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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Air-tractor sledge | 3/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-tractor_sledge | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T12:37:17.942524+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Broken === The Western party left Cape Denison on 3 December 1912. Accompanying Bickerton and the air-tractor were cartographer Alfred Hodgeman and surgeon Leslie Whetter. The air-tractor made slow progress hauling its train of sledges, and about 10 miles (16 km) out from the base its engine began experiencing difficulty. Bickerton shut it down and the three set up camp. At 4 am the next morning the party set off again, but the engine continued to struggle; oil ejected from an idle cylinder and the cylinder's lack of compression led Bickerton to suspect broken piston rings to be the root of the problem. This would take only a matter of hours to fix. As he later recorded, "These thoughts were brought to a sudden close by the engine, without any warning, pulling up with such a jerk that the propeller was smashed. On moving the latter, something fell into the oil in the crank-case and fizzled, while the propeller could only be swung through an angle of about 30 [degrees]." The party continued without the air-tractor, man-hauling the sledges to a point 158 miles (254 km) west of Cape Denison, and returned to base on 18 January 1913. Mawson's Far Eastern Party failed to return, and six men, including Bickerton, remained for an extra winter. On 8 February, just hours after Aurora left Commonwealth Bay after waiting for three weeks, Mawson staggered alone into base, his colleagues Belgrave Edward Sutton Ninnis and Xavier Mertz dead. As Mawson was being nursed back to health, Bickerton dragged the air-tractor sledge back to base to diagnose the reason for its failure. He found that the freezing conditions had caused the engine oil to congeal, jamming the pistons. He abandoned the sledge at Boat Harbour, next to the base. When Aurora returned to Cape Denison for the final time on 13 December 1913, only the engine and propeller were taken back to Australia.
== Recovery efforts ==