On October 8th 1970, on the first flight into McMurdo for the Antarctic summer season a plane by the name of "Pegasus" a Lockheed C-121 crashed in a severe storm. No one on board was injured, but the plane was so badly damaged it was abandoned and laid to rest on the ice that day. Now talk about a bad way to start off the season. I thought that this winter started off bad for us here at McMurdo while as the last plane of the season the Australian Airbus, was doing its ceremonial flyby we had a engine overheat and cause a station wide power outage. The winter-overs were up at the Chalet sipping on Champagne to toast the last planes departure, when they began to receive pages notifying them there was an emergency. Because of the perfect timing of all this no one actually believed the pages and thought it was a joke. To me I would rather start off a season with a power outage than a plane crash any day.
So the runway that the C-121 crashed upon, is still used today as our primary landing strip for the US Air force C-17. The runway holds the name of the crashed plane as Pegasus White Ice Runway, Antarctica. This is the same runway that I set up and maintained the generators at in the pre-summer season this year. The runway is positioned on the permanent Ross Ice Shelf between Black Island and White Island. This allows the wind that funnel between the islands to carry the snow past the runway and not allow it to accumulate on it.
The C-121 "Pegasus" is still visible today, it is about a half mile off the far side of the runway, and is mainly covered by snow drift. Over last weekend we were able to take a trip out to this little piece of Antarctic history and walk around and watch the sunset. It was a great trip to see how the plane has held up over the years, being buried a little more and more each day. The left side engine is now just barely sticking out of the snow. When we arrived out at the plane, it was just at sunset and once again the sky was filled with bright oranges and yellows, I was trying extremely hard to capture the reflection of this sunset on the plane. I just wanted to take this opportunity to show you some cool pictures.
On October 8th 1970, on the first flight into McMurdo for the Antarctic summer season a plane by the name of "Pegasus" a Lockheed C-121 crashed in a severe storm. No one on board was injured, but the plane was so badly damaged it was abandoned and laid to rest on the ice that day. Now talk about a bad way to start off the season. I thought that this winter started off bad for us here at McMurdo while as the last plane of the season the Australian Airbus, was doing its ceremonial flyby we had a engine overheat and cause a station wide power outage. The winter-overs were up at the Chalet sipping on Champagne to toast the last planes departure, when they began to receive pages notifying them there was an emergency. Because of the perfect timing of all this no one actually believed the pages and thought it was a joke. To me I would rather start off a season with a power outage than a plane crash any day.
So the runway that the C-121 crashed upon, is still used today as our primary landing strip for the US Air force C-17. The runway holds the name of the crashed plane as Pegasus White Ice Runway, Antarctica. This is the same runway that I set up and maintained the generators at in the pre-summer season this year. The runway is positioned on the permanent Ross Ice Shelf between Black Island and White Island. This allows the wind that funnel between the islands to carry the snow past the runway and not allow it to accumulate on it.
The C-121 "Pegasus" is still visible today, it is about a half mile off the far side of the runway, and is mainly covered by snow drift. Over last weekend we were able to take a trip out to this little piece of Antarctic history and walk around and watch the sunset. It was a great trip to see how the plane has held up over the years, being buried a little more and more each day. The left side engine is now just barely sticking out of the snow. When we arrived out at the plane, it was just at sunset and once again the sky was filled with bright oranges and yellows, I was trying extremely hard to capture the reflection of this sunset on the plane. I just wanted to take this opportunity to show you some cool pictures.
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