Imagine an enormous 45 tonn vehicle (length 17.0 meters – width 6.06 meters) with giant tires of 1,900 pounds each (height wheels retracted 3.7 meters – height wheels extended 4.9 meters) and powered by two 200-hp diesel engines.On top of that it carries a Navy pursuit plane and it drives over the South Pole’s icy wastelands.
That is exactly what happened in 1939. This giant snow cruiser carried five men and a Navy BI-plane and sufficient equipment for an exploring trip to last a year and it is missing.As the Americans knew that the Nazi were conducting a secret expedition in Antarctica, Admiral Richard E. Byrd received confidential orders from the White House for putting together an American expedition to Antarctica.
The possible reason for the expedition… the Americans wanted to be the first to gain entrance and to explore the lands inside the earth beyond the South Pole.
The snow machine was featured in every newspaper headline concerning the preparations for the 1939 Antarctic Expedition and for months Americans had read every tiny detail about the progress of manufacturing the beast.But after The Snow Cruiser arrived at Little America in the Bay of Whales, Antarctica in early January 1940… the mystery begin.From this point on the vehicle was never mentioned again in the newspapers and it was as though the snow cruiser never existed.During Operation Highjump in late 1946, an expedition team found the abandoned vehicle but inside, the vehicle was exactly as the crew had left it, with papers, magazines, and cigarettes scattered all around.The snow cruiser needed only air in the tires and some servicing to make it operational.In 1958, an international expedition uncovered the snow cruiser again using a bulldozer. It was covered by several feet of snow but a long bamboo pole marked its position.
Later expeditions reported no trace of the vehicle and now it is still unsure where the snow cruiser is and the question remains what happened to the monster machine and the data it was designed to gather.
