Word: polars
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Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, who has seldom shunned the spectacular, made an ear-jarring proposal last week. He suggested dropping an atomic bomb to crack the more than 1,800-ft.-thick Antarctic polar icecap. Thus, the U.S. might gain access to the copper, iron, gold, coal and other minerals reported hidden below...
First step in the Rickenbacker plan: a photographic and radar survey of the 5,000,000-square-mile Antarctic continent. From Tierra del Fuego, Tasmania and South Africa, long-range bombers would make three wide sweeps across the polar area, flying distances up to 6,500 miles. Weather, rescue and emergency air stations would be manned by "paratroopers" at Little America and other places. Next step: sites for base camps would be selected, and sleds, dogs and scientists would be flown in for further exploration of the more promising bomb targets. Suggested base for the bomb-carrying planes: New Zealand...
Lincoln Ellsworth, 65, perennial polar explorer, was off again early in the first year of peace-perhaps the first robin of an old-fashioned explorers' spring. (Admiral Byrd had already begun to yearn aloud for the South Pole.) Explorer Ellsworth headed for the Rift valley volcanic areas in East Africa; after that, said he, would come the Antarctic again. "I just cannot keep away...
...Operation Musk-Ox," said National Defense, is to study "winter operations generally in the Arctic weather zone," to assess "the mobility of oversnow vehicles." But everyone knew that any foreseeable war would not be won-or even fought-with tracked motor vehicles. What soldiers knew was that the polar icecap was no longer an impenetrable natural defense on Canada's topside. So "certain technical research projects in Arctic air and ground warfare will [also] be studied. . . . The expedition is expected to obtain information of immense value...
Bernt Balchen, 45, beefy, blue-eyed, Norwegian-born pilot who flew Admiral Byrd over the South Pole in 1929 and has logged a record mileage over polar regions, received the Legion of Merit for his aid, last year, in evacuating 2,000 Norwegians from Sweden by air, and for parachuting supplies and espionage agents to the European underground...