CAVE CITY, Ark. (AP) - It’s the coldest, driest and windiest place on Earth. The average temperature is between -40 to -94 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s isolated, covered in ice and has no permanent residents - but it’s exactly where Donald Ring wanted to go.
In 1961 Ring was in the Navy and volunteered to become a part of Operation Deep Freeze, which still supports the National Science Foundation. The NSF funds and manages the U.S. Antarctic Program.
For Ring the missions to the world’s southernmost continent was the adventure of a lifetime and an opportunity to see what no man on Earth had seen before.
After World War II, various countries, including the United States, began scientific exploration in Antarctica that is ongoing today, The Batesville Daily Guard (https://bit.ly/1DbGqRN ) reports.
“Sill today no country owns the continent,” Ring said. “It’s as big as North America. . You can own nothing and have got to maintain everything you got or anyone can move right in on you.”
In 1959, 12 countries entered into The Antarctic Treaty, which states the continent would be used for peaceful purposes only - including scientific research. There are now 49 countries that are a part of the treaty.
Ring saw the opportunity to go to Antarctica in a Navy request for volunteers.
“I’d never heard of it (Antarctica) before that notice come out,” he said. “I was going to see places no one in history had ever seen.”
The Operation Deep Freeze provided aircraft, ships and logistical expertise needed to support scientific research. Ring was stationed out of Quonset Point Naval Air Station in Rhode Island and stayed at Byrd Station while in Antarctica.
Byrd station was named after the famous Rear Adm. Richard E. Byrd, who along with three companions claim to have made the first flight over the South Pole and other reports say he was the first person to step foot in Antarctica.
“Contrary to history, Byrd was not the first person to step on the geographical South Pole. It was the crew chief of that plane,” Ring said.
Ring and his crew helped establish 8 Station.
“We as a crew named it ’Sky High.’ That was the eighth station in Antarctica for Americans. We were there first. No one in history had ever landed there.”
But the name Sky High was not officially recognized, to the disappointment of the crew.
Ring was a part of Air Devron Squadron Six (VX-6) and assigned to a P2V Neptune plane.
“I relieved the chief engineer and radar in flight,” Ring said. “As a crew we trained in all positions.”
In addition to its many other activities, VX-6 was responsible for photographic coverage of Antarctic operations, including both motion and still pictures and obtaining aerial photography for mapping purposes.
“We had a professional photographer aboard with three huge cameras,” Ring said. “At 1,000 feet we could shoot from horizon to horizon. . We we’re mapping part of the country.”
Ring still has some of the aerial photos as well as photos of him around camp that were taken by the photographers who were always going around snapping photos of life in Antarctica, according to Ring. His photo collection also includes a photo of a seal that a scientist told him was 6,000 years old.
Due to the freezing temperatures, planes had to be warmed up for two hours prior to flying and Jato (jet-assisted take off) rockets were used to “blast” the planes off the ice and get them to a high altitude quickly to reserve fuel. Flying was dangerous in an environment that can go from a sunny day to 100 mile per hour winds, according to Ring. Four planes were lost during his time serving.
The danger was not just in the air.
Williams Field at McMurdo Sound, the main U.S. station in Antarctica, is named after Richard T. Williams, a U.S. Navy SeaBee. “He was a bulldozer operator who fell through the ice,” Ring explained.
Accommodations for military and others at the time were in tunnels 175 feet underground. Prefabricated buildings were set up inside, heated with kerosene and powered by generators. Warm clothing was essential in such harsh conditions and Ring said his clothing included foul weather gear, rubber thermal boots, wool socks, thermals, army pants, shirts and numerous jackets.
“I’ve seen many men come into the tunnels with 3 pounds of ice in their beards,” he said. “We wore special Ray-Ban (sun) glasses. You couldn’t see nothing without them.”
When coming in from outside, Ring said one entered into a cooling room first and took off their heavy clothing because entering quarters in full gear could cause someone to pass out.
With no fresh water supply, showers were limited to once a week and it was work to get one. Ring said he had to go outside of the tunnel and scoop snow with a large shovel into a snow smelter which could take up to an hour. It was the same process to do laundry.
“Everything we ate practically was powered. Once a year we could have fresh milk and vegetables,” he said.
The continent doesn’t have any permanent human residents but it does have wildlife, including Emperor penguins that aren’t afraid of humans and are very inquisitive, according to Ring.
“If a door’s open at camp they’ll go in and look around at everything,” he said. “You can walk around and they’ll follow you.” But don’t make them angry. “We had men injured by them. Penguins can hit with their flippers.”
One day Ring said an artist at the camp made a sign that read “Hate Penguins” and slipped it on a penguin.
“We tried to get it off but he started to fight,” Ring recalled, laughing.
Receiving an injury would mean a ride off the continent, according to Ring, who said anyone who was injured was immediately evacuated. “It’s so cold the wounds won’t heal.”
Ring said a lot of people don’t know there are actually three poles in Antarctica, the geographic South Pole, (where all the lines of longitude converge in the Southern hemisphere), the magnetic South Pole (the pole your compass points toward when you head south) and the Pole of Inaccessibility.
“I was there four years and never heard anyone explain what the Pole of Inaccessibility was,” he said.
The Pole of Inaccessibility is the point on the Antarctic continent that is farthest, in all directions, from the surrounding seas, lying on the Polar Plateau in a vast territory claimed by Australia, according to www.britannica.com.
Antarctica is an ideal spot for astronomers because the South Pole is the closest one can get to space and still be on the ground, according to news reports and because of its location, the sun is viewed from a different angle.
“The sun goes around and around because you’re on the bottom of the world,” Ring said.
In Antarctica summer runs from October to February and winter covers the remainder of the year. In the middle of summer it is light all day, while in winter there is total darkness. Ring and others left the continent during the winter months but a crew was always left behind to maintain the stations.
“Once the planes leave, you’re there for four months,” he said. “It takes an extreme emergency to get an airplane back in there or a ship. It’s so cold the metal crystallizes. It’s just too cold for metal.”
Those venturing outside to another station during winter held onto a line between the stations.
“When a whiteout hits, if you’re not ahold of something you might get lost,” he said.
During the winters, Ring would return to Quonset Point Naval Air Station and help train incoming personnel for Antarctica and map areas in the United States. Ring said the military sold the maps to oil companies who in turn sold them at gas stations. “Those are made from people like us.”
In the early ’60s Ring said it was discovered there was enough coal in Antarctica to run the world for 200-300 years but it’s so expensive to do things there it would not have been economically feasible.
After leaving the Navy in latter part of 1968, Ring owned a trucking company for many years before retiring in 1992.
Looking back, Ring regrets he didn’t buy a camera and take as many photos as he could have afforded of Antarctica.
“It was the last unexplored country, and it treated us that way too,” Ring said.
Facts about Antarctica
. In wintertime, the sea ice around Antarctica grows at the rate of 40,000 square miles a day.
. The annual snow accumulation across much of eastern Antarctica adds up to less than two inches of rain.
. Only 2 percent of the continent is actually exposed.
. Antarctica holds the top spot for the lowest recorded temperature on Earth, which was -129 F (-84.5 C) at the Russian Vostok station in 1983. At this temperature steel will shatter and water will explode into ice crystals.
. The continent experiences regular Katabatic (downhill) winds, reaching 185 miles/hour, that blow out of the continental interior.
. One of the biggest dangers to researchers and others living on the continent is actually fire. The dry environment makes it very possible and hard to stop.
. Antarctica contains 90 percent of the world’s ice.
. Scientists have discovered fossils of dinosaurs and trees in Antarctica, which shows it was once warm and covered in forests and wildlife.
. Antarctica receives so little moisture that is classified as a cold desert.
. Antarctica is nearly twice as big as Australia, and in the winter its frozen ocean doubles in size.
. There are active volcanoes on Antarctica. Mount Erebus constantly spurts hot lava onto the ice.
. Hidden under the ice sheet is Lake Vostok, a freshwater lake buried under 2.5 miles of frozen water. This lake is about the size of Lake Ontario and is one of more than 200 different bodies of water that has been discovered beneath the ice.
. In January 1979, Emile Marco Palma became the first human ever to be born on Antarctica. Since then, only 10 other people have been born on the continent.
. Because of the Earth’s tilt, the sun does not rise in Antarctica from the vernal equinox to the autumnal equinox, which means the continent remains dark throughout the entire winter season.
. Conversely, during the summer months the sun does not set in Antarctica, which means it actually receives more sunlight than the equator during that time frame.
___
Information from: Batesville Guard, https://www.guardonline.com/
Please read our comment policy before commenting.