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Author Topic: Antartic German Ice Probes: are there any contemporary pictures?  (Read 576 times)

ChairmanPoo

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Antartic German Ice Probes: are there any contemporary pictures?
« on: November 03, 2015, 07:39:50 pm »
As some of you might know, there was a German expedition to the south pole in 1938 that dropped ten aluminium spikes from a plane (the idea was to claim a piece of territory doing this, or something like that). My question is: are there any pictures of these markings, contemporary or otherwise?  I was suddenly struck by them being some rather unique WW2 memorabilia, and am curious as to how they looked.
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i2amroy

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Re: Antartic German Ice Probes: are there any contemporary pictures?
« Reply #1 on: November 03, 2015, 08:30:48 pm »
I wouldn't be surprised if they are all long lost. Antarctica might be good at preserving things, but that doesn't mean that it's like the moon where things stay where you leave them. Weather, ice movements, and so forth could very well have buried or moved all 12 aluminum arrows that were dropped, preventing any sort of recovery. The best I found was this description of them, which seems to be all that anybody says about them (barring the crazy OCCULT NAZI SORCERERS sites :P):
Quote
About a dozen 1.2 meter-long aluminum arrows, with 30 centimeter steel cones and three upper stabilizer wings embossed with swastikas, were air dropped onto the ice at turning points of the flight polygons (these arrows had been tested on the Pasterze glacier in Austria before the expedition).
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LordBucket

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Re: Antartic German Ice Probes: are there any contemporary pictures?
« Reply #2 on: November 03, 2015, 08:46:46 pm »
Casual google search turns up this book which appears to have some pictures of and from the vessel, MS Schwabenland.

Ideally you'd find a copy of Captain Ritscher's official report. I find references to it all over, but having difficulty finding the report itself.

This has some relevant links:
http://www.bkg.bund.de/nn_194916/DE/Bundesamt/Downloads/Kostenlose-Karten/Antarktis-Karten/Antarktis-Karten__node.html__nnn=true

Here are some aerial photographs from the planes:
http://www.bkg.bund.de/nn_170894/DE/Bundesamt/Downloads/Kostenlose-Karten/Antarktis-Karten/Luftbilder/Bildfluguebersichten__node.html__nnn=true#[Anker_DAE_Luftbilder]


...oh, here you go:



Is that what you want?
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