear cocked. But after the message (TIME, April 12) saying that Captain Wilkins and Pilot Eielson had brought their freight-laden monoplane Alaskan safely to earth 560 miles northward at Point Barrow, the Arctic air yielded no more news of them.

The Fairbanks operators were, however, in constant touch with Wilkins' overland party under Explorer "Sandy" Smith. The latter had been obliged to leave his comrades encamped some 140 miles south of Point Barrow on the Colville River, while he and an aide mushed across the tundra to the nearest settlement. He had run out of food for the dogs. Soon, the encamped ones flashed, the animals would have to be shot. Wilkins, second-in-command, Major Lanphier, left behind in Fairbanks, at once rushed repairs on the damaged Fokker Detroiter to send aid. Meantime he worried and worried about Wilkins and Eielson.

At last the familiar signal flashed in. They were at Circle City, 130 miles northeast of Fairbanks on the Yukon. That they were safe was good news, but there was better news still.

The day they flew north from Fairbanks, they had reached the shore of the Polar Sea with the Alaskan still ticking off miles like a great grey goose and had bountiful fuel still aboard. They had thought it a shame to land, and decided on an unscheduled reconnaissance flight due north over the seething floes. It was snowing a bitter blizzard, but far from shore the sun reappeared and they distinguished, 7,000 feet below, that the smooth sea had changed to a white inferno of hummocks -- the great polar icecap in the center of which is what geographers call "the pole of inaccessibility," one of the objectives for which their backers had sent them north.

On they sped, peering over the horizon for some distant rising film that would mean land. They reached what their instruments told them was the approximate point reached by Captain Robert E. Bartlett in the ice-ship Karluk in 1913; flew another hour, whizzing 70 miles into a frozen desert never before penetrated by man. When they circled back they had seen no land, but from their lofty lookout they had explored by eye a swath of the unknown perhaps 60 miles wide and 100 long -- 6,000 square miles of "new world." Returning, they had flown far inland before being able to identify land beneath them through the snow. Gauging their position by the shore line, they found Barrow and landed with the snow drifting waisthigh. Blizzards and fog had kept them there six days before they could start back to Fairbanks.

Going south again they had not navigated (used instruments) but had piloted their plane by "familiar" landmarks remembered from the trip up. A buffeting headwind threw their calculations off a lot, and when they reached the Yukon they were far to the east of their course. Eielson had recognized Circle City; they had descended to refuel and pass the night.

From Circle City to Fairbanks was no hop at all next day. Concerned for "Sandy" Smith and his dogs, Wilkins did not rest long when he got there, but loaded the Alaskan with dogmeat and gasoline and prepared to fly back over the towering Brooks range (6,000 feet and more). A wireless from the Colville River announced Smith's return to camp with reindeer meat. Wilkins shipped the relief food, piled on more gasoline and flew at once with Eielson -- carrying 3,800 lb. of fuel to start supplying the Barrow base for their major polar flights. The same afternoon he flashed a report of their safe landing.

Amundsen. The Pope blessed them and so did the elements. Premier Mussolini bade them adieu. They stood in their linen overalls at the cabin windows and their chief ordered that the nose ropes be cast off. The blunt silvery cigar tilted heavenward to an angle of 45 degrees. Then propellers roared, stern ropes were flung off, every one waved and up they shot toward Italy's bright blue sky -- Colonel Umberto Nobile, Lieutenant Riiser-Larsen, Major Scott (their English pilot), Lieutenant Mercier (their French pilot), Norsemen and Italians and one young female, Titina their mascot terrier -- the personnel of the good airship Norge as she soared above the Ciampino Airdrome to begin the first leg of her Rome-to-Nome transpolar flight.

Emperors used to march the Appian Way in triumph. The Norge soared majestically above it up to the Eternal City and set off to fly, in 24 hours, a distance that used to take Caesar's legions two months of forced marches. She headed out over the Mediterranean for Corsica's upper tip. Colonel Nobile christened her radio with a message to Premier Mussolini -- steaming to visit Italian possessions in Africa aboard the battleship Cavour -- that all was well.

High over the sparkling sea, the Norge was a long silver bullet as she moved by Marseilles. They saw her pass Toulon at 5:30 in the evening, droning strongly northwestward.

Among those aboard the Norge was a stalwart named Amundsen. Despatches did not give his first name, simply calling him "young Amundsen." Had he by chance been named Roald, confusion might have arisen, for "the" Roald Amundsen -- "Old Amundsen"* as the despatches may yet have it -- was at Oslo, Norway, being dined and wined by his countrymen, in company with his fellow explorer, the American Lincoln Ellsworth. They will join Colonel Nobile on the Norge at Spitzbergen and form a joint command.

Byrd. Tom, Dick and Harry shook hands in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Tom and Harry went back to their respective jobs (Harry is Governor of Virginia), and their brother Dick went ahead with his -- getting men and freight shaken down, stowed and shipshape aboard the S.S. Chantier as she steamed from the pier. The freight was particularly troublesome, and the ship paused overnight off Staten Island before heading across the ocean for Tromso, Norway, where Dick -- Commander Richard E. Byrd -- will lay in whatever supplies or equipment he still needs for his flights next month in the Fokker monoplane Josephine Ford poleward from Spitzbergen.

*Aged 53, "the" Amundsen is unmarried. But the patronymic is no common one in Norway. Possibly "young" and "old" are related.