360 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 2 8 



course where land can possibly exist the flight of the Norge has left 

 us where we were, and the field is clear for the next explorer. 



Even for reconnaissance the airplane has doubtful value, so much 

 depends on ground organization, which never can be perfect in polar 

 regions, and there is the even greater diiBiculty of satisfactory landing 

 places. On the long flight of the Norge from Spitsbergen to Alaska 

 not a single landing place was seen, at least not one suitable to the 

 eyes of those who had experience of polar ice. Pack ice rarely offers 

 the requisite surface, and certainly can not be relied on to do so, while 

 among drift ice the necessary expanse of open water is seldom avail- 

 able for a hydroplane. The use of a lead may prove fatal by the 

 ice closing in on the machine. In his first attempt on the North 

 Pole in 1925 Amundsen very nearly lost his machines and the lives 

 of his expedition by landing in a pool of water. As it was, he had 

 to abandon one machine, and it was only by his skill and determina- 

 tion that he retrieved from disaster what was a fiasco as far as scien- 

 tific exploration Avas concerned, except for one sounding. 



It should, however, be noted that G. H. Wilkins, from his flying 

 experience north of Alaska, maintains that landing places on pack 

 ice are numerous. He certainly made safe landings on two occasions 

 without much difficulty. 



For the transport of stores, equipment, and collections the airplane 

 has little value because its use introduces an element of grave 

 uncertainty into the work of the expedition. The explorer must be 

 prepared for the journey on foot or by boat if his airplane fails 

 him. He must carry the necessary equipment, or he is incurring a 

 f oolhardly risk. And in that case why take the airplane at all ? 



In one respect, however, the airplane can be successfully used in 

 polar work, that is in aerial survey of difficult country that lies 

 within reach of a base accessible by sea transport and provided with 

 a good landing place. The value of aerial surveys has been proved in 

 many parts of the world. The survey of the Irrawadi Delta in a 

 few weeks instead of the two or three years that ground work would 

 have entailed, is a case in point; and J. M. Wordie has instanced the 

 eastern edge of Greenland as a country where the aerial surveyor 

 could rapidly make a map of the most rugged and untraversable 

 country. The investigation of the movement of pack ice in Hudson 

 Strait, undertaken this year by the Canadian Government, is another 

 instance of the value of the airplane in Arctic work." 



11 Few men have flown in the Arctic. Some of the most valuable fruits of experience 

 will be found in G. Binney's With Seaphine and Sledge in the Arctic (1925), and 

 R. Amundsen's My Polar Flight (1925) and The First Flight Across the Polar Sea (1927). 

 This address was written before the memorable flights of G. H. Wilkins in 1928 in both 

 the .\rctic and the Antarctic. Those flights do not contradict the general conclusions in, 

 this address. 



