John Brotherhood Evacuation
Dave Brook
The JATO bottle (Z-Fids Newsletter No. 34) results from the first flight into Halley Bay in 1967
by US Hercules to evacuate John Brotherhood after he broke his back man-hauling over the ice cliff
with Jim Shirtcliffe. That was also the occasion when a wind arrow was marked out on the snow
for the Americans using cocoa and Geoff Smith (Abdul) jokingly said that they had used the whole
of the base supply to do so. What do you know, a few weeks later another Hercules flew over
and dropped a parachute of goodies, which included a case of "Schlitz - the beer that made Milwaukee famous"
- though I can't think why! - and a load of American drinking chocolate (which, surprisingly was
infinitely preferable to the base cocoa, of which there was still an awful lot left - we always reckoned
in the field that we could take one tin out of the first box of sledging rations and it would last the
whole field season). The US pilot also reckoned he had to slam the anchors on when he landed because he
thought he was running out of runway - it had been marked out by 45-gallon drums at 50-yard intervals,
while the pilot was used to the drum markings being at 500-yard intervals.
[9 April 2014]
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| Johnny Carter with US parachute. |
| Picture by Dave Brook |
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| JATO bottle in lounge. |
| Picture by Dave Brook |
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| Goodies dropped by US Navy. |
| Picture by Dave Brook |
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