DEPOSITED BY THE ANTARCTICA REPORT, 1962 FRIDAY, MAY 25, 1962 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRITORIAL AND INSULAR AFFAIRS, OF THE COMMITTEE ON INTERIOR AND INSULAR AFFAIRS. Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in room 1324, House Office Building, Hon. Leo W. O'Brien of New York chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Mr. O'BRIEN. The Subcommittee on Territorial and Insular Affairs will be in order. We are very happy to have with us this morning Adm. David M. Tyree, U.S. Navy, commander of the U.S. Navy's Support Forces, Antarctica and the U.S. Antarctica projects officer. Also, Dr. James E. Mooney, deputy projects officer. I might say that while technically this is a hearing, it is much more than that, it is an opportunity for us to say, "Well done," to these distinguished gentlemen for a magnificent job performed in the main out of sight and, I am afraid, too often out of the minds of some of Your people. A few of us have had the privilege of visiting Antarctica and we are impressed beyond words. I think it is most desirable that we hear from Admiral Tyree and Dr. Mooney, and find out what if anything we can do in this committee to further this great job that is being done in the interest of all of us. I understand that we will have a little later the colored film on Antarctica and I look forward with considerable anticipation to that. I regret, Admiral, that many of the members of this committee and members of other committees who wanted to be here this morning were given an unexpected vacation, shall we say. The House will Lot have any business until next Thursday and I assume these gentlemen, anticipating a long hot summer in Washington and perhaps part of the fall, feel this will be their last chance to go home and see how their fences are doing. A great many of them, I believe Congressman Hemphill and Congressman Zablocki-people who have visited the Antarcticsend their very best regards and regret that they would be out of town for the reason I have explained. So, again, you are most welcome, sir. I yield at this time before we hear from you, Admiral, to the chairIman of the full committee, Mr. Aspinall. Mr. ASPINALL. Mr. Chairman, I am very pleased that Dr. Mooney and Admiral Tyree and the members of the staff are with us this Corning to bring us up to date. I have already told Admiral Tyree and Dr. Mooney that I wouldn't be able to spend very much time in the meeting this morning, but I shall read the transcript. 1 As the chairman has said, this is an area of challenge. We feel th it is in good hands and the interest we take in it is just as sincere though the operation was entirely under our jurisdiction. I a very pleased we have had two members of this committee and member of the staff visit the area, because it means so much to us have personal experience in the field. Thank you very much for being with us this morning. Mr. HALEY. Mr. Chairman, I can only reiterate what the chairm of the subcommittee and the chairman of the full committee have sai I must apologize to you, Admiral. It seems like we do have a rath scanty group here this morning, but I can well understand it, being election year and these boys having a few problems probably ba home, that they thought this would be a good time to go back and s "Hello" to the people whom they will need very badly in Novemb Mr. RIVERS. I join in extending my compliments. Mr. O'BRIEN. We would be very privileged at this time, Admir if you would give us whatever statement you would care to mak Mr. Hemphill was with me a year ago when we were down the and he has a desire to go back but I understand he is looking for a ne traveling companion. He does not feel that I measure up to the gre outdoors. I expect he will be back to see you with some other Membe STATEMENT OF ADM. DAVID M. TYREE, U.S. NAVY, COMMANDI OF THE U.S. NAVY SUPPORT FORCES, ANTARCTICA AND TI U.S. ANTARCTICA PROJECTS OFFICER; ACCOMPANIED BY D JAMES E. MOONEY, DEPUTY PROJECTS OFFICER Admiral TYREE. Mr. Chairman and members of the committe I am very grateful for the opportunity to be here today. Ev though some of the Members had to go back to take care of things home, I may say, looking about, I am privileged to have a very sele group here to tell about the operations this morning. I am sure, Mr. Congressman O'Brien, that Mr. Hemphill did n outdo you down there at the South Pole. It seems to me that yo both had a very invigorating experience there. I think the wind w blowing that day. I would be delighted to have anyone come dov again who could possibly come down, because I think it is very, ve important to see the work there first hand. I have not prepared any statement this morning. I thought would just tell you about some of the things that have happened th year. However, to begin with I think perhaps it might be well to ru over briefly some of the things that you have heard before in the w of the physical characteristics of the continent and the stations th we are maintaining. Subsequent to the IGY, the U.S. policy called for us to mainta four permanent stations and if I may just step to the map a momen I would like to point the fact that it is 2,200 miles from our advanc staging base in New Zealand to McMurdo by air. We go there, course, by air and by ship. We have our main staging and supp base at McMurdo, on Ross Island. We maintain two principal scie tific stations in the interior of the continent, one at the exact ge graphical South Pole, which is somewhat over 700 nautical miles fro McMurdo, the other in the heart of Marie Byrd Land, Byrd Statio which is about 800 miles from McMurdo. We also maintain a joi 1 1 sation at Cape Hallett. We operate a joint scientific program there th New Zealand. Those are the four permanent stations and this coming season we expect to establish another wintering-over station which will be of a serimobile character, but which will be a small station with about alf the complement of the other two interior stations up here near the base of the Palmer Peninsula. This station will be for some new studies that the National Science Foundation plans to make. Mr. HALEY. Admiral, where is this city you built practically underground in the ice? Admiral TYREE. That is the Byrd Station up in the heart of Marie Byrd Land. We replaced the old station built by the IGY and this year in February we occupied the new station which has taken more an 2 years to complete. That is right where my finger is pointing LOW. Each year we have the jobs of resupplying and relieving the wintering over-personnel in these stations. Each year we bring Large numbers of people into the continent to augment the summer program. This year, for example, at McMurdo we had an average population of about 900 people throughout the summer. This is much larger than it has been before. Each year it seems to grow. We had a larger population at Byrd Station then we have ever had before. The continent itself is a most interesting one. It covers an area of 5.5 million square miles. That represents a fairly sizable portion of the earth's land surface. It is a high continent. The altitude of the interior of the continent averages something around 10,000 feet. On the polar plateau the altitude runs up to about 14,000 feet. Its periphery is surrounded by mountains and down through these mountains and the valleys, the ice presses down from the polar icecap making innumerable glaciers. The winter temperatures are severe. The record low is minus 110° at the geographic South Pole Station. la the summer, on the other hand, in the coastal regions such as McMurdo and Hallett, the temperature will sometimes get up above freezing. It seldom gets up above zero at the South Pole. These are just some of the physical factors of the continent. Deep Freeze 1962 opened this year on the 26th of September. It opened that night when we took off from Christchurch and landed the morning of the 27th of September at McMurdo, in a C-130 ski plane. The normal limiting factor on the opening of the season has usually been the readiness of the ice runway to receive our wheeled aircraft at McMurdo. Now that we have the big C-130 ski plane we don't have to wait for the completion of the ice runway. This year we set starget date-that is, this past season we set a target date of the 2th of September to go in. Bad weather held us up but on the 27th of September we landed on a skiway at McMurdo. A few days later we had our ice runway ready and we started bringing in the wheeled arcraft, the C-124's and the Super Constellations and so on. We also got into Byrd Station earlier than we have before, to open up the summer work. We went up there, I think it was, the 29th of September. We went into the Pole Station a little bit earlier. Now the reason I am telling you this is to give you an example of how we are improving our efficiency in the Antarctic. It takes a lot of money to get people down there. It takes a lot of money to get in there and do this summer work. We do the major part of our wo in this summer season, and the longer we can have people there, t more payload we get out of them. We are attempting to stretch t season out on each end and the C-130 is helping us do this. With regard to the resources at my disposal this year, we us about 3,000 men including the complements of the ships. We us 11 ships, about 30 aircraft, and we included a mobile constructi battalion consisting of about 300 men. Of course we have the regul wintering-over party, which we call the Antarctic Support Activi We had our Navy air squadron consisting of 300-and-some-odd me and the Air Force, the MATS air squadron that comes down in Octob and November to make the air drops and to run the major portion the airline between Christchurch and McMurdo. This briefly is t force that I have at my disposal this year to support the Nav mission of supporting the scientific effort in the Antarctic, which the basic reason that we are down there. This is a peacetime job 1 the Navy. There is no military mission in it. We are down the on a peaceful mission and of course we have the treaty now whi has confirmed the spirit of cooperation that grew up during the IG We feel that this season we probably had the greatest success any expedition that has ever been in the Antarctic, certainly t most successful season that I have had. I do not like to make con parisons with things I haven't had firsthand experience with, b the general consensus is that it was an extremely successful season. There were two factors accounting for this. One was the extreme good weather that we had this year as opposed to the extremely b weather that we had had the season before. I do not know real what a normal season in the Antarctic is weatherwise, but the seas this year was certainly an extremely good one weatherwise. T second factor was communications. We had very little trouble wi communications blackouts which plagued us the year before. of this was due to the fact there was not the severe sunspot activi that we had had the year before. We did have occasional interru tions in communications this year, but we have made great improv ments in communications during the past 2 years. We have ha something on the order of between $1.5 to $2 million used in putting modern communications system in there. This is essential for safe of operations. So I feel that this paid off this year and assisted giving us a good and a successful year. Pa I feel, too, that as the years have gone on we have benefited fro and taken advantage of the lessons we have learned each year a each year we get a little better organized to do our job. I feel th when the breaks in the weather did come this year we were bett prepared to take advantage of it than we have ever been befor This is also a part of the reason for having had a successful seaso Now, to me the job breaks down into three parts. As I told yo our mission is to support the scientific endeavor. The first thir that we have to do, of course, is to resupply the stations, the perin nent stations, and we have to take in the people who will relieve th personnel there to man them for the following winter. This is year-in and year-out task and it must be done if people are going survive on the continent through the winter. This forms one of th major elements of our task. Then, as I mentioned, in the summer we take in large numbers of people to augment the wintering-over program. For example, this winter, right now, there are about 300 Americans on the Antarctic Continent. When the next summer comes there will be something on the order of 1,100 or 1,200 Americans on the Antarctic Continent during the summertime physically on the continent. And this is a pretty sizable augmentation. Included in this group will be 100 or more scientists in addition to the ones who go in there for the winter work. These scientists go out into the field to do fieldwork. Summer camps are established, scientific traverses are run. Some of this is staged out of Byrd Station; a great deal is staged out of McMurdo. Some of the work does not actually go into the field. It is augmented work at the station itself but the greater number of scientists who come in, go out into the field to engage in those disciplines done in the summertime. The second part of our task in the Antarctic is to support these summer field programs and this is a big task in itself. In this task our Navy air squadron plays the principal role. VX-6 takes these parties into the field. They supply them from time to time. They make it possible for them to get out there. Later I shall go into some of the details of a few of the more interesting jobs they did this year in that connection. Now, the third major thing that we have to do down there is in the construction field. When I came into this job in 1959 I was faced with the task of making a transition from you might say a one-shot affair for the International Geophysical Year, which had been set up on a more or less temporary basis, to a permanent organization and permanent facilities which would last us for an indefinite time. The treaty, of course, confirms that we will probably be down there at least 30 years. That is the duration of the treaty and I am sure it will probably the longer than that. So in order to make this transition it was necessary, as we mentioned to this committee before, to rebuild our bases, to rehabilitate our bases where it was not necessary to completely rebuild them, and to get better tools with which to work. So we have accomplished two things over the past 2 or 3 years. Starting 2 or 3 years ago we started construction of a new station in the heart of Marie Byrd Land to replace the old station that was gradually being crushed by the snow. Whenever an obstacle is raised in the snow (and the original station was built on top of the snow and had plenty of obstacles) the winds, which normally blow in the Antarctic day after day, drift the station over and gradually bury it. This was happening at Byrd Station at an accelerated rate. The station was gradually being crushed and when we went down there after the IGY it was obvious it was going to have to be rebuilt and rebuilt very soon if the scientific work in that area were not to be interrupted. So we embarked on a program of rebuilding Byrd Station and that was completed this year. This station is built on the concept developed by the Army Engineers for Camp Century in Greenland. It is a concept in which trenches are cut in the snow by a Peter Snow Miller, a Swiss-made machine which was designed for clearing roads in the Alps. These trenches are arched over with steel arches. The milled snow is blown back onto the steel arches. It has the property of setting up very 86058-62- -2 |