- Chronicles is made possible by a grant from the Erie Community Foundation, a community assets grant provided by the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority.

Support from Springhill Senior Living, and the generous support of Thomas B. Hagen.

- This is WQLN - 1 2 3 4.

- Our main job as weather people is to keep you safe, and if you don't understand the extremes that are happening out there, you can die.

- We're proud of having been able to carry out the program because temperatures that went down below minus a hundred, in fact, for the last 160 days, the temperature has never once been above minus 40 degrees.

So I don't know how prepared he was, - But I think he knew what he was getting in for and it was a thrill of a lifetime.

- So, Paul Siple has certainly a lasting legacy in the Antarctic program.

All Antarctic programs, really.

- I'm Dr. Paul Siple, scientific leader at the South Pole Station.

- Paul Amman was born in Montpelier, Ohio, December 18th, 1908, and moved to Erie, Pennsylvania before his 10th birthday.

A curious and active child with a love of nature.

He joined the Boy Scout troop number 24.

He excelled and earned a record number of merit badges, helping him earn the rank of Eagle Scout at age 15 achievements that would have a profound impact on his life.

- Paul Siple, I think, was a leader to begin with, and also a very much a had a thirst for knowledge Of the natural world.

He went out and did, earned all these mirror badges, discovering the world around himself and going out.

He had a, a thirst for adventure working through the ranks.

A scout has to do many things.

Number one, they have to participate, but they also have to show competence in a variety of skills that is related to scouting traditional scout skills, how to make a fire, how to camp, how to pitch a tent, stuff like that.

But they also go through the process of earning merit badges.

And merit badges are a lot like a lesson in a, a tech school where you get to try out different things that you might consider for a living.

Carpentry, plumbing, welding, veterinary medicine.

- And one of the highest awards is the rank of Eagle Scout.

- I am an Eagle Scout.

Very proud of that.

Of course, it takes a lot of hard work once an eagle, always an eagle.

- I, I keep Eagle Scout on my resume because I think it, it helped me get the job that I have now, and it's, yeah, once, once an Eagle Scout, always an Eagle Scout - Siple had earned Eagle badge at an early age, but he continued on earning merit badges afterwards, and he did earn 59 merit badges at the time.

It was a great number that that was pretty much every merit badge they had available.

- You know, being an Eagle Scout means that you have the discipline to finish tasks, that you have the, the whereabout to ask questions and find answers, or find solutions to problems that exist.

- In 1928, it was announced that famed explorer, Richard Evelyn Byrd, was leading an expedition tan Antarctica.

- We think about the early 20th century in Charles Lindbergh and Shackleton and Byrd.

These were things, these explorations, these were the superstars of the day.

Everybody knew what was going on.

Everybody knew about the Shackleton expedition to Antarctica.

Everybody knew it was just that popular - At that point in history.

There was no guarantee that people were gonna come back.

They didn't really know how things were gonna go.

- Byrd planned to be the first to fly over the South Pole, following a similar flight he had made over the North Pole two years earlier.

What made this especially interesting to the young Paul Siple was the announcement of bird's intent to select the Boy Scout to join the expedition.

Thousands upon thousands applied, but only six were selected for the final assessment.

A close competition for the experience of a lifetime.

But it perhaps wasn't close at all, because after several days of activities and interaction, Byrd asked each scout to choose one other from the sixth to go on the expedition.

They each chose Paul Siple.

- Unbelievable.

I mean, just what an unbelievable opportunity he had.

- So if I, if I were to put my, put my feet into Paul Siple shoes as a 19-year-old Eagle Scout, who's just been selected from a, a, a huge applicant pool to join Admiral Byrd on what, at that point in time, was a world famous expedition.

I just cannot imagine how, one, how excited he was and also just what he must have been thinking.

You know, certainly there had to be some aspect of what have I gotten myself into, but certainly some thoughts about, you know, will I be back?

You know, how, how risky is this?

I'm sure his parents and family were very excited, but also maybe scared for him.

- I mean, he was a young man and back then, a young man of 18 was much more so than what we could consider today.

- The first challenge was to cross the oceans.

The accomplished Paul would be a useful addition to the ship's crew after spending time as a Sea Scout.

- The Sea Scouts are a division of the Boy Scouts, or scouts BSA.

They've been around since the 19 teens, and they are a group of older scouts that are dedicated to learning about sailing and, and boating and everything nautical related to that.

- But this was to be a voyage.

Unlike anything Paul had experienced before.

Thousands lined the port of New York to send off the expedition.

- Everybody knew about an expedition to Antarctica.

Everybody knew it was just that popular - Four boats left loaded with their various supplies.

And Paul, an animal lover, appreciated that the dogs were transported on the faster boat to limit their exposure to the heat of the tropics.

Initially assigned as a mess mate, peeling potatoes, Paul was replaced by a ow away who was made to earn his passage.

Paul's knowledge of navigation not tying rope splicing and rigging made him a valuable member of the crew.

But this wasn't sailing on Lake Erie.

Stormy waters caused a supply case to break loose.

It struck Paul on the head, just as a wave crashed over the deck.

His outstretched hand found a railing just before he was washed overboard.

- You enter into the Drake passage, which you know, has some of the, the, the roughest, you know, most extreme weather and seas of anywhere on the planet, right?

I mean, it's, it's not unusual to get 30, 40, 50 foot swells while going across the, the Drake passage.

- And while his home in Erie is no stranger to the harsh cold and the great outdoors, Paul was about to test the limits of his abilities.

- If I look back at Siple, and this ad came out about going to Antarctica, I mean, that's pretty amazing because even when you talk about living in the Erie and those harsh winters that we've had in the early century, that's cold.

So for him to take that challenge and probably hearing like Antarctica's cold is full ice n' that.

Yeah, that took, so that, that took a lot.

(Laughs) - During the voyage, the crew had to tackle a crack in the hull.

The seeping water damaged the engine room and a fire in the radio battery room threatened to destroy the ship.

Paul was quick to step in and limit the damage.

After months at sea, the team successfully navigated the ice pack to land at the Ross Ice Shelf.

- First arriving in Antarctica is absolutely, its other worldly, a it's unbelievably beautiful.

Ultimately, it's, it's like stepping onto another planet and just breathtakingly beautiful.

Snd it's, it's vast.

I think people don't realize how big it is.

It's much larger than than the United States.

- The the air is still largely so clean and pristine, you can see mountains that are 120 miles away when - Vast and uncompromising, the perils at the polar landscape became immediately clear when a portion of the ice shelf broke away, sending one crew member tumbling into the icy water.

The unstable ice shell started to break up, and the ship was forced to anchor elsewhere.

Thankfully, there was no loss of life.

But in all the excitement, one man grabbed hold of a metal pole without a glove.

His skin started to freeze instantly.

Although quick to rip his arm away, a sizable chunk of flesh was torn from his hand.

The dogs on the other hand, didn't mind the cold.

The dogs were essential for moving supplies miles inland to a predetermined location for the base station.

They would later provide crucial transportation to explore the vast and icy unknown.

The second supply ship was unable to make it through the ice pack, leaving the expedition crew to make due with what supplies they had.

And so a smaller re-imagined base camp was quickly built with fewer buildings and much less space.

Supply crates formed the walls of connecting tunnels, providing access to storage and a sheltered walkway between the buildings.

And the use of modern radio communication was a first for a polar expedition, allowing messages to be transmitted and received across the ice and the oceans beyond.

With a merit badge and taxidermy, and a request to return penguin and seal specimens back to North America, Paul was selected as one of the 42 that would winter over in Antarctica.

In isolation until the arrival of spring and the melting of the ice pack.

42 men and many penguins.

- There are thousands of penguins, five species of seals that the animals didn't have.

Fear.

They, they had no, no instinct to fear humans in in any way.

- After Byrd's selection, the city of New York left before the ice pack began to reform, leaving Paul and his 41 colleagues cut off from the rest of the world with winter fast approaching.

A polar winter means four months of darkness.

For many a psychological challenge Paul spent with little time he had to himself immersed in self-study in the camps library, and receiving lectures from his experienced team leaders.

Paul and another man spent weeks carving out a tunnel system to provide shelter for the 95 dogs that were brought to Antarctica.

Complete with a maternity room for new litters.

An avid lover of animals.

Paul found solace in caring for the sled dogs.

He worked daily with the unruly ones to transform them into valuable team members.

He formed a relationship of trust with these dogs, spending many hours with them each day.

A special bond was formed with one in particular Pete, whom Paul trained to be a team leader.

Paul would often just sit with Pete and talk to him at length.

Pete was Paul's trusted confidant.

But the harsh realities of life in Antarctica meant not all the sled dogs would survive.

Ailing or injured dogs.

Risk holding up the expedition, adding more strain to the healthy dogs, and potentially risking the life of the crew.

The solution was harsh but simple.

Kill the wounded and frail, feed them to the healthy where necessary - survive at all costs.

Once conditions became more favorable, the expedition of the region began in earnest.

Pete was selected to lead a dog team out to a mountain range several hundred miles away.

Paul would miss his companion, but he had plenty of work to distract himself with.

Among Paul's responsibilities was the task to collect and prepare specimens of penguins and seals for transportation back to the United States.

Skeletal structures and preserved specimens were to be delivered to the American Museum of Natural History.

A task somewhat at odds with his love of animals.

No work in Antarctica is without risk.

While working on a seal specimen, Paul left a simmering vat of seal blubber unattended, only to return to find his workstation.

Ablaze with no means of rescue had fire swept across the camp.

It could have meant a death sentence for all 42 men.

Observing the animals so closely, Paul began making carvings of these ice inhabiting creatures.

Ultimately the objectives of the mountain exploration team were met.

The team confirmed that the landmass was once a part of Australia, but this discovery came at a cost.

Happy to see his colleagues safely return, Paul immediately noticed a crushing absence.

Due to difficulties returning to base, Pete, along with other dogs, were killed and used for food for the remaining dogs, a necessary step to ensure the research team's survival.

With the arrival of spring, unusually colder weather meant that the ice pack had refused a thaw.

Only one ship was able to successfully find a break in the blockade.

Byrd and his team were forced to carefully choose what would leave the icy realm and what would stay.

With limited space on board.

The heartbreaking decision is made that there is only enough space for 60 of the remaining dogs.

After returning to Erie.

Paul had three years of study remaining to obtain his Bachelor of Science degree in biology at Allegheny College.

With his drive to further his education, he completed his degree in just two years.

He gave lectures and wrote books on his Antarctic experience.

But soon enough, in 1933, Byrd requested Paul join a second expedition, this time assisting Byrd with the logistical planning and acting as chief biologist.

By the second expedition's completion in 1935, Paul had discovered 84 new species of lichen and five new species of moss in the course of mapping 30,000 miles of the Antarctic.

Paul had established himself as part of Byrd's team.

Byrd's next expedition didn't happen until four years later.

And in the interim years, Paul lectured became a husband and expecting father and obtained his PhD in geography and climatology from Clark University, Massachusetts.

During this third expedition, Paul was the assistant to Admiral Byrd, supervising all the supplies, equipment, and logistics, and was the senior geographer serving as navigator for all exploratory flights.

A critical responsibility in the difficult environment.

A traditional compass didn't work flying so close to the South Pole.

It was on this third journey to Antarctica that he conducted the experiments to explore the relationship between the wind and the cold.

Tests that resulted in the important formula for calculating the windchill.

- So the big, the big risk with, with wind, in conjunction with cold, is that moving air wind essentially is removing the boundary layer of warmth around our body.

So the higher the wind speed, the faster that heat is being extracted across the surface of our body.

Because it's across the surface of our body, across the surface of our skin, that we lose heat to the environment around us.

And so the cold in combination with higher wind speeds is only going to exacerbate that, that heat loss.

- The importance of the windchill factor is really to let people know, to cover up, to cover that exposed skin, to keep your natural body heat in as much as possible, because the wind will evaporate that heat away from your body and you feel colder and colder.

So when we talk about the windchill factor, we're talking about your health, about your safety.

You don't want frostbite, you don't want the hypothermia.

- A frostbite is actually ice formation within the skin and the tissue.

So what happens is, as, as the body attempts to keep warmth in and around our core, it allows our periphery and our extremities the temperature to drop.

And obviously, if the temperature drops below freezing, you know, our body is, is 60 plus percent water.

There's the risk, the heightened risk of that water being converted to ice.

And so frostbite truly is ice formation within, within the tissues.

And that presents a, a variety of problems.

I mean, the, the physical growth of ice can actually damage cells and proteins within our body.

Even greater risk is as ice forms outside of our cells, that actually creates a gradient that dehydrates our cells.

Water will actually move from our cells out into the extracellular spaces of our body.

And our cells only have a limited capacity to withstand that dehydration.

At some point, they reach a threshold where literally they will collapse and, and will be killed at that point, The windchill is really gonna dictate the, the speed at which we are at risk of a frostbite.

- The windchill factor is a complicated equation along with a lot of weather, you need to know a lot of math, the forecast weather, and with the windchill, that's just an added headache sometimes.

But this is the windchill factor.

This is a very long equation.

Luckily enough, we today have it automatically done through computers, thank goodness.

But I know Siple did not have that a long time ago.

There were no computers or technology out there.

- I think the best way you ex-- you explain it is just, you know, there's a, a really popular chart that colorizes the windchill factor numbers in, you know, like blue, dark blue and purple.

And you ha and anybody can use it, right?

'cause it has the wind speed on one axis and the air temperature on the other.

And you just do the graph and you can find out whether exposed flesh is vulnerable in 30 minutes or 10 minutes or five minutes.

And I think that's very practical.

- His knowledge and understanding of how climate conditions impact the body led to many years working with the US Army.

First as a civilian expert, then as a commission captain, to direct research on clothing and environmental protection of troops, ultimately earning the Legion of Merit metal for his work.

In 1946, he returned to Antarctica as scientific and polar advisor and senior representative of the US War Department.

That same year, he was discharged, having earned the rank of Lieutenant colonel, but stayed with the US Army as a civilian advisor, as a geographer, and directing the Environmental Research Program.

No stranger to dangerous environments, he traveled twice to the battle lines in the Korean War to inspect the effectiveness of new military clothing.

After an absence of nearly a decade, Paul joined Byrd's fifth and final expedition as his deputy and director of US Antarctic Programs in 1955.

Paul was one of the few, if not the only person, to join Byrd in all five of his Antarctic expeditions.

This trip would see the establishment of permanent stations.

A polar campaign that was largely in preparation for what would arguably become Paul's biggest Antarctic achievement.

In 1957, a collaboration of 11 countries across 40 Antarctic stations conducted coordinated research in what was coined the Geophysical Year.

Paul led a team of 18 as the first to ever winter over the South Pole Station.

An experience that involved six months of sub-zero, constant polar night - Here is a a, a station.

And it would've been, you know, fairly rudimentary at that time at the South Pole Station, which is one of the most inhospitable places on the planet.

And this is the first time that, that we would've, you know, started a continual presence there.

So no one really knew what the winter was going to be like down there.

And here they were, you know, the plane leaves and, well, we gotta, we gotta get through it.

And I just cannot imagine, one, the excitement of that adventure, but also all the questions he must have had to, to, you know, answer and just questions he invented along the way.

- From an early age, Paul was always engaged in actively pursuing knowledge and action.

This continued right up until his death.

He died of a heart attack while working at his desk in Arlington, Virginia, November 25th, 1968.

Just weeks before his 60th birthday.

- I think he is one of the most distinguished Eagle Scouts that we have ever had.

And, you know, if I were to been in his, his shoes, I would've been, you know, just number one, I don't think I could ever have done the things that he's done or, or survived what he survived.

The strength and stamina he had to survive in the Antarctic is just beyond belief.

Takes a great deal of courage, both mental and physical courage to have survived what he did.

It's truly a phenomenal.

- I am Dr. Paul Siple, the Department of Army, the scientific leader at the South Pole Station.

We've been here at the South Pole Station for the past year, carrying out part of the International Geophysical Year program.

We're quite proud of this camp having lived here through the longest polar night history and 18 of us living in this camp that was constructed a year ago by Navy cbs.

A group of scientists, navy men 18 in total have lived here very comfortably carrying out our program.

We're proud of having been able to carry out the program because temperatures that went down below minus a hundred, in fact, for the last 160 days, the temperature has never once been above minus 40 degrees - Chronicles is made possible by a grant from the Erie Community Foundation, the Community Assets Grant provided by the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority support from Springhill Senior Living, and the generous support of Thomas B. Hagan.

- We question and learn.