Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 17, 2011



The air-tractor sledge was a converted fixed-wing aircraft taken on the 1911–14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition, the first plane to be taken to the Antarctic. Expedition leader Douglas Mawson had planned to use the Vickers R.E.P. Type Monoplane as a reconnaissance and search and rescue tool, and to assist in publicity, but the aircraft crashed heavily during a test flight only two months before Mawson's scheduled departure date. The plane, stripped of its wings, was nevertheless sent south with the expedition, and converted to a sledge; brakes were fashioned from a pair of geological drills and a steering system from the plane's landing gear. The air-tractor was first tested in November 1912 and subsequently assisted in laying depots for the summer sledging parties, but its use during the expedition was minimal; the freezing conditions resulted in the jamming of the engine's pistons, and its frame was left on the ice when the expedition returned home in December 1913. In 2008 a team from the Mawson's Huts Foundation began searching for the remains of the air-tractor sledge; a seat was found in 2009, and parts of the tail a year later. The foundation believes that the air-tractor is still at the expedition's base, buried beneath the ice. (more...)

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