3 May 1952: A ski-equipped United States Air Force Douglas C-47A Skytrain, piloted by Lieutenant Colonels William P. Benedict and Joseph O. Fletcher, USAF, was the first airplane to land at the North Pole.¹ The navigator was 1st Lieutenant Herbert Thompson. Staff Sergeant Harold Turner was the flight engineer and Airman 1st Class Robert L. Wishard, the radio operator.
Also on board was Arctic research scientist Dr. Albert P. Crary and his assistant, Robert Cotell. Additional personnel were Fritza Ahl, Master Sergeant Edison T. Blair and Airman 2nd Class David R. Dobson.
Colonel Fletcher was commanding officer of the 58th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron, Eielson Air Force Base, Fairbanks, Alaska. He was responsible for establishing Drift Ice Stations within the polar ice cap for remote weather observation bases. Ice Island T-3 was renamed Fletcher’s Ice Island in his honor. He became a world authority on Arctic weather and climate. Various geographic features, such as the Fletcher Abyssal Plain in the Arctic Ocean, and the Fletcher Ice Rise in the Antarctic are also named for him.
The airplane flown on this expedition was Douglas C-47A-90-DL Skytrain 43-15665.
The Douglas C-47 in the photograph below is similar to the Skytrain that Benedict and Fletcher landed at the North Pole, however it is a screen image from the RKO/Winchester Pictures Corporation motion picture, “The Thing from Another World,” which was released just one year earlier, 29 April 1951. Howard Hawks’ classic science fiction film involves an Air Force C-47 Skytrain crew that flies in support of a remote Arctic research station.
The C-47 is 64 feet, 5½ inches (19.647 meters) long with a wingspan of 95 feet (28.956 meters) and height of 17 feet (5.182 meters). Empty weight of the C-47A is 17,257 pounds (7,828 kilograms) and the maximum takeoff weight is 29,300 pounds (13,290 kilograms).²
The C-47 has a cruising speed of 185 miles per hour (298 kilometers per hour) at 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) and service ceiling of 24,100 feet (7,346 meters).
The C-47-DL could carry 6,000 pounds (2,722 kilograms) of cargo, or 28 fully-equipped paratroopers. Alternatively, 14 patients on stretchers could be carried, along with three attendants.
43-15665 crashed on Fletcher’s Ice island 3 November 1952. It has since sunk to the floor of the Arctic Ocean.
¹ At least one source states that a Soviet expedition aboard three Lisunov Li-2 transports (a license-built Douglas DC-3) landed near the North Pole on 23 April 1948.
² Data from AAF Manual 51-129-2, Pilot Training Manual for the C-47 Skytrain
© 2019, Bryan R. Swopes
Bryan- the caption under the picture of the crew has the wrong year – should be 1952, not 1951.
Good catch! Thanks!!
1951. The movies were musicals, Three Stooges, westerns, Bob Hope, and that sort. I was ten, Saturday afternoon at the Roxy, Meridian Idaho. The movie was The Thing and I walked out of there with eyes the size of saucers…slept with the lights on for a year. Its funny to think how innocent we all were then…pampered by the greatest generation…and now kids now would laugh at that movie.
“The Thing From Another World” premiered the year that I was born, but has always been one of my most favorite movies. The overlapping conversations of the various characters add a real sense of reality to the production. “Captain Hendry’s” C-47 was named “Tropical Tilly.” Margaret Sheridan (“Nikki”) was the standout actor of the movie. She made only the briefest appearance in another favorite of mine, “Man’s Favorite Sport” (1964).
Have to agree with the comment made by SS……. first time I saw “The Thing From Another World” I went to bed and left the lights on. It was shown on tv and I was 5….sat there with my dad and watched it. Strange, because he wasn’t a horror movie fan, in fact he rarely watched ANY movie. Maybe it was because he had been a pilot in WWII and he was hooked by the C-47 flying sequences…….. or maybe ( looking back now ) it was Nikki ?? But a great movie nonetheless.
At age 76 I’m another one of those who (when seeing these amazing photos of the snow, aicraft, crew in cold weather gear of the period) automatically thinks of the movie “The Thing From Another World”, and the monster (James Arness, AKA Marshall Matt Dillon of the TV series “Gunsmoke”. ‘The Thing…’ premiered 5 1/2 years after my (late) 1945 birthday. And I remember the other polar events in those years! Including August 3, 1958, when the U.S. nuclear submarine Nautilus accomplished the first undersea voyage to the geographic North Pole. Fourteen years later I was a firefighter in Los Alamitos (southern), California. One of the large manufacturing plants we protected, Arrowhead Products, made the oxygen-generating candles that allowed the Nautilus crew to breathe as the submarine traveled for 1,000 miles under the ice to reach the North Pole.