Weasel in Antarctica

[JBOYLE]

I just saw this on ebay...

Great shot of a weasel alongside a Douglas C-124 Globemaster in Antarctica.

Wonder if it had a cold start problem?


Great airplane, my father flew them and they're a long time favorite.

[skyway]

Small weasel, big bird!

[Skip Lackie]

Back in the Dark Ages (1962) I spent three months living in a plywood hut at a small camp built on an ice island near the North Pole. We had two Weasels, one enclosed, and one without a top. The latter was called the sports car -- it was used for trips on the much thinner surrounding sea ice. The lack of a top made it easier to escape if it fell through the ice. They were used primarily to pull the sledges we used to haul supplies between the camp and the landing strip about 1/4 mile away. We were suppliied (infrequently) by a very tired war-surplus DC-3. (Landing strips built on the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean are generally very rough, making aircraft with nose wheels impractical. The DC-3 was largest tail-dragger that was available at the time.) I wasn't a Stude freak at the time, so to me, the Weasels were just interesting tracked vehicles made by one of our smaller auto companies. Regrettably, the sports car fell through the sea ice one day, and now resides at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean somewhere north of Siberia. The Arlis II camp eventually was expelled from the Arctic Ocean into the North Atlantic in 1965. I believe the closed Weasel was left behind when the camp was evacuated, so it presumably lies on the bottom somewhere east of Greenland.

[farmhawk]

The C-124 would be too heavy for landing on a ski way, since it doesn't have skis! The picture would have been taken at McMurdo station on Ross Island and is either on the seasonal sea ice runway next to town or at Pegasus white ice runway out on the Ross Ice shelf. Either way McMurdo in the summer is consistently above zero and sometimes above freezing, so starting wouldn't be much of an issue. McMurdo is about the only place on the ice where they can actually shut the planes down. On the flights to Pole they have to keep the engines running continuously.

[gordr]

Weasels were built for cold weather operation. They had a primer pump built into the instrument panel, and they had a 12 volt electrical system and a big starter and generator. There was also a fuel-burning heater which resided in the frame tunnel. If they were properly maintained, they would readily start in sub-zero weather.

[Buzzard]

I have one that came from Washington State. It had been fitted with a hand built top made of lathe and canvas with plywood sides probably from the 50's era. In the right lighting conditions, one can still read "Spokane Emergency Rescue" on the sides. We reside in the BC wilderness and the Weasel is practically unstoppable in the winter.
Bill

[Mrs K Corbin]

anybody got a junk weasel I can "Steal"??

[GrumpyOne]

When I was working at the Kwajalein Missile Range back in the early 1970's, a retired navy chief found a position in the photo lab where I was the Sr. Cinematographer/Film Editor and somehow the subject of Weasels came up. When I mentioned that Capt. Finn Ronne was stationed on Antarctica the ol' chief went into panic/rage mode as to what a fraud he was and the satisfaction that he had when he knocked off the tracks off of Ronne's Weasel.

Ronne was also retired at the time and was a traveling lecturer on his exploits, a career that I once entertained by never pursued...

[715m29]

The 2 weasels my brother and I own were both former search and rescue rigs. One came from Nevada some place it still has traces of the sheriffs star on the side. The other weasel just says search and rescue on the back.

[jclary]

I just saw this on ebay...

Great shot of a weasel alongside a Douglas C-124 Globemaster in Antarctica.

Wonder if it had a cold start problem?


Great airplane, my father flew them and they're a long time favorite.

Forgive me if this is a repeat story. (I've been posting on the forum long enough to reveal my on-setting senility by repeating myself too much.) Every time I see a picture of one of those huge lumbering Globemasters, it reminds me of what I witnessed one night in Vietnam. 1968, not long after the Tet Offensive. Ton Son Nhut air base. A time that small groups of enemy were making harassing hit & run probes against our perimeter. Anything to keep us edgy, sleepless, and unnerved. The tactics included sapper teams, mortars, Chinese made rockets, and small arms. It was during this time that I acquired a short wave radio. At night, a few of my Buddies and I would sit out on an elevated deck built in our barracks area, swat skeeters, tell stories, and tune the radio to the control tower listening to communications to outgoing and incoming air traffic.

One thing that noticeably changed, after Tet, was the take off attitude and landing glide paths of most aircraft. Even civilian airliners began climbing almost as steep as fighters. The one aircraft that had few options for altering it's takeoff was the poor Globemaster. This particular night, just as the last rays of the sun lit the horizon, our attention was drawn to the flightline as a huge Globemaster began revving/synchronizing its engines. Brakes released, and the behemoth began its slow roll down the very long runway. It seemed to take forever for the craft to lift off. Not long after clearing the base, suddenly, a ribbon of huge tracer rounds snaked skyward to the nose of the lumbering aluminum goose.

From the tower...an excited controller called to the craft, "You guys OK? You are cleared to return!" A brief moment of silence, and then, a voice from the aircraft, in a very calm ho-hum manner, replied, "Na, no need to return, just a few holes. We'll put 'er down in Guam. You guys have a good night." That night, those of us on that deck, gained a huge amount of respect, for the pilots of cargo craft.