The Daily Alaska Empire

"Inverted Sled" Riding Bottom of Ice
Ceiling, Is Soon to Be Tested for Trip
Under North Pole During Present Year

(A. P. Science Editor)

CAMDEN, N. J., Feb. 18.

An electric refrigerator will be carried to the North Pole or under it, in a submarine next summer.

Stranger than fiction, things never seen before on land or sea, are included in the equipment of this underwater boat. Upon them depends the safety of Sir Hubert Wilkins and his crew of 17 scientists who expect to start from Spitzbergen in July to sail to Alaska under ice floes of the top of the world.

There is the jack-knife periscope, the trolley, the sled top, the boring conning tower, and the forward deck light glass which has the tensile strength of carbon iron.

These and other fittings are being installed here under direction of Lieut. Commander Sloan Danenhower, who is to navigate her and who expects to have her ready for launching on Washington's birthday.

The sled top is a pair of runners, four feet apart, arching from bow to stern over the sub's top. It is intended to ease the ship's bumps as she coasts along under ice floes.

The only equipment permanently rising above the runners are the jack-knife periscope and the trolley. The periscope is jointed so as to fold back when it strikes ice. It is made to spring back upright when the sub comes to open water, and to give a 360 degree view of the open lead without the necessity of rising to the surface for a reconnoitering look.

The trolley is to maintain contact with the underside of the ice. In trial trips planned for the Maine and Nova Scotia coasts soon, the trolley will be tipped with an auto truck wheel. A runner may be tried in place of the wheel.

The boring conning tower is for putting a manhole up through the ice. This tower telescopes to rest below the runners when not in use, and can be thrust 13 feet above them. Its top has a collar-shaped ice saw of slightly greater diameter than the tower. This cutter will turn at 600 revolutions per minute, while the tower inside it revolves six times a minute and is slowly forced upward by hydraulic pistons. The cutting saw is adjustable to free itself from ice clogging. Twenty-eight inches is the diameter of the tower, a tight squeeze for a large man.

The bowsprit bumper is a piston, which upon collision with underwater objects will be driven back into an air cushion to absorb shock. The entire bow is reinforced with timbers and concrete, the forward torpedo tubes being closed permanently.

Glass that rivals iron will be set in a fixed light housing on deck at the bow to cast a beam ahead. There are two escape locks for divers, one in the bottom of the hull forward, and the other on deck. The divers will have a 5,000-candle power portable, underwater light for going outside to look around or make repairs.

In a pinch the divers might do some fishing. If the sub gets trapped "down under" too deeply there are two boring shafts capable of reaching upward through 100 feet of ice. Slender they are, but big enough for air.

The Sir Hubert Wilkins submarine, equipped for probably the strangest of all scientific voyages from Spitzbergen to Alaska, has a bow that acts as a shock absorber, and her back is a sled for riding under imprisoning ice. She can drill a 13-foot long manhole through ice above, or thrust air pipes up 100 feet.

By Howard Blakeslee