ANTARCTIC SNOW CRUISER: A 1930s Giant Snowmobile Aircraft Carrier

THE SNOW CRUISER

Internal layout with airplane attached 

In 1937 Thomas Poulter, a scientist and Antarctic explorer on Admiral Byrd's second expedition to the Antarctic, came up the idea of making a machine to explore the South Pole.  Some people called it the Penguin or Turtle but it was really a large machine designed to traverse the ice and be a shelter from the cold harsh environment of Antarctica.  

Caught in a traffic jam on the way to the docks

It was 55 feet long, 19 feet wide and about 16 feet high, and weighed 75000 pounds.   A monster vehicle advanced especially for its  time, it was a hybrid electric diesel that had four electric motors running the wheels. This same configuration of using electrically driven wheels is still used to day in modern mining trucks.  Besides the hybrid engine it boasted several ingenious designs that were particularly unique. One unique aspect of the vehicle was its ability to use engine coolant to warm the interior, especially the sleeping quarters. This made it possible to do without jackets when inside the vehicle.  Another ingenious device was its ability to raise and lower the front and rear wheels to cross crevasses.  As a crevasse would appear in front of the vehicle, it would drive the front wheel off the ledge and then retract the front wheels, using the rear wheels to propel it forward. Once the front wheels had crossed the crevasse, it would then use them to drag the rear section across as well.   

How the cruiser crossed ravines

getting off the ship in Antarctica 

It had a range of 5000 miles on its fuel tanks and carried a flat spot on the top for a five passenger Beechcraft airplane used for scouting. A winch would place the airplane on the ground and pick it back up when it landed.  It was designed to be self sufficient for up to one year and carried 3500 gallons of fuel. Its crew size was five.

Found by later expeditions 

The sad fate of this vehicle goes back to the first few moments it arrived in Antarctica.  As it was being unloaded from the ship for the first time, it broke through the timbers and got stuck in the snow. Its tires were found to be more suited to swamps and had very little traction on the snow.  Tire chains were put on and the spares were added to the existing tires but to no avail.  It was discovered that being driven in reverse worked better and so it was driven backwards for 92 miles on its longest drive.  Funding for the Snow Cruiser was cancelled in 1940, even though an expedition was currently using the vehicle for living quarters, as the U.S. entered WW2.  In 1946 and expedition found it and got it running with no problems.  In 1956 an international expedition found the Snow Cruiser and uncovered it with a bulldozer.  It was found exactly as it had been left with newspapers, cigarettes, and signs of the former occupants still evident.  Later expeditions found no trace of the vehicle and it is suspected that it now is buried or at the bottom of the ocean as the ice shelf constantly moves ice into the sea.  A sad end for such an incredible vehicle and dreams of exploring the southern continent in style and safety. 

Mega Machine Press: The Iron Giant that still lives

STOP THE PRESSES

The Iron Giant 50,000  hydraulic press

There is a machine that still uses 1940's technology to produce modern machines like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Sounds impossible?  Not nearly as impossible as the incredibly massive nature of this machine: the giant Mesta 50,000 ton press, also know as the Iron Giant and rightly so.

The story of the giant press goes back to post WW1 Germany and the treaty of Versailles which essentially took away Germany's iron production facilities but allowed them to keep its magnesium mines and production methods.  A little metallurgy here:  iron can be hit into a shape, magnesium cracks when you hit it.  Magnesium is not the ideal metal to work with when making strong metal shapes that require forging which is melting into a mold. But, having no other way to make the machines they needed, the Germans developed a forging process with magnesium that required it to be heated to a certain temperature and then hit with a giant force:  enter the gigantic press.  They would use this process to make their airplanes and war machines throughout WW2.

What does the press do you might ask?  It stamps metal into complex shapes that give it extra strength and requires less time to make.  This is huge.  Light metals can be shaped into complex shapes and structures that would not have been thought possible before the German invention.  Most American airplanes before this press had to be riveted together which was a long and labor intensive process and not nearly as strong.

Before and after picture of raw titanium after one hit on the press
in this case the bulkhead of an F-15 fighter jet

The Iron Giant or the Fifty as it is also know, is still producing parts for very modern machines. It is a 50,000 ton press which means it can put that much force on a piece of metal.  The  actual weight of the machine is 16 million pounds.  It can shape titanium, one of the hardest and lightest metals, into any shape by putting 100 million pounds of pressure on it, in seconds.

For production methods that involve speed, quality and strength this is a huge step forward.  What took days now takes seconds to build.  During WW2 it was Rosie the Riveter who put the giant air planes together piece by piece in a long and painstaking process and assembly line.  When the U.S. started using the Mesta 50 in the early 1950s, mostly in response to the Soviets using captured German presses, it was a leap forward.  Even though the giant press was a strategic development to further the U.S. against the Soviets, it is still being used today and will likely still be in use for decades.  There is no substitute for its incredible blows.   Vulcan's mythical hammer still lives.