The Harvesters — Part 2
The First Assault
Teniente Matienzo Base, Argentine Air Force
64°58′S, 60°04′W — 30 August 1969, 11.30 a.m.
‘Velázquez, check the hydraulic system pressure,’ Pose ordered, his voice muffled by the padding of his leather flying headset.
‘Nominal pressure at eight hundred and fifty pounds, Lieutenant. The system is responding correctly,’ the non-commissioned officer replied, keeping his eyes fixed on the instruments of the central console.
‘Sir, we are ready to begin taxiing,’ Pose announced, turning his head to look back over his shoulder.
‘Proceed, Pose,’ Olezza replied, with a composure that contrasted sharply with the silent tension enveloping the cabin.
To grasp the true magnitude of the thunderous roar unleashed when that radial engine came to life upon the lower plateau of Seymour Island, one must return to the final stages of the winter of 1969.
In those days, the bureaucracy entrenched in Buenos Aires remained convinced that the Antarctic Sector should be governed through a form of seasonal sovereignty, limited to the icebreaker’s summer campaigns. At Larsen Nunatak, however, Vice-Commodore Mario Luis Olezza was silently and defiantly playing a game of chess that would shatter the inertia of an entire era.
His feverish gaze was not fixed upon the comfort of military quarters, but upon an ice-free topographical anomaly whose importance had already been recognised by the visionary Vice-Commodore Marambio.
Olezza’s original plan did not envisage the immediate use of conventional wheels upon the island’s rocky surface, for the aviation technology then available, combined with the complete absence of infrastructure, made such an audacious undertaking impracticable.
The technical and human assault formally began on 30 August 1969, a date that would become permanently inscribed in the annals of polar endeavour.
On that bitterly cold day, a single-engined de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver, bearing the registration P-03 on its tail, took off from Teniente Matienzo Base fitted with snow skis. At the controls of the rugged aircraft sat Lieutenant Oscar José Pose Ortiz de Rozas, a pilot of steely nerve and delicate sensitivity at the controls, assisted by the watchful Principal Non-Commissioned Officer Ramón Alberto Velázquez.
Lieutenant Mario Víctor Licciardello and the first non-commissioned officers of the Sovereignty Patrol were crammed into the limited space of the cargo cabin, wedged between hand tools and provisions essential to their survival.
During that first approach, Pose did not point the Beaver’s nose towards the upper permafrost of the island. Instead, he descended with precision towards the very surface of the Weddell Sea.
With a flawless manoeuvre that defied the treacherous air currents, he brought P-03 down in a perfect ski landing upon the frozen sea ice covering López Bertodano Bay. There, at the foot of cliffs plunging from a height of more than two hundred metres, Camp Alpha was formally established.
Operational command of this precarious outpost was entrusted to Lieutenant Francisco Florencio Mensi. His monumental responsibility would be to coordinate the reception of airborne supplies and ensure the group’s logistical withdrawal should adverse weather conditions make it necessary.
From that moment onwards, the epic undertaking abandoned the relative ease of mechanical traction and became an entirely human effort, driven by the strength of the pioneers’ arms and hearts.
Under Licciardello’s direct command, the patrolmen began climbing the slippery slopes of Seymour Island on foot. Every pickaxe, every shovel, every two-hundred-litre drum of kerosene and every crate of field rations was carried upwards on their backs, step by step, in defiance of the abyss and the fatigue that stiffened their muscles.
At the top, exposed to the full force of the wind, the twenty-one chosen men established Camp Beta. Their only fragile protection against the extreme cold, which fell beyond thirty degrees below zero, consisted of the canvas walls of Alberta-type field tents, precariously secured behind a dry-stone barrier constructed from the empty fuel drums that gradually accumulated around them.
For twenty-five endless, agonising days, the plateau of Seymour Island became a kind of prehistoric quarry where time appeared to have stopped. The island’s geological features, providentially free of snow, revealed a crust of fossilised mud, loose slabs of rock and frozen clay as hard as the purest granite.
Without modern bulldozers, tipper lorries or heavy-duty cranes, the only instruments of Argentine sovereignty at that latitude were pickaxes, shovels and the unbreakable physical endurance of men selected for their fortitude and their proven abilities in the hangars of the mainland.
Master Non-Commissioned Officer Mario Rogelio Ranieri was responsible for organising the exhausting work parties, which relieved one another continuously from sunrise to sunset. The physical effort demanded of them was destructive to the body. With the first sharp blow of a pickaxe against the permafrost, violent vibrations travelled through their arms, tearing at their tendons and cracking the wooden handles before they could dislodge even a miserable fragment of stone. Indeed, the tool handles broke faster than the ground itself; the extreme cold made the metal brittle and the wood prone to splintering.
Men such as Corporal First Class Juan Carlos Luján, Corporal First Class Ramón Alberto Velázquez and Corporal First Class José Luis Cortese worked continuous shifts that challenged the limits of human endurance. They stopped only when the barometers forecast windstorms so violent that remaining upright in the open became impossible.
The objective set by Olezza was modest in its dimensions but colossal in its execution: to clear and level a minimum strip three hundred metres long and twenty-five metres wide across the rocky plateau.
The most prominent slabs, which protruded like blades, had to be removed by hand. Hollows had to be filled with compacted clay, and every fragment of fossil rock capable of puncturing a tyre or destroying the delicate undercarriage of a conventional aeroplane had to be cleared away. Every metre wrested from the ground was silently celebrated as a victory against the isolation of their homeland.
The morning of 25 September 1969 finally brought a fragile but sufficient respite from the weather.
At Matienzo Base, after the synoptic charts and radio reports had been checked, final approval was granted. The thick oil inside the air-cooled, nine-cylinder Pratt & Whitney R-985 Wasp Junior radial engine, capable of producing four hundred and fifty horsepower, had been patiently preheated for hours with noisy kerosene-fired Primus heaters. This prevented the dense lubricant from obstructing the crankcase passages at the critical moment of ignition.
Lieutenant Pose settled into the left-hand seat of the cockpit, tightening the harness straps over his Antarctic-issue parka. To his right, Non-Commissioned Officer Velázquez reviewed the checklist, naturally assuming the dual role of flight mechanic and co-pilot on a mission that allowed no margin whatsoever for distraction or miscalculation.
Vice-Commodore Olezza positioned himself at the rear of the narrow fuselage, from which the seats had been removed to reduce weight. His presence aboard the flight was no mere ceremonial gesture. Olezza knew perfectly well that military doctrine and senior command regarded the idea of operating wheeled aircraft upon the plateau as sheer madness. Should the Beaver overturn or break its legs on Seymour Island, the military and professional ruin would fall entirely upon his own shoulders.
At 11.15 a.m., Beaver P-03 taxied along Matienzo’s runway on its skis, took off after a short run and climbed to gain altitude above the frozen strait off San Martín Land.
The north-easterly flight took place above a wilderness that creaked beneath the rigours of the late winter. As the aircraft approached the coordinates of Seymour Island, a dense front of leaden clouds began descending from the east, threatening to close the narrow window of visibility that meteorologist Amistadi had forecast from the ground.
When the elongated shape of Seymour Island finally came into view, Lieutenant Pose began his descent. The scene beyond the windscreen was intimidating. The lower plateau selected for the makeshift runway extended from south-west to north-east, parallel to the area’s prevailing winds. However, as the aircraft crossed directly above the southern cliff, violent air currents rose with extraordinary force, producing dangerous rotor turbulence that shook the Beaver’s structure and forced its left wing down alarmingly.
‘Watch that gust from port, Pose!’ Olezza warned from the rear, gripping the cabin structure for support. ‘It’s forcing our left wing down!’
‘I have it, sir. Applying trim and correcting with rudder,’ Pose replied with a surgeon’s calm, exerting firm pressure upon the pedals to keep the nose aligned with the imaginary centreline marked by the small red flags and aluminium sheets defining the beginning of the strip.
‘Velázquez, maximum revolutions, fine pitch on the propeller,’ the pilot instructed.
The engine’s characteristic hum became a deafening roar that echoed through the island’s ravines.
‘Fine pitch selected, mixture rich,’ Non-Commissioned Officer Velázquez confirmed, his left hand resting upon the throttle, ready to assist the pilot in the event of any interruption to the thrust.
At Camp Beta, the ground crew had completely abandoned their tools and gathered expectantly along both sides of the three-hundred-metre strip.
Lieutenant Licciardello kept his binoculars trained upon the Beaver’s undercarriage, holding his breath as he watched the two tyres protruding beneath the skis.
At that precise second, the entire fate of Operation Marambio depended upon the structural resistance of those tyres against the sharp slabs covering the Antarctic plateau.
The Beaver crossed the runway threshold at barely ten knots above its stalling speed, exploiting the aircraft’s capabilities to the fullest in order to shorten its stopping distance.
At exactly 11.45 a.m. on that historic 25 September 1969, the wheels finally made direct contact with the fossil ground of Seymour Island.
That first contact possessed none of the smoothness of a mainland aerodrome. It was a sharp, violent impact, a brutal blow that tested the elasticity of the shock absorbers and the load-bearing legs of the main undercarriage.
Immediately, a deafening hammering erupted against the aluminium belly of the fuselage as loose stones and hard fragments of frozen clay were violently thrown from beneath the tyres by the propeller’s airflow, striking the metal skin like shrapnel.
The Beaver bounced alarmingly twice over irregularities that the patrolmen’s pickaxes had been unable to level completely. Lieutenant Pose was forced to fight with all his strength, gripping the controls to prevent the aircraft from pitching forwards and overturning under the braking resistance exerted by the hardened mud.
‘Brakes, Pose! Gently but continuously — we’re running out of strip!’ Velázquez roared as the final red flag approached at an alarming speed through the side windows.
‘Braking!’ Pose replied, driving his heels into the pedals as the undercarriage shrieked and the tyres dragged across the stony ground.
The aeroplane decelerated brutally. Its tail swung violently to the right under an unexpected gust from the west, threatening to unleash a ground loop that would have destroyed the undercarriage. The pilot’s timely use of the rudder, however, corrected the drift in the final instant of the landing run.
With a sharp crack and a groan from the brake pads, the de Havilland came to a halt upon the stones of the plateau.
Looking through the windscreen, now covered by a thin layer of dust, Lieutenant Pose was able to appreciate the dramatic reality of the manoeuvre: the aircraft’s nose had stopped barely twenty-five metres from the end of the level ground, precisely where the steep downward slope began its descent towards the void of the sea cliff.
The pilot reduced the throttle to its minimum setting and the engine settled into an idle, producing a rhythmic purr that broke the ancient silence of the Seymour plateau.
For the first time in the annals of world aviation, an aircraft equipped with conventional wheeled undercarriage had successfully landed upon the permafrost of the Antarctic continent in the depths of the polar winter, vindicating Olezza’s audacious hypothesis at a single stroke.
Before the cloud of dust raised by the braking had settled, the Beaver’s doors opened. Vice-Commodore Olezza was the first to climb down from the cabin, planting the soles of his boots firmly upon Seymour Island’s frozen mud.
His weathered face, furrowed by the deep marks of tension accumulated over weeks of uncertainty, lit up with an open smile when he saw the men of the Sovereignty Patrol running towards the aeroplane, cheering with restrained enthusiasm.
Lieutenant Licciardello arrived at a trot, leading the group. His cold-weather clothing was completely soiled by the grey dust of the compacted rock. He came rigidly to attention before his superior in accordance with military regulations, although the emotion of the moment caused his voice to break as he delivered his report:
‘Sir! Camp Beta reports that the three-hundred-metre runway has been formally inaugurated, with no operational incidents affecting personnel or equipment,’ Licciardello exclaimed, his eyes visibly moist.
Olezza dismissed the formation, setting aside the rigidity of military protocol for a moment to embrace the young officer who had led the effort upon the plateau in a deep and brotherly hug. His voice hoarse but filled with profound conviction, the Vice-Commodore looked into the eyes of the men under his command.
‘What you have done here has no name in any military manual, lads. The bureaucracy decreed that deep-draught ships, months of logistical preparation and heavy bulldozers would be required to place a single wheel upon this island. Yet here is that wheel — and it was put here by twenty-one pairs of Argentine arms.’
Meanwhile, Pose and Velázquez had climbed down to conduct a visual inspection of the undercarriage. To their great relief and surprise, the tyres showed neither deep cuts nor deformation. This provided irrefutable proof that the monumental labour carried out by the ground crews had achieved an admirable standard of technical excellence.
‘They’re intact, Lieutenant,’ Velázquez announced, striking the tread of the left tyre firmly with the palm of his hand.
Olezza approached the airmen to congratulate them, gripping their gloved hands firmly.
‘Good work, Pose. That wind very nearly played us a nasty trick during the final seconds of the approach.’
With appropriate modesty, the pilot looked back at the narrow and rudimentary strip of cleared ground stretching behind him. He adjusted his balaclava before replying:
‘The Beaver performed magnificently, sir. But three hundred metres is scarcely a breath if the objective is to bring the heavy Douglas C-47 over from the hangars at Matienzo.’
Vice-Commodore Olezza nodded, fully acknowledging the pilot’s point, and turned towards the other patrol non-commissioned officers, who had gathered around the fuselage of P-03 with faces cracked by the cold. His voice regained the firmness of an irrevocable order.
‘Listen carefully, lads. Today we have finally shattered the myth of Antarctic winter isolation, but geopolitics does not wait for pioneers to finish celebrating. By the end of the week, I require four hundred metres of clear runway, and by October its total length must reach twelve hundred metres without fail. Douglas TA-05 is waiting at Matienzo and requires that distance to stop before the violent spring storms begin. Sharpen your pickaxes — the real work begins tomorrow!’
The roar of the Pratt & Whitney engine as the aircraft took off for its return flight to Matienzo barely an hour later marked the formal beginning of the second and most demanding phase of Operation Marambio.
The men of the Sovereignty Patrol walked silently back towards the canvas of their tents, their worn pickaxes resting upon their hardened shoulders. They knew perfectly well that their isolation remained absolute at the furthest reaches of the Weddell Sea, and that the implacable Antarctic winter had not yet fully withdrawn its icy claws.
Yet they also marched with the intimate and unshakeable certainty that the history of Argentine Antarctica had been set upon a new course for ever, beneath the indelible mark of those first wheels, branded as though by fire into the hard stone of the plateau.
(To be continued)…
Alejandro G. Mazzuchi
Retired military aviator — Writer of historical narratives
