DISCOVERY

in camp joined in looking for them, but no results. That night, Gnome was disconulate. She spent the night with her friend Dustin. [Music] We heard a noise under the snow. [Music] Just as completely as if we were on the planet Mars, the old bear looked like he ghost shipped as he disappeared into the mist. [Music] This little seal, Jimmy Jr. just one day old. [Music] [Music] [Music] The mothers were generally asleep when you went up to them. They'd open their eyes and take a look at you and go back to sleep again. Jimmy Junior. A month later, we weighed the young seal periodically for the benefit of biological science. They had to gain very rapidly on account of the extremely short summer season. Jimmy Jr., believe it or not, Ripley gained six lbs a day. And here is how he did it. [Music] They keep this hole open by sewing on the edge with their teeth. [Music] And here's Mrs. Jimmy Seal trying to get Jimmy Jr. to make his first solo dive under this thick ice. Even though his mother was there to show him how to do it, this first dive must have been a tough one. [Music] In this fight between Wedell and the crab eater, who's only half as big as the Wedell, the little fella easily licks the big one. [Music] And the big fella is wise. He runs away so he'll have to fight another day. [Music] These emperor penguins are great fellas. They weigh from 60 to 90 lb and stand about [Music] We put the planes in snow hangers. Plenty of hard work. All the fat men soon got thin. [Music] We had to put our dogs underneath the snow in tunnels up around the North Pole in most places. You can keep them outside during the long night, but it is so much cooler down south. If you should keep them out, they would soon freeze to death. We had about a quarter of a mile of these tunnels altogether. The dogs slept in boxes put in the sides of the tunnel. [Music] These dogs are stout fellas. They will pull for you on the long trail until they drop in their tracks. They are okay with people, but are sudden death to each other. Of all living creatures, they are probably the most pugnacious. If we had unchained them, they would in a few weeks be very few dogs left, if any. They fight to the death. One of the good things about full-blooded huskys is that they eat snow. So that on the long trail, you don't have to carry fuel to melt snow for water for them. And that enables you to make much more mileage. And here is one of those wonderful dogs, Denny. Denty's master had ordered him to go back into his box. Although Denty was very, very hungry, he was a good soldier. He obeyed orders and went back into his box. But that didn't keep him from coming right out again. The mother of these pups had gotten sick, and it fell to the lot of Captain Taylor to nurse them. [Music] [Applause] [Music] It is still a great mystery to Hey, our how a nursing bottle and nipple happened to get on a polar expedition. It was a magnitude of our flight operations that it is impossible to cover them with motion pictures. On this expedition, as on the others, we made many flights of exploration and discovered much land and islands and many mountains. Our various North Pole expeditions explored and investigated for science the Pacific half of this South Pole continent. This map shows how this half appeared before my first Antarctic expedition of 192830. The white blank part you see here was completely unknown. It was well over a million square miles in area. No human being had ever seen any part of it. We didn't know whether there was land or water in that area. We didn't know where the Pacific Ocean ended or where the coastline of Antarctica began. Now I'm going to show you how this map looks today. We know now what is in that blank space. [Music] so much for the science of discovery. Now, something about that very important branch of science, meteorology. Well, fellas, we've licked it. Supplies are all in. The camp's secure. Field parties are all set to go. Fine, Dick. Now we the home god will sit by the fire in our cozy shack just thinking of those poor devils on the trail picking them up and laying them down. Oh, no you won't, Charlie. The home guard will do all that thinking with a snow shovel. Rather do my thinking sitting down, Lloyd. How about less painful? Admiral, will the field parties hold the original plan? Well, here's the dope. Saples party will clear for long penetration near the Edel Ford range over here. Plateau party uh will start south on a geological reconnaissance up here. Bamal and Morgan with the tractors and make a seismic survey over in this region. That campaign ought to clear up a great many questions backto. Let's go top side. Dog team's ready. I want to have a look at those sleds again. And here are the field forces lined up for the start of the campaign. Dr. Bram Hall, physicist. Isson driver. Morgan, geologist. Russell, driver. Ins Taylor in charge of trail operations. Admiral Bird. So long, Payne. Good luck. Take no chances with the creasses. Thank you, Commander. Payne, navigators, Ronnie, ski expert, and Blackbird, leader of the geological party. Instantly now, on half a dozen far-flung fronts, Bird launches his attack. Dogs, tractors, airplanes, every weapon in the armory of the explorer is pressed into action. Tractors and airplanes may be the new tin gods of polar transport, but the Eskimo Husky is still the spearhead, the advanced king of the trail. Men and dogs. Ahead of them, a 100 days of aching marches with the deadly white ambushes of creasses. In two months, one of these parties will stand on the rim of the South Pole Plateau. Just 7 days march from the pole itself. Let's follow the fortunes of the southern party for a while to see how it goes on the long trail. [Music] This is a typical scene making camp at the end of the day's march. Each man has a reindeer skin sleeping bag which in my opinion is the warmest and the best. It is also light. It is covered with a windproof bag to keep the snow out during storms. This cooker you see has been specially made. You can't buy them in civilization. You melt the snow for the tea and cook the trail hooch at the same time. Tea is a great trail ring. [Music] On the long trail, you can't use metal spoons because they will stick to the lips and the coal and pull the skin off. You have to use wooden spoons. The food is strictly rationed. You get a certain amount each meal, and there is no second helping. Now, supper is ready. In order to go long distances on the trail, you have to put up these food beacons, which consists mostly of pemkin, dried milk, and chocolate. Dogs can't pull enough in any one load to go very far. Therefore, you must put up these food beacons to pick up on the way back. On the top, you put an orange colored flag for visibility. If you should miss the beacons in thick weather, you would be in danger of starving. As an experiment, we tried sails on the sleds just as you would use them on the boat. This was to help the dogs, and it worked very well. [Music] On the way to the mountains, a couple of dogs were lost down a creasse. Then later, one of the men nearly fell into one of them. At length about 500 miles south of Little America, they reached the mountains that borrow the Great Polar Plateau of which the South Pole is the center. They ascended a gigantic glacia which we had discovered on our flight to the South Pole in 1929. It was about a 100 miles long and more than 30 mi wide in places. Finally, they reached a point 10,000 ft high in the mountains where they were almost within sight of the South Pole. There they discovered a great seam of coal. There was enough to supply the whole United States for a while. There's plenty of COD, too. The coal was right out in the open. And here's a photograph of some hunks of it. It proves that this area now, the coldest spot of the world, was once tropical or semi-ropical. They also discovered some fossilized tree trunks, showing that trees once grew where now there's not even a blade of grass. Such discoveries helped to divulge the past history of this world we live on. And as long as anything remains unknown on this globe, man is going to keep at the job of finding it. He is made that way. And now let's take up where we left off back at Little America. Not even a series of disasters, two crashes, and a defenderitis operation are allowed to interrupt the march of exploration. Weather clears. A steady barometer. And with standby orders to fly, Chief pilot June and his aviation crew make ready for the crucial flight. The ground crew guides the giant plane. And with its two engines of 1400 horsepower pulling in rhythm, the whalebodied condor breaks from her driftcoed birth. Charlie, how'd you like to go along? That's the whole national deck. I promise you a nice southern exposure. Are you still determined to go through with this thing? Certainly. We got a meteorological station out there and we're going to use it. It's a pity it's so late in the season that we can't get enough supplies out there for three men. Well, it can't be helped now. You still insist on doing it alone? There's no choice. You know, it's impossible for two men psychologically. It's got to be one man. I know, Dick. To talk about it is one thing, but 7 months of cold dark solitude, it's a long, long time. Okay, Charlie. I know all about that. But you see, it's up to me to go. Besides, I want to do it. It's 43 below, Admiral. The oil is chilling. Coming. Any instruction? There's only one standing order under no circumstances. Shall anyone come for me during the winter night? Suppose we lose radio contact. You probably will. I'm the world's worst radio operator. So don't let yourself get stampeded into any relief effort. Somebody might get hurt. Such a tough. Well, it's a safe one. Let's go. [Music] Here she comes. 9 1/2 tons of staining steel and fat. The heaviest load ever lifted on steal takeoff. June circling over little America. He gains altitude over this newly founded capital of the unknown. Seen from the air for the first time since that historic and intrepid flight over the South Pole. Now they've squared away to the sun compass bird lays across to the eastwards toward the unknown undiscovered land which has eluded him on half a dozen flights. Will that distant storm locked horizon this time yield its ancient secrets? Making a 100 knots, they take a shortcut across an arm of rost sea. Like chips from a whitler's knife, the miles fall behind them, two to the minute. Eastward, ever eastward. In the smooth air, they fly unhindered over the frightful disturbances that make sledding a constant nightmare. Pressure ridges, creasses, miles upon miles of huge creasses like gaping wounds. Some of them are 100 ft wide with sheer blue green walls and no bottom. A swell place to get rid of old razor blades, but a ghastly place for a forced landing. And now Pelta indicates something below on the plateau. It's the tractor poppy. One month out of little America, still gamely carrying on. Man, what a story these pioneering gasoline gypsies could tell. One machine broken down, the other crippled. No service station nearer than 200 miles. Sorry fellas, no hitchhikers. steadily they forge eastward, hour after hour, and at last, on the threshold of discovery, their weary senses are freshened by the thrill of looking upon that which no other human eyes have ever seen. A thing which Bird had sought through two expeditions, that remote and inaccessible land which had drawn explorers to its frontiers like filings to a magnet, and then mockingly flung them back. That land now slowly unlocks its secrets of the centuries. Peak upon peak streaming as far as bird could see. A great and mountainous land larger than Texas, but condemned to everlasting rigidity. Once a tropical climate carpeted these slopes with luxurian vegetation, but the floodgates of the last ice age were opened. Oceans of glacial ice drowned all but the tallest peaks and all life except tiny crawling microscopic things was extinguished. A lost world as barren as a dead planet. A world where sun and darkness are forever struggling for ascendancy. A world wrenched from the twilight of the ice age and restored by American daring to the knowledge of mankind. Now the clouds are massing behind them as if the furies of the Antarctic, angered by the rupture of their ancient secrets, were mobilizing to chastise the invaders. We at last saw under us the sight of the advanced outpost. just a tiny speck in the immensity of the limitless rolling snow plane. [Music] And now it is time to build a little shack which was only 9 by3 ft and which would be filled mostly with meteorological instruments. It got as low as 65° below zero when this shack was being built and some of the men froze their faces, hands and feet rather badly. One man froze his feet so thoroughly that it took quite a long time to get them back to life again. We couldn't get all the food and fuel in the tiny shack, so we had to build some tunnels leading out from it. At last, the shack is finished. A few feet of it that proted above the snow was entirely covered by the first storm. This is now a completely equipped and operating US weather bureau station. We were going to find out for the first time what the inland weather of an ice age would be like. Here's an example of one of the many weather instruments I operated. It records with ink the speed and direction of the wind. I had to take the grease out of it so it would run and put glycerin in the ink to keep it from freezing. It was connected electrically with this anometer pole. This is how no instrument had been designed for such bitter temperatures. It was a chilly job, especially when I had to remove my mittens. My fingers always froze along with my nose. [Music] Here you have the cold weather costume. Reindeer skin, mucklucks, parker, pants, and mittens. Reindeer skin is the lightest, warmest, and best. We had at this weather station the coldest average temperature ever recorded. The cold does queer things. When the temperature is 65° below zero or colder, your breath freezes. And now it is time for my friends to leave for a little America. And for me to begin my vigil alone in the shadow of the South Pole. The long winter night is very close now. Even though this photograph was taken at midday, note how long the shadows are of the men. I would see no living creature until the long night would end. 5 months hence. As my friends disappeared over the horizon, I felt as if I were the only man alive on a strange and unknown planet. Here is a rush cablegram just received from Little America that tells us the latest developments and what's going on down there. It says, "Under the leadership of Dr. Thomas C. Holter, second in command, a tractor party this afternoon, was making ready for a dash to Admiral Bird's advanced base. He has just been contacted on the radio, but doggedly insists that he is all right. His men don't believe him. Admiral Bird is now in his fifth month of isolation at the bottom of the world. The last gear is stowed on the tractor and on the sledges, sleeping bags, tents, prim stoves, two months of emergency rations per man in case of failure. Everything required for the night transit of the most inhospitable region on the face of the earth. The officer commanding the party, Dr. Thomas C. Holder. Budweight, radio operator. Pete Deus, driver. Ahead of the tractors, a party of manhaulers to explore a safe passage for the heavy track to the labyrinth of pressurized south of the camp. Your golden push you pull you the wind and snow pull your blizzard blow. Oh, must you must you must the cold alone. Weather bulletins and progress reports are exchanged every few hours on the blackboard in the messaul. The inching progress of the tractor is told in hardbought miles. And every mile a cruel adventure slaving over a failing clutch and ice filing hands and faces every few minutes. Nothing done that. Don't come through. Okay. Tomorrow's another day. Wish him luck. Midnight and after hours of silence, a message from the tractor. They're at advanced base. [Music] And now the scene shifts back to Little America. This is a few days later. The sun returns at last. You don't realize what a magnificent thing the sun is until you've been without it for months of darkness and cold. As spring had come, my men started to dig out. Cox had refused to go up on topside during the long night. When they took the trapoor off the barn in the spring, he stuck his head out into the pure fresh air and asked the question, "What is this strange smell up here? [Music] [Applause] [Music] Two months later, the sun having risen and dissipated the winter night, Admiral Bird returns to Little America, nearly 7 months after he began his long period. of isolation. [Music] Big tough, wasn't it, Commander? Well, George, I'm here. You don't look so hot. You should have sent him under him two months ago. You put on 30 lb since then. Thanks for the bunk, George. You're very welcome, Commander. I'll sweep up there. Oh, Tom, are you going to be all right? He'll be okay, but you got to be careful. He had a close call. What was it? The carbon dioxide poisoning from his radio engine and stove. When did it happen? He got his worst case of poisoning the last of May. That was 2 and a half months before you reached him. Curious. We had radio contact me the most of the time. How did he manage to hold out? And why didn't he call for help? That we may never know. He doesn't say much about it. Okay, I'm going up the plane. Please sit down. [Music] souvenir. [Music] Oh, Charlie. Hi, Dick. Thanks, Bill. Won't be long now. Nope. I hope it'll be in tomorrow. Then civilization. Green grass, green trees, green vegetables, home. [Music] is drawing near again. So the ships have come to get us. We tried to load up from the bay ice. You will see what happened. I couldn't risk my men on any such ice as this. In a storm, they drift out to sea and get lost. Therefore, whether we liked it or not, we had to go alongside the Great Barry. And here is the only low place within a radius of a 100 miles. We were lucky to find it. We couldn't risk the roof alongside. So, we loaded onto the bear and from the bear to the Robert. Penguins were there to see us all. No emperor penguin had ever been brought back to civilization alive. We built an ice box on the Robert, air conditioned it and put some water in it and managed to get 10 of them back in good shape. And for the first time, emperors were brought back the civilization alive. They refused to eat at first. So we had to force these little fish down their throats. They got very indignant. [Music] A sea leopard appeared on the bay ice. Sea leopard is very rare and he's a great killer. He's death on seal and penguins. The whales are going north. They will soon freeze over. These are blue whales. They weigh from 50 to 100 tons. The biggest creatures that ever existed. [Music] As we approached New Zealand, we took the penguins out of the ice box for some exercise on the deck of the ship. [Music] found that these penguins belong to the penguin army. They insisted on marching everywhere and they went two by two. [Music] Some weeks later, the shores of the United states are in sight. From little America, they returned to big America. After 14 months on the Antarctic continent, the 56 members of the Bird Expedition land at the Washington Navy Yard, Admiral Richard Bird, the only man to fly the Atlantic and across both poles, back from further explorations on the South Pole continent. home. Not so humble with the president of the United States there to greet you, but still it's home sweet home. He makes his report to the head of the nation. I here West report you, Mr. President, the return of the bad Antarctic expedition. The president pays a national tribute that warms to a glowing welcome. Let me add just one thing from the heart. Dick, I salute you. [Music]