TRANS-ARCTIC AVIATION + 
By ELMER PLISCHKE, LIEUTENANT (j. g.), U. S. N. R. 
Frequently it is wise and profitable to spend a few moments in 
speculation on the potentialities of the future. Many improvements 
are bound to be occasioned by the necessities of the war, not the least 
of which is the impressive development in aviation. The technological 
advancements being perfected for war purposes today doubtless will 
revolutionize commercial aviation after the termination of hostilities. 
One of the most logical results is the linking of the continents by a 
network of air routes traversing the Arctic Basin. 
Belief in the physical practicability and in the commercial value of 
trans-Arctic aviation was first manifested about the time of World 
War I, and in 1919, W. Brun, a German, proposed the organizing of 
regular flights from the European capitals via Archangel, the Arctic 
Basin, and Nome or Unalaska, to either Yokohama, Vancouver, or 
San Francisco. A few years later, in 1923, Maj. Gen. Sir Sefton 
Brancker, Director of Civil Aviation for Great Britain, enthusiasti- 
cally declared in a speech at Sheffield that the carrying of mails from 
England to Japan by way of the Arctic was a probability of the next 
10 years. In connection with the preparations for the flight of the 
dirigible Shenandoah to explore the polar “white spot” between 
Alaska and the North Pole, Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, Chief 
of the Bureau of Aeronautics of the United States Navy, stated in 
1924 that polar air routes connecting England, Japan, Alaska, and 
Siberia are possibilities of the near future. 
Many writers have since expressed their belief in the future of 
trans-Arctic flying. But perhaps the most vocal of these exponents is 
the polar explorer and publicist, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who has been 
pointing out the positional importance of the Arctic Basin for the past 
20 years. Ona map which has the North Pole as its center, he explains, 
the Arctic constitutes a small hub from which the land masses radiate 
like spokes of a great wheel, thus lying in the central part of a circular 
region enclosed for the most part by northerly extensions of rich and 
densely populated modern countries. By the logic of its position, it 
1 Reprinted by permission from Economic Geography, vol. 19, No. 3, July 1943. All 
assertions and opinions are purely those of the author and are in no wise to be construed 
as reflecting the views of the Navy Department. 
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