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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Air-tractor sledge | 4/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-tractor_sledge | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T12:37:17.942524+00:00 | kb-cron |
The bill for the plane remained unpaid. In 1914 Vickers reminded Mawson, who had apparently forgotten the outstanding debt. Mawson wrote to Vickers director Sir Trevor Dawson in November 1916, requesting the company write off the bill as a donation. His company buoyed by armaments contracts, Dawson agreed. The next expedition to take a plane to the Antarctic was Shackleton's 1921–22 Quest Expedition, but the Avro Baby remained grounded owing to missing parts. Not until 16 November 1928—when Hubert Wilkins and Carl Ben Eielson flew for 20 minutes around Deception Island, just over a year before Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd's first flight over the South Pole—was a plane airborne in the Antarctic. The frame of the air-tractor sledge remained on the ice at Boat Harbour where Bickerton had left it. The last expedition to Cape Denison to see the frame was in 1976; the next expedition, in 1981, could find no trace of it. The ice in that location does not move, and the implication is that the frame sank through the ice. It is therefore possible the frame is still there. In 2007-8 a team from the Mawson's Huts Foundation began to search for the remnants of the plane. Using photographs from 1913, 1931 and 1976 it was possible to derive transits between the frame and distant objects which located the frame to a small area of ice about 50 m from the hut. Comparison with a 1931 photograph by Frank Hurley confirmed this location. The following summer (2008–9), the team extensively surveyed the area where they believed the air-tractor to be, using ground-penetrating radar. A 3-metre deep trench was dug in a promising area, but nothing was found except fragments of seaweed indicating the overlying ice must have melted sometime in the past. Temperature records from the nearby Dumont d'Urville Station showed that there had been extended periods (each of about six weeks) of above average temperatures in 1976 and 1981, suggesting the ice around the harbour could have melted. Dr Chris Henderson, the leader of the team, believes "the frame sank in situ to the rock surface, three metres below the present ice surface". Next year (the 2009–10 season) further search was undertaken using differential GPS, bathymetry equipment, ice augers, a magnetometer and a metal detector (whose sensor was placed down the ice auger holes after drilling). The ice showed signs of having extensively melted in the past, was about 3 metres thick and covering smooth rock which extended Northwards to become the harbour bottom. Visual examination of the harbour bottom during the bathymetry survey did not reveal any fragments of the frame in the first 30 metres of the harbour. The most significant findings from the ice survey were a positive reading from the metal detector, coupled with a significant echo from the Ground Penetrating Radar, both from the small area where the frame is assumed to have sunk. Parts of the Air Tractor are already known to exist: The Australian Antarctic Division has one wheel from the frame, and its ice-rudder – both of which were found in the harbour. In January 2009 the remains of a seat from the air-tractor were found in rocks near the hut, about 200 metres (660 ft) from where the team believes the frame to be buried. On 1 January 2010, a day of unusually low tide, 4 small capping pieces from the end section of the tail were found by the edge of the harbour. The tail and a section of fuselage had been removed from the rest of the air-tractor before it was abandoned in 1913, therefore this discovery did not shed much light on the location of the rest of the frame, but it suggests that "the frame, or parts of it, can survive for nearly 100 years in this environment". The team returned to Cape Denison over the 2010–11 summer, but the crash of a French helicopter near Dumont d'Urville Station in October 2010 forced deployment of a much reduced team with no resources to continue the search. The findings to date (2011) suggest that metal object(s) exist at a depth of 3 metres, on rock, in the location where the frame was last known to have been seen in 1976. This is likely to be the remains of Mawson's Air Tractor, but confirmation awaits a future opportunity.
== See also ==
Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration Aerosled, propeller-driven sledge Hydrocopter Screw-propelled vehicle
== Notes and references ==
=== Notes ===
=== References ===
=== Bibliography ===
== External links ==
Australian Antarctic Division: Australasian Antarctic Expedition Mawson's Huts Foundation