Paul Siple: American Explorer

Paul Siple was an American Antarctic Explorer and Geographer from Erie who took part in six Antarctic expeditions, including the two Byrd expeditions of 1928-1930 and 1933-1935, representing the Boy Scouts of America as an Eagle Scout. Paul was also a Sea Scout. His first and third books covered these adventures. With Charles F. Passel he developed the wind chill factor, Paul Siple coined the term.
Born Paul Allman Siple on December 18, 1908, in Montpelier, Ohio, his father, Clyde L. Siple, and mother, Fannie Hope (Allman) Siple, moved the family to Erie, when Paul was about ten years of age, where two years later he joined the Boy Scouts of America. Merit badge work held the greatest interest for him and by the time he was eighteen, sixty of these badges had been earned. He applied himself to the study of insects, radio, woodwork, art, athletics, first aid, bee-keeping, and many other areas of science as well as pragmatic subjects. It was during this period of time that Paul discovered Captain Robert F. Scott's ill-fated journey during a Sea Scout session aboard the retired Brig Niagara when his Sea Scout leader read the story to his troop. The story cultivated his lifelong interest and desire to visit distant, frozen lands.

Upon graduation from from Central High School in 1926, he took a job working as an assistant draftsman for a year so that he could save money for entering college. The following year, in 1927, he entered Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and through the encouragement of Dr. Chester A. Darling, the head of the Biology Department, and a local Scoutmaster, Paul chose biology as his major in college. Having finished Spring Examinations, he spent the summer working in the Boy Scout’s camp as a nature instructor with the intentions of returning to school for his sophomore year in September.

However, when class opened in the fall of 1928, and after an extensive nationwide search in 1928, when he was elected to be the first Eagle Scout to be selected for an Antarctic Expedition, Paul Siple was serving on board Commander Richard E. Byrd's Antarctic Expedition flagship City of New York as the official representative of the Boy Scouts of America. Paul spent the next eighteen months either at sea or on the Antarctic continent living in close quarters with 41 other men. While there he taught himself to train and drive a dog team and learned the basic essentials of polar travel and camping, the mysteries of sorting out stores and provisions and all the innumerable chores of a large polar base.

When the explorers returned to the United States in the spring of 1930, Paul began a series of extraordinary accomplishments. Returning to Allegheny College, he became a brother of the Alpha Chi Rho fraternity while completing three years of study in two, thereby receiving his Bachelor of Science degree in biology in 1932. Dr. Darling, his mentor, was instrumental in this rapid movement and Paul forever afterwards acknowledged his regard for and gratitude to his dear friend. Paul participated in a lecture tour during the years 1930 and 1931, most often speaking to Boy Scout councils. On several of these occasions, he and Admiral Byrd lectured together. His association and friendship with Richard E. Byrd was tightly interlocked until the Admiral's death on March 11, 1957.

While continuing his education, Paul Siple married Ruth Ida Johannesmeyer on December 19, 1936, while attending Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, from which he received a Ph.D. in 1939. His dissertation was on Adaptations of the Explorer to the Climate of Antarctic. He worked in the Army Scientific Office for most of his career.

Paul was involved with the United States Antarctic Service Expedition of 1939-1941, which would have been the third Byrd expedition. It was this planned expedition when Admiral Byrd's Antarctic Snow Cruiser made it trip from Chicago to Boston, passing through Erie County in November of 1939, en-route to Boston harbor to be loaded aboard ship bound for the Antarctic.

He also served during Operation High Jump, (also known as the United States Navy Antarctic Developments Program 1946-1947), developed cold weather gear for the Korean War, and Operation Deep Freeze I in 1955-1956. He was the inaugural scientific leader at the U.S. Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station 1956-1957, during the International Geophysical Year. This activity is covered in his fourth book.

Paul Siple became a leading authority on the principles governing the adaptation of man to life in cold regions and on polar logistics. On December 31, 1956, he appeared on the cover of Time Magazine as the Scientific Leader of Admundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Among many other awards, he received the Patron's Medal of the [British Royal Geographic] Society in 1958, after receiving the Silver Buffalo Award from the BSA in 1947. In 1958, he received the Order of the Arrow National Distinguished Service Award, and the Hubbard Medal from the National Geographic Society. From 1963-1966 he served as the first U.S. science attaché to Australia and New Zealand where he had a stroke in 1966 and returned to the United States. He died on November 25, 1968, at the Army Research Center in Arlington, Virginia.

The Antarctic features many geographical points and a station named after Paul: Siple Coast, Siple Island, Mount Siple, Siple Ridge, and Siple Station were named in his honor.

Paul Siple.

Eagle Scout Paul Siple with his troop.

Paul Siple with his lifelong friend Admiral Byrd.

On December 31, 1956, Paul Siple appeared on the cover of Time Magazine as the Scientific Leader of Admundsen-Scott South Pole Station.

Admiral Byrd's Snow Cruiser arrives in Erie County

Admiral Byrd’s Antarctic Snow Cruiser was built in 1939 to support his third Antarctic expedition. It was a huge, one-of-a-kind invention designed to house scientists while they traveled to the South Pole and back over a 12-month period. It sported four, independently-steered, pneumatic tires 10 feet tall, and carried an airplane on its roof in support of the expedition. This Jules Verne-like vehicle also slept four comfortably, boasted a galley, machine shop, darkroom, and radio room, and carried a year’s supply of food.

Byrd’s Snow Cruiser was designed by Dr. Thomas C. Poulter, Director of the Armour Institute in Chicago, and built by the Pullman Company of sleeping car fame at a cost of $150,000. The vehicle was so large the only way to get it from Chicago to Boston, its port of departure, was to drive it across country very, very slowly. The trip attracted huge crowds and newspaper headlines along the way especially when a series of mishaps spurred speculation that Byrd’s Snow Cruiser was a white elephant in disguise.

While in eastern Ohio a hydraulic line which controlled the steering broke in an accident, the Cruiser limped into the Borough of Albion on November 01, 1939, using only the right-side motors. In need of repairs the cruiser continued on, for the next three days, slowly crawling to the city of Erie, arriving on November 04, around six o’clock in the evening. Lumbering through the city it finally arrived at the General Electric Plant in Lawrence Park to receive much needed repairs. Work was begun, under the supervision of Dr. Thomas C. Poulter, at 8:15 p.m. While at the plant the left side motors were repaired and the hydraulics brakes were replaced with a new electrical braking system. New modifications, that were originally planned to be made to cruiser when it arrived in Boston, were completed at the Lawrence Park plant.

Afterwards, the cruiser repaired and modified, left General Electric and continued on to Framington, Massachusetts, 20 miles from Boston, where the worst traffic jam was caused when 72,000 vehicles were unable to move on the highways. The Cruiser finally arrived in Boston on November 12, 1939, and drove to the wharf only to find that about five feet of the rear of the machine had to be cut off before loading it on the ship, the North Star. With the Cruiser lashed to the main deck, the ship headed for the Antarctic by the way of the Panama Canal and New Zealand.

By January 1940 (summertime in the Antarctic), the North Star was lashed to the ice about a mile from the base camp of the expedition.

The problem of unloading the 75,000-pound Cruiser from the deck of the ship to the floating ice was thought to be solved by Dr. Poulter who had an 80-foot long ramp built to serve as a bridge. As the machine moved slowly down the long ramp, sudden creaking and popping sounds were heard as the front wheels broke through the cross timbers, the vehicle coming to a dead stop. Dr. Poulter, in the driver’s seat, abandoned caution and gunned the motors as the Cruiser pulled itself free, then inched down the ramp to the solid ice, all the while Admiral Byrd was hanging on to a length of rope on the very top of the vehicle.

The Cruiser moved slowly along on the ice for about three miles, where it was halted by a slight grade, which proved to be too steep. The huge wheels stopped turning and the $150,000 machine never moved again. Engineers figured that power had been sacrificed for speed in the gear-reduction unit, and that the machine was too heavy for the four tires. The texture of the Antarctic snow was found to be different from that of the sand at the Indiana Dunes.

The big Cruiser was used only as living quarters for several of the members of the expedition, who continued their pioneering in the ice and snow of the Antarctic until 1942, when, because of World War II, concern led the explorers to return back home.

Unfortunately the Snow Cruiser proved much slower in the field then her specified cruising speed of 10-13 miles per hour. Though she may have been adept at fording crevasses, she was unable to climb the 35 percent grade she was designed for, a serious problem given her 30-ton weight caused her to sink in the snow more times than anyone cared to remember.

Byrd’s Snow Cruiser proved so problematic that it only managed to cover 96 miles in 12 months of activity, most of it in transit to Boston, and much of that in reverse! As a result, when the expedition ended, the vehicle was abandoned. She was rediscovered sometime in the 1950s, only to float away on an ice shelf and sink to the bottom of the sea. Nevertheless, the Institute has a warm place in its heart for Bryd’s impractical Snow Cruiser, even though sled dogs would have performed better.

Admiral Byrd’s Antarctic Snow Cruiser arrives in the Borough of Albion on November 01, 1939.

Admiral Byrd’s Antarctic Snow Cruiser arrives in the City of Erie on November 04, 1939.

Admiral Byrd’s Antarctic Snow Cruiser under repair at Lawrence Park’s General Electric plant.