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Two helicopters landing on flat white snow.

Date Taken:

February 4, 1963

Photograph By:

U.S. Navy

License Type:

Public Domain

The first helicopters to ever land at the South Pole. This photo shows two of the three helicopters from the U.S. Army Transportation Board at Fort Eustis, Virginia, arriving at the South Pole after the completion of topographic survey work during Operation Deep Freeze 1963.

The three Army HU-1B (later designated UH-1B) Iroquois turbine engine helicopters’ crews had placed ground control points for the aerial topographic photography conducted by U.S. Navy pilots. At the completion of this work, the helicopters refueled at Mount Weaver and then flew to the South Pole on 4 February. A few hours after landing, the helicopters were loaded into LC-130F cargo planes and returned to McMurdo.

This is an archival image.

Associated Keywords

Helo, Historical, History, NSF, Public Domain

By downloading this image, you agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of the image license.

This photo is in the public domain.

Photos whose copyright has expired or were taken by government employees as part of their job duties are considered to be in the public domain. Public domain works are not subject to copyright laws. Anyone may download these photos and use them freely, even for commercial purposes.

Attribution is not legally required for public domain photos but is strongly recommended.

This photo is covered by a Creative Commons license. Please see the Usage and Submissions page for more information. Use of this photo requires the following:

(1.) The user must give appropriate credit to the photographer and the National Science Foundation (NSF) and provide a link to the Creative Commons license. (2.) Use of the photo must be for non-commercial purposes only. (3.) No derivative works may be made with the original photo without the explicit permission of the photographer.

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