Q: How big was Byrd's first Antarctic expedition?
LR: Well, it was very large. Byrd's private Antarctic expeditions, first of
all, were the largest mounted to that time. They required an enormous amount
of logistical planning. He had to balance out the, his own needs and desires
to explore Antarctica by aviation and above all to make the spectacular flight
down to the South Pole with his publicly professed commitment to science to
bring good scientists down there and so on. He had to balance off his
inclination to test new technologies. In this particular case the internal
combustion engine, not only on airplanes, but on tractors and so on, with the
need to maintain tried and true means of transportation, that is to say dog
teams and so on. So it was a tremendous undertaking and for a man who had
never been there before, I mean most people who went down to Antarctica, many
of them had been juniors on earlier expeditions and so on. They had some idea
of, some acquaintance, some relationship with the place. They had gotten their
feet wet as it were, before they went down there. Here Byrd says, well, I'm
going to go down to Antarctica which is 10,000 miles away and I've never seen
the place before, and by the way I'm taking tractors and scientists and
airplanes and so on. It was a breathtaking means of exploration.
Q: What was unique about this expedition? What was he trying to do for the
first time?
LR: Well, no other people had wintered over before. Scott had wintered over
and a lot of other people had wintered over. What was unique about this
expedition was that he was going to be using advanced technologies, industrial
technologies, the tractor, but particularly the airplane to see more of
Antarctica than had ever been seen before. The glory of the airplane is
that it's a moving balcony. So your perspective is immeasurably broadened and
deepened by what you can see from the air. You can just do an enormous amount
more. And this was again, much of the promise of the first Byrd expedition was
that you were going to bring back and, and really begin to fill in the outlines
of what was down there.
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