Jon Johanson stranded in Antartica....

(Snowbird) wrote:

Does have me wondering how the same bunch would vote on
Scott vs. Amundsen. The latter exemplified good preparation,
good leadership (made one turnback decision when wx too bad),
and good planning. The former planned for unfeasible, untested
transportation and inadequate, inadequately marked caches. He
pressed on beyond the limits of his supplies and failed to take
into account known problems, thus killing himself and everyone
with him.

At the time, Scott was almost deified as a hero, and Amundsen
almost vilified.

So...here we have a lady who planned ahead and had fuel cached,
then who scratched a flight and turned back when it became
obvious she couldn't make it to her planned fuel stop. Good
planning, pre-flight and enroute. Willing to make the hard
calls.

Then we have a chap who didn't plan ahead and had fuel cached,
and who at some point enroute made a decision to press on
rather than turn back and land somewhere he hadn't made prior
arrangements for fueling.

As far as I can see that is exactly what he did do - turn back and
land somewhere where he had not made arrangements for refueling,
instead of pressing on into risky weather. Having determined that he
couldn't make it to Argentina, he wanted to land at a different base,
but the weather made it too risky.

I would equate him to Amundsen in your analogy, right down to the
vilification. He isn't dead, no one had to risk their lives looking
for him (despite the American statements about risking their lives
etc.) and he landed with 7 hours of fuel left. To me he made a
sensible call to land rather than push on, and the
availability/unavailability of fuel didn't influence the decision.
Better to worry about that once you are safely on the ground.

He did say they made a mistake in not making the decision until after
it was too late to return to New Zealand, which seems like a fair
assessment to me.