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Boeing Country: Tacoma-Based Globemaster Stars in Antarctic Runway Test
Thursday, April 4, 2002
By Chris Genna
Journal Business Reporter

My, but those Boeing C-17s get around.

The U.S. Air Force published a photo Monday on its ``Air Force Link'' Web page of one of the Long Beach, Calif.-built four-jet transports landing in Antarctica. The plane is assigned to the 446th Airlift Wing at McChord Air Force Base near Tacoma.

Boeing Aircraft and Missiles unit thought enough of the photo to publish a link to the Air Force Web site on its internal news network.

General news outlets have been filled recently with reports of C-17s supporting America's war on terror in Afghanistan, but readers may have forgotten that it was a McChord C-17 that flew Keiko the orca whale to Iceland in 1998.

Altogether, the stories show the Globemaster's worldwide migration pattern extends from pole to pole as well.

The C-17 pictured was participating in a test of a technique to keep the runway, which lies on a 100- to 200-foot-thick block of ice near McMurdo station, from turning to slush. Even in Antarctica's summer, November through February, the temperature rarely gets above 30 degrees, the Air Force account said, but intense solar radiation during 24-hour daylight still melts the runway surface.

Four Air Force engineers decided that snow, because it's much whiter than ice, could be compacted on the runway to reflect the solar rays. But ``No one involved with the project could remember anyone ever trying to land a heavy, wheeled aircraft on snow,'' the Air Force story said. ``Skis allowed the weight of the aircraft to be dispersed, but what would aircraft tires do to the snow?''
(More: The Eastside Journal News Source)
2002 © Horvitz Newspapers, Inc.

Dan