A fascinating piece of aviation history

It's reported from Antarctica that the remains of a 1911 Vickers REP monoplane (link is to a .PDF file), taken there as part of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911-1914), have been rediscovered. The BBC reports:

Australian explorer Douglas Mawson had the single-propeller Vickers with him on a 1911-12 expedition but it was abandoned because of engine troubles.

Brought to the frozen continent without its wings, the plane was used for a time as a kind of motorised sledge.

Mawson with the wingless Vickers REP fuselage

The conservationists are working to restore Mawson's original wooden huts.

The plane had not been seen since the mid-1970s, when researchers photographed the steel fuselage nearly encompassed in ice.

After searching for three summers, the Mawson's Huts Foundation team stumbled upon metal pieces of it on New Year's Day.

"The biggest news of the day is that we've found the air tractor, or at least parts of it!" team member Tony Stewart wrote on the team's blog from Cape Denison in Antarctica's Commonwealth Bay.

The "air tractor", as the plane was described, was abandoned by Mawson's expedition because its engine could not withstand the extreme temperatures. The engine itself was removed and returned to Vickers in the UK.

Mawson had removed the plane's wings back in Australia because of an accident during a demonstration flight in Adelaide which had damaged them.

Nobody was hurt in the accident but there was no time for repairs before the 31-strong expedition set sail for Antarctica.

"The pilot was sent home to England in disgrace while the fuselage was used as an air tractor to tow sledges," according to the Mawson's Huts Foundation website.

There's more at the link.

The Australasian Antarctic Expedition was a pretty heroic affair by any standards. You can read a fuller account of it, and of Mawson's life, here, if you're interested. It was based at Commonwealth Bay in Antarctica, ringed in red on the map below.




The expedition sailed in a converted whaler, the Aurora, and arrived in Antarctica during December 1911.




The Vickers aircraft, as noted, had been shipped to Antarctica without wings, due to an accident in Australia before departure. However, fitted with skis, it was employed to tow sleds across the ice, apparently with some success. Eventually, after the stress of such operations (for which, of course, it had never been designed) had taken its toll, its engine was removed and returned to England. The fuselage was abandoned, to sink into the ice and snow over time.

Here's how the base camp huts looked at the time of their erection:




And here's how they look today during an Antarctic winter, photographed from the air:




The ice and snow around the huts melts each summer, allowing excavation at greater depths. The remains of the aircraft were found a few days ago in a pool of melted water. The first photograph below shows them in relation to the huts; the second shows the remains under the water.






The remains will be recovered and returned to Australia. If their condition is good enough, I understand the 'air tractor' may be restored (although I don't know if new wings will be fitted). Given that it never actually flew in Antarctica, that may not be relevant or appropriate: but as the only surviving example (so far as I know) of a Vickers REP monoplane, it sure is an interesting piece of history, even without the story attached to it.

The tail of the monoplane was found in one of the huts some time ago.




It appears to have been removed in order to fit skis and ground steering apparatus to the fuselage, to make it more controllable when towing sleds. I understand the tail will also be restored, and perhaps refitted to the fuselage.

It's amazing to think that several years before the airplane finally came into its own as a viable instrument, during World War I, this little Vickers was towing sleds to and fro on the Antarctic ice. I hope they find enough of it to restore. It would be a worthy tribute to an heroic expedition and an historic 'first'.

Peter