Little America ( English Little America , in the lane. Little America ) - the American research base in Antarctica . Its location changed five times due to the sliding of the ice shelf on the sea on which it was located.
Little America is located in West Antarctica, on the eastern edge of the Ross Ice Shelf , Whale Bay and Cayman Bay. The base was founded in 1929 by the American polar pilot and traveler Richard Byrd . Often used by Byrd himself and the researchers after him when studying the Antarctic continent.
Richard Baird led the first Antarctic expedition to fly from Little America in 1929 that used airplanes , and he was the first to reach the South Pole by air, flying his plane over the pole. It took the American explorer only a few hours to overcome the distance separating Little America from the South Pole, while it took months for his predecessors, the expeditions of Royal Amundsen and Robert Scott . Byrd was also the first person to see the South Pole after the English traveler Robert Scott. Since the pilot could not land the plane at the pole, he only dropped the American flag over it.
In Little America, the first radio station on the 6th continent was also created, constantly broadcasting both its own programs and broadcasts from the United States, located 11 thousand miles from Antarctica.
Of great interest to philatelists is the postal correspondence that came from the Little America base, with a special postmark.
In March 1934, Byrd began work on the study of weather and geophysical conditions in the interior of the continent. To this end, he leaves the polar base. Having deepened in the winter, in conditions of extreme cold and darkness, the researcher is seriously ill and asks the station for help on the radio. Despite the fact that Byrd’s message was decrypted incorrectly, the polar explorers equipped an expedition in search of him, and in August 1934 went to him. In October, the researcher was finally delivered to Little America. The lowest temperature recorded by Bird during his research in the winter of 1934 was -82 ° F, which equals -63 ° C.
In the 1950s, Little America served as the American scientific base for research programs at the South Pole during the International Geophysical Year ( 1957 ).