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Air-tractor sledge
Sir Douglas Mawson's air-tractor sledge was a converted fixed-wing aircraft taken on the 1911–14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition, the first plane to be taken to the Antarctic.〔Bickel (2000), p. 39〕 Expedition leader Douglas Mawson had planned to use the Vickers R.E.P. Type Monoplane as a reconnaissance and search and rescue tool, and to assist in publicity, but the aircraft crashed heavily during a test flight in Adelaide, Australia, only two months before Mawson's scheduled departure date. The plane was nevertheless sent south with the expedition, after having been stripped of its wings and metal sheathing from the fuselage. Engineer Frank Bickerton spent most of the 1912 winter working to convert it to a sledge, fashioning brakes from a pair of geological drills and a steering system from the plane's landing gear. It was first tested on 15 November 1912 and subsequently assisted in laying depots for the summer sledging parties, but its use during the expedition was minimal.
Towing a train of four sledges, the air-tractor accompanied a party led by Bickerton to explore the area to the west of the expedition's base at Cape Denison. The freezing conditions resulted in the jamming of the engine's pistons after just , and the air-tractor was left behind. Some time later it was dragged back to Cape Denison, and its frame was left on the ice when the expedition returned home in 1913. In 2008 a team from the Mawson's Huts Foundation began searching for the remains of the air-tractor sledge; a seat was found in 2009, and fragments of the tail assembly a year later.
The Mawson's Huts Foundation has undertaken extensive investigation using sophisticated equipment in 2009 and 2010. Results indicate that the air tractor, or parts of it, is still buried under 3m of ice where it was abandoned at Cape Denison.
== Background ==
Douglas Mawson had accompanied Ernest Shackleton's 1907–09 British Antarctic Expedition. Along with Edgeworth David and Alistair Mackay, he had been part of a man-hauled sledging expedition, the first to reach the area of the South Magnetic Pole. Upon his return from Antarctica, he recommenced to his post as geology lecturer at the University of Adelaide.〔Riffenburgh (2009), p. 36〕 Despite an offer from Robert Falcon Scott to join his Terra Nova Expedition to reach the Geographic South Pole, Mawson began planning his own Antarctic expedition.〔Riffenburgh (2009), pp. 36–37〕 Mawson's plan, which led to the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, envisaged three bases on the Antarctic continent, collectively surveying much of the coast directly south of Australia. He approached Shackleton, who not only approved of his plan but was prepared to lead the expedition himself.〔Riffenburgh (2009), pp. 37–38〕 Although Shackleton withdrew from the expedition in December 1910, he continued to assist Mawson with publicity and fund-raising.〔Riffenburgh (2009), pp. 38–40〕
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