Mawsons Air Tractor no 1 or no 2?

Mawson bought the second of Vickers REP monoplanes. The first one crashed and was a write off. Vickers did not want this to be publicised, so they re-badged No2 as No1. Mawsons Aeroplane has been called Vickers No1 ever since.

The story of the monoplane before it went to Antarctica, and the story of our search, was presented at a conference called Antarctic Visions in Hobart in July 2010.

I intend to edit videos of these talks and put them online, along with all the information we have about Mawsons Air Tractor.

The search for Mawsons Air Tractor

My colleague Dr Tony Stewart and I (both of us are doctors), have been looking for Mawsons Air Tractor at Cape Denison Antarctica for the past two years (2009 and 2010 seasons). In 2010 we used a number of methods to locate the fuselage, but were unable to dig for it because of a blizzard.

We think we have found the location of the fuselage (there was a lot of media interest in some fragments of the tail found in Jan 2010, but these were cut off the fuselage and are not what we are looking for).

The detailed story so far was written up by me online at the Australian Antarctic Division:

http://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/australian-antarctic-magazine/issue-18-2010/the-search-for-mawsons-air-tractor

Dr Chris Henderson