World Flight

World Flight
Followin in the footsteps of the great aviators.

1/31/12

Ellsworth and Hollick-Kenyon across Antarctica

On November 23, 1935, explorer Lincoln Ellsworth, with pilot Herbert Hollick-Kenyon took off in the aircraft the "Polar Star".

The Polar Star took off from Dundee Island in the Weddell Sea and headed across Antarctica to Little America. They flew 3500 km across the breadth of Antarctica, claiming 350,000 square miles or 910,000 km2 of land for the United States of America. Fuel exhaustion forced them to land 40 kilometers short of their goal.
After a forced landing on the polar ice, they walked for six days to reach their destination, an abandoned camp left by Richard E. Byrd several years earlier.

A British Research Society ship sighted them on January 15, 1936, near the Bay of Whales. Hollick-Kenyon later returned to recover the Polar Star. The total distance flown by the Polar Star before its forced landing was about 3862 kilometers or 2,400 miles.



Source: Smithsonian Institution - National Air and Space Museum / Wikipedia / South-pole.com

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