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Soviets: North to South pole flight

Shivam302001
Member
#1 · Posted: 4 Jul 2019 05:44
While escaping from USSR, Tintin was mistaken to be the pilot who is supposed to travel from the North to South pole with a touchdown in Berlin.
When this story was being published, there was no such similar incident taking place. The engines at that time were not strong enough to sustain such a long duration flight and as far as I know, this feat was only accomplished in 1965.
So why did Hergé suddenly have the idea of a North-to-South Pole flight so long ago, when it was difficult to cross even the North- or South-Poles alone by aviation?
Is it another instance of Hergé anticipating future outcomes by predicting a feat that would remain unaccomplished for a long time to come?
jock123
Moderator
#2 · Posted: 4 Jul 2019 18:27
Shivam302001:
there was no such similar incident taking place

Well, not exactly that, but the first Antarctic expedition by Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr. took place while the story was running in the papers, and I am sure that that, with planes landing on that continent for the first time, and - launched on November 28, 1929 - the first flight over the South Pole and back, must have put sorties speculating what the next record to fall might be in the public consciousness.

It's probably Hergé playing such achievements for laughs that he suggests that such a feat might be about to be performed by a diminutive Belgian, or that he might be mistaken for such a daredevil pilot; however, he and his young readers must have been enthused by the way in which aviation was coming along in leaps and bounds, and while it was obviously going to take time, it won't have seemed wildly outlandish to suggest that once the poles had fallen to pilots, that someone would take up the challenge of pole-to-pole flight.

As you say, it didn't actually happen for a long time, but hindsight is a marvelous thing; there were all sorts of stories about how man would develop permanent Moon-bases and take trips to both the Inner and Outer Planets when Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon. Nobody at the time could say it would certainly happen, but then again, nobody would have thought that man would stop going to the Moon almost as soon as he'd got there either.
snowybella
Member
#3 · Posted: 5 Jul 2019 01:50
The original pilot could easily have had stop-overs in the various countries he was flying over - somewhat like the two Andmunsen-vs.-Scott original Arctic(?) land-expeditions.

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