Reservist

ISS3 2014

Reservist Magazine is the award-winning official publication of the United States Coast Guard Reserve. Quarterly issues include news and feature articles about the men and women who comprise America's premier national maritime safety and security

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The crew enjoyed smokeless cigarettes, frost-proof fountain pens and the relative silence and comfort unknown in Smith's sea-going expeditions or the frozen struggles carried out by early ice-bound explorers. The next morning, Graf Zeppelin began the first leg of its journey with a flight to Leningrad by way of Helsinki, Finland. Soviet fighter aircraft met the airship at the Russian-Finnish border to escort the zeppelin around sensitive coastal defense installations and on to Leningrad. After it landed at Leningrad's Commandant Aerodrome, Smith and Graf Zeppelin's crew received an official welcome by local Soviet leaders and enjoyed a lavish banquet. That evening, fuel, stores and hydrogen gas were topped off and Soviet members of the expedition stowed their equipment on board. By the morning of Sunday, July 26, Graf Zeppelin, Smith and the airship's complement of scientists, explorers and zeppelin crew were ready to begin their 8,000-mile aeroarctic journey. At altitudes between 500 and 1,500 feet, they proceeded from Leningrad over the port city of Archangel and the White Sea before heading due north through the Arctic Circle and over the open water of the Barents Sea. As the airship flew farther north, the temperature dropped from sixty degrees to fifty to nearly freezing and the open water began to exhibit ice patches, then floes of ice and finally a solid sheet of ice. Graf Zeppelin spent Sunday evening and most of the day on Monday crossing the Barents Sea and by 4:30 p.m., on 27 July, Smith and the crew first sighted islands of the Franz Josef Land group. The airship's landfall was the glacier covered headlands of Cape Flora, where Nansen came upon the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition in 1896 and fortified himself before returning home to Norway. Graf Zeppelin continued on to nearby Hooker Island, site of the day's most northerly meteorological observatory, and a rendezvous with the Soviet icebreaker Malygin. At 5:00 p.m., the airship descended to the water's surface and Malygin sent out a boat with naval officers, meteorologists and Arctic aeronaut Umberto Nobile. Nobile and Eckener exchanged greetings and the boat and zeppelin exchanged post bags full of mail with unique German North Pole stamps cancelled using an exotic postmark on board the airship. The postmarked mail was returned to the U.S.S.R., where it was sent back to philatelists in Germany. The exchange between zeppelin and boat proved brief due to the dangerous proximity of floating ice to Graf Zeppelin's low-hanging gondola. After the meeting with the Malygin, Graf Zeppelin continued to the northeast surveying the rest of Franz Josef Land. The survey of this island group revealed several features not seen from ground level, including new islands and peninsulas previously believed to be islands. Ellsworth radioed the American Geographic Society: "Present chart not correct. Albert Edward Island and Harmsworth Island do not exist." A Russian scientist on board the zeppelin estimated that three hours of aerial mapping represented about four summers of land survey work for a ground party. At midnight on Tuesday, July 28, Graf Zeppelin attained her highest latitude of the trip at 81° 50´ N, 490 nautical miles south of the North Pole. German insurance firms would not cover accidents or mishaps above latitude 82° N due to the treacherous conditions and odds against rescue between that latitude and the pole. From that high point, Smith noted: "Here was one of the most beautiful scenes of the trip, looking northward towards the midnight sun, then just below the horizon. All objects appeared to be bathed in the soft and mellow light except where a golden reflection shone brightly along a glittering, icy path between us and the pole." In the six hours since departing the Malygin, Graf Zeppelin had covered the same terrain it took Nansen eleven months to hike in the summer of 1895. From Franz Josef Land, Graf Zeppelin proceeded to the island of Severnaya Zemlya, located three hundred miles to the east. During the flight, Lt. Cmdr. Smith witnessed unusual formations in the sea ice, including smoothly polished ice disks one to two miles in diameter, and patches of brown, green and yellow color caused by algae in pools of melt water. As the airship approached the island, Smith found that the sea ice formed a continuous run from glaciers flowing from Severnaya Zemlya's northern headlands. Upon its arrival at the island, Graf Zeppelin assumed an altitude of 4,000 feet to begin its photographic survey. While the island had been charted from a Russian icebreaker in 1914, most of the land mass had never been seen by man. The survey of the large The track chart of Lt. Cmdr. Smith's 8,000 mile fight on board the Graf Zeppelin. U.S. Coast guard Photo 40 RESERVIST � Issue 3 • 2014

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