Trans-Arctic Aviation

F REQUENTLY it is wise and profitable to spend a few moments in speculation on the potentialities of the future. Many improvements are bound to be occasioned by the necessities of the war, not the least of which is the impressive development in aviation. The technological advancements being perfected for war purposes today doubtless will revolutionize commercial aviation after the termination of hostilities. One of the most logical results is the linking of the continents by a network of air routes traversing the Arctic Basin. Belief in the physical practicability and in the commercial value of transArctic aviation was first manifested about the time of World War I, and in 1919, W. Brun, a German, proposed the organizing of regular flights from the European capitals via Archangel, the Arctic Basin, and Nome or Unalaska, to either Yokohama, Vancouver, or San Francisco. A few years later, in 1923, Major General Sir Sefton Brancker, Director of Civil Aviation for Great Britain, enthusiastically declared in a speech at Sheffield that the carrying of mails from England to Japan by way of the Arctic was a probability of the next ten years. In connection with the preparations for the flight of the dirigible Shenandoah to explore the polar white spot between Alaska and the North Pole, Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics of the United States Navy, stated in 1.924 that polar air routes connecting England, Japan, Alaska, and Siberia are possibilities of the near future. Many writers have since expressed their belief in the future of trans-Arctic flying. But perhaps the most vocal of these exponents is the polar explorer and publicist, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who has been pointing out the positional importance of the Arctic Basin for the past 20 years. On a map which has the North Pole as its center, he explains, the Arctic constitutes a small hub from which the land masses radiate like spokes of a great wheel, thus lying in the central part of a circular region enclosed for the most part by northerly extensions of rich and densely populated modern countries. By the logic of its position, it therefore should be one of the great transportation crossroads of the world. A glance at the globe is sufficient to illustrate the significance of these statements. Geographers also have designed a so-called polar projection, prepared by laying a geometric plane on the Pole at right angles to the earth's axis, and depicting the globe with the North Pole as the center and with the South Pole as the outer circumference. Parallels of latitude are ruled off at equal intervals in concentric circles and meridians of longitude are straight radial lines. As a result, the northern continents surround the central Arctic Basin and the Antarctic Continent represents an outer lacy fringe. This projection is particularly interesting if population density is indicated, for, with the exception of India and China, the areas of densest population-between which most aerial communication is likely to develop-lie immediately around the Arctic

Aeronautics · Arctic · Aviation · Business · Geography · The arctic · Aerospace Engineering · Arctic and Russian Policy Studies · Engineering · Geology · Oceanography

• From Podes to Antipodes

  Matthew Zook, Matthew A Zook et al.•Annals of the Association of…•2006

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