Antarctic's First Plane, Found In Ice

Arvisp writes "In 1912 Australian explorer Douglas Mawson planned to fly over the southern pole. His lost plane has now been found. The plane – the first off the Vickers production line in Britain – was built in 1911, only eight years after the Wright brothers executed the first powered flight. For the past three years, a team of Australian explorers has been engaged in a fruitless search for the aircraft, last seen in 1975. Then on Friday, a carpenter with the team, Mark Farrell, struck gold: wandering along the icy shore near the team's camp, he noticed large fragments of metal sitting among the rocks, just a few inches beneath the water."

The Independent is a little dishonest here

[Suki I]

A few paragraphs down in TFA:

Mawson had hoped to stage the first flight over the Antarctic ice cap, but the plane crashed on the Australian mainland before he set sail. No one was hurt, but with the wings damaged and no time to repair them, the explorer adapted the craft to haul his sledges, adding skis to the undercarriage and a special tail-rudder.

It was an airplane before being loaded on the boat, then it was just a cool looking tug.

Re:Cue the pissing contest

[Anonymous Coward]

And Americans, always wanting to show they have the biggest dicks, must bitch about the idea of the "Antarctic's First Plane" by stating it's not "Antarctic's First Flight".

Re:Does anything ever leave Antarctica?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Antarctic Treaty means pretty much everything that can possibly be cleaned up is cleaned up. Things that can't be cleaned up shouldn't even be done.