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Northrop Gamma

1932 WORLD WAR 2

History

Explorer Lincoln Ellsworth and Canadian aviator Herbert Hollick-Kenyon aboard the Northrop Gamma Polestar on November 23, 1935 The ship departed from Dundee Island in the Weddell Sea and flew to Little America via Antarctica. This isn't the first time Ellsworth has attempted a transantarctic flight on Polaris.

Antarctica was the last continent to be discovered, and the only one to be drawn entirely from the air. Aeronautical explorers from the US, UK, Australia, Norway, Canada and France can be credited with this achievement, and Lincoln Ellsworth was one of the most persistent of these explorers.

World War I pilot Ellsworth was the son of a millionaire coal mine owner in Chicago. In 1925, he embarked on his first polar expedition with the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen.

In May 1929, Ellsworth, Amundsen and Italian airship pilot Umberto Nobiler made the first ever transpolar flight from Spitsbergen, Norway to Alaska in the airship Norway. Ellsworth's reconnaissance use of aircraft, rather than his skills as a pilot, earned him a place in aviation history.

Ellsworth first brought the Polar Star to Antarctica in 1934. The famous Australian polar explorer, Sir Hubert Wilkins, accompanied him as an advisor, and the pilot of the Polar Star was Bernt Balchin.

The expedition arrived at Walvis Bay by boat on January 6, 1934, and Ellsworth intended to use the Balkans for the return flight between Walvis Bay and the Weddell Sea.

However, the 15 feet of ice where the Polar Star was located cracked and one of the skis slipped through the crack. The plane was almost lost, but after a long work, it was recovered and put back on board to be brought back to the United States for repairs.

Ellsworth and the expedition returned to Antarctica in September. October and November are considered the best months to fly there, and this time Ellsworth is planning to fly from Deception Island to the end of the Weddell Sea.

Before the flight, however, the Polar Star had to be transported to Magellanes in Chile to repair the damaged linkage, and when the plane returned to Deception Island, snow conditions made the runway unusable.

The expedition then tried Snow Mountain Island off the east coast of Antarctica. Ellsworth and Balchin successfully flew to Graham Land on January 3, 1935, but clouds and snow forced them to return to Snowy Island a few hours later.

This November. Ellsworth and Hollick-Kenyon finally managed to fly the Polar Star over South Antarctica. After taking off on the 23rd, they flew at 13,400 feet; over the 12,000-foot peak of the Eternal Mountains, they became the first people to visit West Antarctica.

Ellsworth named part of the area James W. Ellsworth Land in honor of his father.

Polaris made four landings during its flight over Antarctica. After a snowstorm that hit the third camp overnight, the interior of the plane was firmly clogged with blowing snow. The two explorers spent the whole day scooping dry powder snow from teacups.

On December 5th, a lack of fuel forced her to descend about 25 miles from her destination, Little America. They walked six days to get there, then settled in the camp where Richard E. Bird had left a few years earlier.

They were discovered on 15 January 1936 by the British Research Association's Discovery II ship. Hollick-Kenyon later returned to recover Polaris. The total distance before Polestar's emergency landing was about 2,400 miles. The U.S. Congress awarded Ellsworth a special gold medal for his exploration of Antarctica and "representing the approximately 350,000 square miles of Antarctica claimed by the United States and representing the last unclaimed territory in the world."

The Polar Star was one of two Northrop Gamma aircraft, the first aircraft produced by the newly formed Northrop Company in Inglewood, California, in 1933. The Gamma is an all-metal cantilevered low-wing monoplane powered by a 710-horsepower 9-cylinder Pratt & Whitney Hornet engine. The one built for Ellsworth has two consecutive seats with dual controls. The other of the first two Gammas was built for Frank Hawks, who was a Texaco pilot at the time.

Hawks's Gamma is a single-seater model. On June 2, 1933, the Eagles flew from Los Angeles to New York's Floyd Bennett Field in 13 hours, 26 minutes and 15 seconds, setting a record for a non-stop flight from west to east in his Gamma plane.

In April 1936, Lincoln Ellsworth donated the Polar Star to the Smithsonian Institution.