The Knight´s Legacy

Flagship Mount Olympus- South Pacific

FLAGSHIP MOUNT OLYMPUS

W 102 ° 30´”S 45 ° 15´ - SOUTH PACIFIC OCEAN

DECEMBER 1946

The Admiral Richard E. Byrd leaned on the navigation chart deployed on the wide worktable of the situation room of the ship. The Eastern Group of the secret mission of the US Navy known by its key name Highjump progressed apace toward Peter Island, the first milestone in the plotted route.

In total more than forty vessels participated in the operation, including the Mount Olympus, the aircraft carrier Philippine Sea, the submarine Senate, the icebreaker Northwind, the destroyer Bronson, and numerous tankers and support ships. The fleet had a total of 1500 sailors and all sorts of supplies and machinery to replenish the U.S. base Little America, already used by Byrd in his three previous Antarctic expeditions, the first of which dated back to the year 1928, precisely in the course of which the base had been built.

Byrd had also flown over the South Pole in 1929, a remarkable feat in that time with the technical aeronautical means then existing. This made Byrd, sailor and Aviator born into a prestigious family of Virginia, the most seasoned explorer of the southern latitudes of the United States Navy.

The expedition was also equipped with six DC-3 aircraft refurbished for take-off and landing on aircraft carriers, and skis padded with rubber for soft landing on the polar ice. These aircraft had aerial cameras and magnetometers to detect anomalies in the terrestrial magnetism even under the frozen surface. For the use of the airplanes a runway would be prepared next to Little America.

What intrigued Byrd were indeed the objectives, both overt and hidden, of his expedition, by far of the largest conducted by the U.S. Navy since the end of the World War II. The obvious stated goals were to train personnel in conditions of polar climate, determine the feasibility of establishing bases in the area, including airfields, and expand scientific knowledge and mapping of most of the Antarctic coast and the interior of the continent. In addition, underlying the intention to strengthen the presence and establish bases for American sovereignty in Antarctica, particularly after certain progress made during the second world war by Argentina and Chile in the Antarctic areas closest to their continental and insular coasts, and imitated after the war by the USSR, Norway, United Kingdom, Australia and other countries. But the aim, never stated clearly, that left perplexed at the Byrd was a secret order referred to determine the progress made by the Nazi Germany in "colonizing" parts of Antarctica. Of course that Byrd  had heard versions on that issue but he thought that they were part of the psychological warfare or tasks of counterintelligence, without basis in reality.

He then set out to allocate a portion of his resources to explore certain predetermined areas, where the Nazis -according to the versions collected from prisoners of war- had developed their activities  and then jealously kept in secret by the US until that mission.

CHAPTER 16.1

COAST PRINCESS RAGNHILD-LAND OF QUEEN MAUD

ANTARCTIC CONTINENT

ON BOARD THE DC-3 WARRIOR

FEBRUARY 1947

The pilots Schumacher and McGrath had obtained hundreds of aerial photographs of the monotonous ice sheets and had already traveled 300 miles of coast. They shad to take advantage of that clear day, since from mid-February on  storms and snowfalls were to commence in the Antarctic continent. Defeated by the routine and boredom their senses were somewhat blunt. McGrath decided to return the bow of the aircraft to the South since  they had received orders to make inroads into the interior of the continent as much as possible, while leaving to their discretion to what extent to do it. After half an hour of flight in the new direction, Schumacher, serving as a copilot indicated with his thumb a few blue spots in the Southwest direction. The land was rising in that direction, and the aircraft, which flew relatively low for better resolution of its photographs should gain altitude. Schumacher estimated that the ice shield was over three thousand meters above sea level. After a while they could clearly distinguish a range of mountains of ice crystal, which shone in a deep blue tone against the frozen ground and the dark sky of the outline. The optical effect was beautiful, and they made sure to have it perfectly recorded by their cameras. Indeed, mountains emitted strong glare by the reflection of the sunlight and the landscape that was exhibited in their eyes was surreal, dreamlike. After continuing for about fifty miles in that direction, they saw even smaller patches of dark blue and emerald green. Even if they had certain precautions to take for a possible climate change  -indicated in advance by the barometer onboard- and the advanced hour, they decided to land as they saw a large enough snowy plain before them. On the descent of the aircraft they checked that they were facing unfrozen lakes of some dimension. They approached, and one of the crew members took off the gloves and put his hands in the dark waters.

“Is lukewarm!” Exclaimed with astonishment.

They brought a thermometer from the cabin of the plane and inserted it into the lake water which indicated  the incredible mark of 18 ° Celsius. McGrath noted algae in different colors to which the lakes possibly owed their shades. They took samples of the water and after  the third crew member warned of a storm front of advancing from the South, they all returned to the airplane and returned to their base. Boredom had given way to a great excitement by having encountered the unexpected phenomenon of a warm corner in the middle of the vast frozen plain of the Antarctic Continent.

Sergeant William Knox guided his sled with safe hands and great concentration in his task; in fact born and raised in  Alaska he was accustomed to this type of vehicle, to handling Siberian dogs, and finally, to the icy landscapes and their tricks. With him was Corporal Beau Washington, an  African American originally from Louisiana for whom the Antarctic experience was a real torture. He would hardly be in that place had he not offered as a volunteer for expeditions in polar areas in order to prove himself, of which he repented.

The dogs struggled dragging the heavy sled loaded with supplies, weapons and scientific instruments. Every couple of hours they made a short break to give breath to the animals. The polar summer ensured them long hours of light except in the case that a storm darkened the sky, and that was precisely what Knox was fearing, looking at the South horizon. A mass of dark clouds quickly moved from that direction. After consulting his map and a new measure of latitude with the Sextant, he decided that they could arrive on time to the point shown by the aviators, and where they had to make their recognition. They had already travelled several days through the mountains covered of ice that did not look crystal clear when viewed from the ground. Knox hurried the dogs using the crackling of the whip over their heads and the cries of encouragement he knew so well. Thus, they could still travel a couple of hours until – when overcoming a fairly high promontory-  they could see down below a dark black circle. The lake appeared rather sinister in the midst of the growing darkness, but gave them the certainty to be already at the place of destination, just as the storm was breaking out.

Knox and Washington had been able to assemble the polar tent with great difficulties in the middle of a snowstorm supporting it on a large rock, which covered the side from which the winds came. Anyway, eddies that are formed leeward of the rock shook the tent and threatened to fly it away. The dogs were hardly visible, partially covered by snow and immobilized. Knox guessed that the storm would turn into a blizzard in the following few minutes.

The storm had lasted two hours. Clung to the tent, they had managed to prevent it from being driven away by the wind, but their bodies were exhausted. Provisions and the sled were invisible in the middle of the white mantle. Knox knew that it would them take hours to dig them out and that some things would never appear because they were carried away great distances and then covered with snow. They noted with dismay that one of the dogs was missing, something difficult to understand and very sensitive since it meant losing traction power of the only means of transport in this immense loneliness. After a couple of hours of efforts they managed to overhaul the camp, in which they decided to stay at least another twelve hours to sleep, eat and prepare the next day.

Washington had moved somewhat away to urinate when he started  shouting. Knox ran to him and saw what had struck him. At the base of a cliff a dark spot highlighted on the white snow.

“It looks like the entrance of a cave.” Said stunned Washington.

Undoubtedly the blizzard, as well as it had covered everything with fresh snow had removed earlier layers and discovered the entrance of a hole in the mountain side.

The men approached sinking into the still not frozen snow and could confirm what they had found was the entrance to a cave, a deep one at first sight. They decided to rest as they had planned and to return the next day with flashlights and ropes.

That night, marked more by the clock than by variations in light in the polar summer, Knox succinctly wrote in the expedition logbook.

"Tomorrow we will go to explore this cave. The entrance is about 7 feet tall and 5 feet wide and is almost rectangular. The odd thing is that I think I have seen apparently tool-made notches on the left wall, but we will return with torches to verify it".

Knox moved first through the dark tunnel excavated by remote waters in ancient times. Every now and then he lit up and examined the walls always noticing artificial marks on them. The general appearance of the tunnel was unexpectedly neat, geometric, and he wondered if only the forces of nature had intervened in its conformation.

Suddenly, something unexpected shook the Knox’ meditations. Washington had gone a certain distance along a side tunnel and started to call him with great voices.

“Bill, look at this! I can't believe it!”

Approaching Knox saw the cause of his companion excitement: two pieces of parallel rails were fixed on the cavern flat floor forming a narrow gauge railway.

“This is a path for carts of the type used in the mines to extract ore and debris to the surface.” Whispered Knox for himself while preparing his camera with flash to record the discovery.

The men immediately understood the implications of the finding: long before someone had been working in that cavern lost in the immensity of the Antarctic continent, probably in order to extract minerals, enable the cave for unimaginable applications, or others.

They followed the layout of the rails for several hundred meters, until it abruptly ended. Later, the tunnel narrowed and allowed the passage of only one man at a time. They continued their march for about half an hour, until the rays of headlights reflected in front of them a vast enclosure with a dark background. A dark blue color, apparently a deep water lake was clearly visible as they approached. They spoke in a voice low, amplified by an intense echo, overwhelmed by the vastness of the place in which they were.

Suddenly, an intense noise deafened them; when they turned towards  its source a flash of intense light dazzled them, a mass of rock precipitated on them extinguishing their desperate cries and covering them completely.

Non-commissioned officers Knox and Washington never returned to their base. Extensive land and air searches carried out in huge icy areas did not reveal their trail. Only some leaves of a notepad, obviously a blog, were found which unfortunately did not have the coordinates of the place where they had been written. They were scattered in a radius of more than three hundred meters, and the conclusion of the soldiers who found them was that they had probably been dragged for many kilometers by Antarctic winds. As they contained certain strange inscriptions were derived to the Naval Intelligence Service.

The lost men were two of the five casualties of the Highjump Mission.