“What happened to the Antarctic Snow Cruiser? In 1939 a fifty-five feet long, twenty feet wide monster, weighing 37 tonnes and designed to have a range of over 8000 miles arrived on Antarctica. Built in the late 1930s for Richard E. Byrd’s Third Antarctic Expedition, it was one of the most incredible ventures in engineering history, not just in its size and scale but also her failure as an exploratory vehicle and subsequent disappearance.”
If you put the Snow Cruiser next to a conventional snowcat, it would look like a tractor trailer next to passenger van. This thing was large and in charge in the mind’s eye of its creators but once it hit the field the story was a bit different. A fascinating story of an old school man vs nature that you’ve probably never heard:
If you like what you just watched and want to go deep here’s a sweet list of references you can get into:
The best website for archives and information on the cruiser GO HERE
Best overview and details on the design and history of the cruiser GO HERE
An Atlantic article with great photos of the cruiser GO HERE
Interview with someone who saw it in person GO HERE
Colour footage of the cruiser GO HERE
“With Byrd at the South Pole”- a documentary Byrd made (where I got most of the stock footage) that went on to be the first documentary to win an Oscar GO HERE