Latest news with #NationalNavalAviationMuseum
Boston Globe
2 days ago
- Science
- Boston Globe
Conrad ‘Gus' Shinn, first pilot to land at the South Pole, dies at 102
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Looking back on the flight, Commander Shinn said that getting to the pole was the easy part. Getting back proved far more challenging, requiring the use of more than a dozen small rockets to dislodge the plane from the ice and provide enough thrust for takeoff. Advertisement Friends said that long after he retired, when he was introduced to strangers as 'the first man to land at the South Pole,' he would gently note: 'Well, that's true. But more importantly, I'm the first man to take off from the South Pole.' By flying to the pole and back, Commander Shinn — who died May 15 at 102 ― helped open up a new era of Antarctic research, demonstrating that it was possible for personnel and supplies to be flown to one of the world's most desolate places. By his count, he made about 17 South Pole flights, providing assistance to Navy construction workers who began creating a permanent research base, a precursor to today's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, a few weeks after his first trip. Advertisement Scientists continue to conduct experiments at the pole, including on air quality, seismic waves, and elementary particles known as neutrinos. Tractors make the weeks-long trek to bring supplies overland from McMurdo Station. And supply planes continue to fly in and out, although the aircraft — ski-equipped LC-130s, carrying as much as 42,000 pounds of cargo — are more powerful and better equipped than the planes flown by Commander Shinn and his colleagues. 'Everything was critical in that day: attitude and altitude and air speed, weight and balance. We hardly stayed in the air,' he said in a 1999 interview for the Antarctic Deep Freeze Oral History Project. A North Carolina native who joined the Navy during World War II, Commander Shinn started out as a multiengine pilot in the South Pacific, transporting medical supplies and wounded men. He later flew military brass and other VIPs, ferrying flag officers, Cabinet secretaries, and friends of President Harry S. Truman, before volunteering for Operation Highjump, a Navy program that brought him to Antarctica for the first time in 1947. By then, the Navy had been involved in Antarctic exploration for years, supporting scientific research while also — amid a Cold War standoff with the Soviet Union — seeking 'to establish a foothold in a region of the world that could be strategically important,' said Hill Goodspeed, a historian at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Fla. Advertisement To prepare for the mission, Commander Shinn took a transport plane equipped with skis and tested it on the ice in Edmonton, Alberta. He went on to fly a ski-clad R4D, the military version of a Douglas DC-3 airliner, off an aircraft carrier, taking it hundreds of miles over the ice to reach Little America, the Navy's makeshift exploration base on the Ross Ice Shelf. Commander Shinn lived on the ice for about a month, sleeping in a tent — designed more for the tropics than the Antarctic — and flying photographic missions that were intended to help map the continent. At the end of his tour, he was picked up by an icebreaker and joined the command ship of Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, who had made history in 1929 as the first person to fly over the South Pole. Commander Shinn accompanied the admiral on a triumphant voyage to the Washington Navy Yard, where Byrd shook hands with the secretary of the Navy and presented the National Zoo with a gift of two-dozen penguins. (When a crate burst open during unloading, three of the birds disappeared into the Anacostia River.) By 1956, Commander Shinn had returned to Antarctica as part of Operation Deep Freeze, a Navy mission that was launched in support of the International Geophysical Year, a collaborative effort promoting scientific research at the poles and elsewhere around the world. This time he lived in comparative luxury at McMurdo Sound, in a heated Quonset hut instead of a tent. Still, he noted that the solitude of the Antarctic could take a toll — 'people get angry with one another; there were a few mental cases' — and that even with his experience navigating high winds and whiteout conditions, the risks of polar aviation remained high. Advertisement During an exploratory flight near the Beardmore Glacier, his airplane was caught in a wind shear and 'fell out of the sky,' hurtling toward the ground before Commander Shinn turned to a rocket system known as JATO, for jet-assisted take-off, in which rockets are fired to provide additional thrust. 'The wing rolled and the wingtip touched the ice. I'm sure it added to the deafening blast of the JATO firing,' he said in the oral history. 'We were close enough to the surface to send up a huge balloon of ice crystals. The passengers must have been terrified. But we flew out.' Commander Shinn turned to the JATO system once again during his historic flight to the South Pole, aboard a propeller-driven R4D-5L named Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be), after the newly released Doris Day pop song. The plane carried seven passengers and crew members, including Rear Admiral George J. Dufek, who stepped outside and planted an American flag into the ice. (Technically, they had landed about four miles from the geographical South Pole. Observers deemed it close enough.) The group set up a metal radar reflector, intended to help future pilots make their way to the site, and spent about 45 minutes outside before readying for takeoff. Commander Shinn was already prepared for a difficult departure by virtue of the pole's altitude, at more than 9,000 feet. But he was surprised to discover that while the plane's engines were running, the snow under its skis had melted and refrozen. Advertisement They were stuck. 'We just sat on the ice like an old mud hen,' he told the Associated Press in 1999. Overheard was an Air Force cargo plane, assigned to hang close and drop supplies in case of disaster. It wasn't needed: Commander Shinn was able to free the plane by firing JATO bottles, four at a time, enabling the Que Sera Sera to break loose and, at full throttle, take off — just barely. Commander Shinn and his crew flew through 'a cloud of ice,' using their instruments to navigate while unable to see out of the cockpit, before making their way back to base at McMurdo, some 800 miles away. After landing, his colleague John P. Strider downplayed their difficulties at the pole, joking to a reporter that he dealt with only one problem on the flight: 'My coffee wouldn't percolate at 12,000 feet.' As a result of the mission, Commander Shinn was awarded the Legion of Merit. Antarctica's third-highest peak, Mount Shinn, was named in his honor. 'I had been lucky,' he said in the oral history, looking back on his flying days in the Antarctic. 'Lucky — that's what I would call it.' The second of six children, Conrad Selwyn Shinn was born in Leaksville, N.C. — a mill town that is now part of the city of Eden — on Sept. 12, 1922. His father served in the infantry during World War I and worked as a YMCA secretary; his mother managed the home. As a boy, he idolized Charles Lindbergh and Wiley Post, pilot heroes of the golden age of aviation. His high school yearbook, which he edited, seemed almost prophetic in its title: The Pilot. Advertisement Commander Shinn graduated at age 16, first in his class, and studied aeronautical engineering at North Carolina State College, now a university. He enrolled in a civilian pilot training program, left school to join the Navy in 1942, and received his commission the next year. After World War II, he married Gloria Carter, with whom he had three children: David, Connie, and Diane Shinn. They divorced in 1954. Commander Shinn retired from the Navy in 1963 and settled in Pensacola, where he had been stationed. For years, he made regular visits to the National Naval Aviation Museum, where he was able to visit his restored former plane, the Que Sera Sera, and tell visitors about his flying days. Long after he retired, he continued to dress in military-style flight suits, preferring to avoid fussing over questions of personal appearance and style, according to his family. He remained especially concerned with safety issues, a theme dating back to his Navy days: If he couldn't sit in the pilot's seat as a civilian, he refused to fly at all, preferring to maintain control over maintenance and safety procedures. 'He always had the military demeanor,' his son David said, 'with one dramatic exception. While living in Florida, he developed the moniker Cat Man of La Rua,' after the street where he lived. 'He always had a dozen or two-dozen cats in residence. They'd come to his door, having heard about town that there was this man who would take care of them if he needed help.' Commander Shinn lived in the city until shortly before his death, at a nursing facility in Charlotte. His son confirmed the death but did not cite a specific cause. Survivors include his three children; a sister; a grandson; a great-grandson; and several of his cats, which he re-homed late in life. Asked in the oral history what he was proudest of from his time in the Antarctic, Commander Shinn replied: 'I would guess if I were going to have a tombstone I would put on it, 'He tells it like it is.' There's just no substitute for honesty and integrity.'
New York Times
13-03-2025
- General
- New York Times
How the Intrepid Moved a World War II Fighter Plane
Good morning. It's Thursday. Today we'll find out how a World War II fighter-bomber was squeezed into an exhibition space on the former aircraft carrier Intrepid. We'll also get details on new census data that show that the population of New York City is growing again. 'It was like moving a couch into your New York City apartment,' Jessica Williams said, except that the item in question had no pillows or cushions and no pull-out bed to sleep on. And there was no super insisting it would never fit. Williams, the head curator of the Intrepid Museum, was explaining how dicey it had been to transport a 33-foot fighter-bomber from World War II. The aircraft was not going far, just from the Intrepid's restoration hangar, on the former aircraft carrier's flight deck, to the hangar deck two levels below. New York is a city where impossibly large objects squeeze through impossibly small spaces when moving day comes — somehow, grand pianos are shoehorned into elevators. But size is relative. On a ship like the Intrepid, which is roughly 890 feet long, a few feet shorter than the height of the office tower at 425 Park Avenue, so many spaces seem extra-extra-large. The Intrepid's elevator originally had a wide-mouthed opening. The fighter-bomber being moved, a Corsair on loan from the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Fla., would have gone in and out easily, as aircraft did during World War II. 'The whole design of this ship was to facilitate the movement of aircraft,' Williams said, 'but now it's a museum, so of course we've changed things.' The elevator now has a vertical support that was not there during World War II — a mullion, according to Williams, who was trained in historic preservation. That reduced the clearance for the Corsair to inches. Before it could go anywhere, it had to be 'rigged up on skates' for the trip, and an airplane already on the hangar deck had to be moved out of its path. A huge propeller on display, one of four that originally drove the Intrepid, was also lifted out of the way. The movers, a team from the Intrepid's restoration center, rehearsed with a scale model of the plane, the elevator and the hangar deck. 'Initially the assumption was that it would go in tail first,' Williams said, 'but then upon testing with the model, it made more sense to have it go nose first.' Then the serious wiggling began. 'Jockeying,' Richard Skolnick, an aircraft restoration specialist on the Intrepid, called it, looking as if he was doing a little dance move. Williams held her breath, but the plane squeezed through. Skolnick and his colleagues reattached the wings and raised them until they looked like a pair of praying hands that almost touched the ceiling. Movable flaps on the wings had to be reinstalled. Along the way, the plane had to be jacked up a bit to make room for axle stands. It can't just sit there on its tires — the tires are old. The Intrepid's restoration center gave the plane a new paint job to honor Alfred Lerch, a Navy pilot who flew from the Intrepid during the 82-day Battle of Okinawa in 1945. On one of his first combat missions, Lerch shot down seven Japanese aircraft, making him an ace in a day. Later that same day, a kamikaze dived into the Intrepid, and the ship went to a shipyard in California for repairs. When it went back in service several months later, Lerch flew one last strike mission. And then the war ended. At the Intrepid museum, the Corsair will be the first thing visitors see when they reach the hangar deck. 'It cements the idea about the purpose of this sort of ship, its role as a military airfield and how the whole ship was built to manage and service these aircraft,' she said. 'Coming face to face upon entering reminds everyone what the ship is and what was at stake for the people who served on it.' Expect mostly cloudy skies with mild winds and a high near 48 degrees. In the evening, it will be mostly cloudy with temperatures in the low 40s. In effect until Friday (Purim). The latest New York news 'People clearly want to be here' Five years after the pandemic — and the disturbing drop in population that it set off — New York is growing again. New census data put the population at 8.48 million in July 2024, up from 8.39 million in July 2023 but still well below the peak of 8.8 million in early 2020. The census figures indicate that fewer people are leaving the city, countering losses that deepened in the early months of the pandemic, when thousands of New Yorkers packed up and fled. Many have moved back. But the growth between 2023 and 2024 — about 87,184 people — largely reflected a steady increase in newcomers from other countries. New York has long relied on immigrant newcomers to replace residents who left. 'That's the secret to New York City's demographic success,' said John Mollenkopf, a professor of political science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. But during the first Trump administration, beginning in 2017, there was a decline in immigrants moving to the city, Professor Mollenkopf said. 'It remains to be seen how Trump 2 crimps international migration, and that may temper that force in increasing the city's population.' The new census numbers notably revised last year's estimate to show that the city grew between 2022 and 2023 for the first time since the pandemic. Between 2023 and 2024, Manhattan grew by about 1.7 percent — the most of any borough. Its total population increased for a third straight year, to 1.66 million. The other boroughs also grew — Brooklyn and Queens by nearly 1 percent each, the Bronx and Staten Island by less than 1 percent. Staten Island has fully erased its pandemic slide, the only borough to do so. 'Despite everything the city has had to overcome in recent years, people clearly want to be here,' said Jonathan Bowles, the executive director of the Center for an Urban Future, a Manhattan think tank that researches policy issues facing cities. Good seat Dear Diary: My husband and I got tickets for 'Take Me Out' when it first played in New York in the early 2000s. We had seats close to the stage, and I started a conversation with a woman sitting to my right who had a thick Texas accent. She and a male colleague were on a business trip and had gotten last-minute tickets that were unfortunately not next to each other. She and I discussed the play. With a twinkle in her eye, she said her colleague had given her the seat closest to the stage so she would have a better view during the nude scenes. They planned to switch at intermission. At the start of the first nude shower scene, I felt a poke in my ribs. I turned to look at my new friend, who was nodding at me with a big grin. She did not switch seats at intermission. — Elka Grisham Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Natasha Cornelissen and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@ Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
