Dr. Walter Bleistein Coming Here to Enlist Aid of Federal Government.
Co-operation of the United States Government and American scientific organizations in a proposed Arctic expedition of the German dirigible Graf Zeppelin will be sought here this week by Dr. Walter Bleistein. secretary and treasurer of the Aero-Arctic Society, who arrived In this country from Europe recently. Dr. Bleistein probably will arrive in this city tomorrow and will remain here two or three weeks, it is expected.
Dr. Bleistein will request the assistance of the War Department, Navy Department and Weather Bureau in arranging the details of the expedition, in setting up fueling and servicing depots and in maintaining communications and weather forecasting services while the big dirigible is in flight over the areas mapped for exploration. The scientific party aboard the Graf Zeppelin probably will be headed by Fridtjof Nansen, noted Arctic explorer. The Graf Zeppelin is to leave Friedrichshafen, Germany, its home base, some time in April, according to present plans, and proceed to Tromsoe, Norway, where a mooring mast has been erected.
Will Ask Co-operation.
From Tromsoe the Graf Zeppelin will fly to Fairbanks, Alaska, where a mast is now being erected. The Army station at Fairbanks, under command of Maj. Gen. John L. Hines, commandant of the 9th Corps Area, will be asked to co-operate with the Graf Zeppelin party during their operations from Fairbanks. After completing its work from the Fairbanks base, the Graf Zeppelin will return home byway of the Bering Sea and Siberia.
The principal objects of the projected expedition, it is understood, will be to mark the boundaries between deep and shallow waters in the Arctic seas, to study meteorological and magnetic conditions and to prepare for the establishment of scientific survey stations in the Far North.
According to word received here from Dr. Bleistein. who now is in New York. Dr. Hugo Eckener, master of the Graf Zeppelin, will not make the trip, turning command over to his first officer, Capt. Ernst Lehmann, who commanded the dirigible on the last leg of its round-the-world flight from Lakehurst to Germany in September. Dogs and sleds will be carried for ground survey work in the Immediate vicinity of the Arctic bases.
Knows Magnetic Conditions.
While in this city Dr. Bleistein will consult with John Adam Fleming, vice president of the American branch of the Aero-Arctic Society. Flemming was magnetic observer of the Coast and Geodetic Survey from 1904 to 1910 and has been chief magnetician of the Carnegie Institution’s department of terrestrial magnetism since 1904 and chief of the magnetic survey division since 1919. For three years he also was head of the institution’s observatory division.
Mr. Fleming is thoroughly familiar with magnetic conditions in the Arctic, having gained international prominence as author of “Scientific Results of the Ziegler Polar Expedition of 1903-1905-1908.” He also was co-author of the second to fourth volumes of researches of the department of terrestrial magnetism of the Carnegie Institution.
Evening Star, Washington, DC, November 3, 1929