 It's time for the Lawn Jean Chronoscope, a television journal of the important issues of the hour brought to you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, a presentation of the Lawn Jean Wittner Watch Company, maker of Lawn Jean, the world's most honored watch, and Wittner, distinguished companion to the world-honored Lawn Jean. Good evening. This is Frank Knight. May I introduce our co-editors for this edition of the Lawn Jean Chronoscope? Larry Lecer, from the CBS television news staff, and Kenneth Crawford, National Affairs Editor of Newsweek Magazine. Our distinguished guest for this evening is Colonel Bernd Balkan, the Arctic expert of the United States Air Force. Colonel Balkan, we can see by your chest that you've received many military distinctions, but I don't think you've ever gotten sufficient credit for expanding the world's air frontiers more than any other man has. Now, which do you consider your greatest achievement, the visit to the South Pole or to the North Pole? I consider the South Pole a greater achievement than my many later visits to the North Pole, because it culminated two-and-a-half years of intense work and planning, together with Admiral Burt, to achieve the flight to the South Pole in 1929. In comparison to the equipment and the techniques we had at that time and now, I consider it a greater achievement as far as achieving the flight across the pole. Colonel, the North Pole, however, is much more important strategically, is it not? Yes, it is. And air power has brought the North Pole into our strategic thinking today. Well, Colonel, you were the American project officer in building the great American air base at Tula in Greenland. Now, what is its strategic importance? Its strategic importance is this, that it is one of the key points in the defense of the North American continent and one of the bastions also in the defense of the democracies of the world. It's so strategically located that the best way to explain the thing is for anybody who wants to look at it a little more closely, take a globe and see its location. And it comes out from certain basic facts. The location of the population on the globe today, over 85% of them are located in the Northern Hemisphere, between latitudes 35 and 50 North. And where they are located, the industries are located and the industries of today, military speaking, are our strategic targets. Is that, Colonel, wholly a defensive base for radar and interception in case of attack, or is it also useful as a base for attack by us? An effective defense installation must also be offensive. What about the commercial possibilities of the Tula air base? Is that open the world for peacetime travel too? Yes, it does. And as I just said, the location of the industries and populations, the airplane has the facility which put the Arctic into the center of our world in the air age. Namely, it can take the shortest route between any two places on the globe. And all these shortest route, the great circle courses, converge towards the North Pole. Some of them will even go across the geographic pole. If, for instance, we would go the shortest route from here to Karachi in India, the great circle course would take us straight across the North Pole. If we would go from here, for instance, to the Middle East, we would go through the high Arctic, north of Greenland. We would save several thousand miles. For Europe, for instance, is of tremendous importance these bases, Tula and Alaska. A traveler from London to Tokyo would save over two thousand miles one way by going across the Arctic instead of the conventional way today. Well, Colonel, you piloted the first aircraft over the south pole. Now, has that continent down there got any strategic importance? It has some strategic significance. If, for instance, the Panama Canal should be blocked. All vessels, they couldn't go through the Panama Canal, which had to go around Cape Horn. But it has not got this high priority, strategic significance as the high Arctic, as the North Pole has. General Arnold, in his book, Global Mission, said, if a third world war should come, its strategic center is the North Pole. Colonel, because of the New Look military policy, the so-called New Look, with greater emphasis being placed on strategic bombing, I assume that we can guess that the enemy or potential enemy also will put new stress on strategic bombing. That makes Tula more important than ever, does it not? It makes it more a key point in the whole defense system across the high North. General Spass said in 1946, the Arctic will one day become the by-race for operational missions. It works both ways. They are all open across the high North. That was in 1946, but Tula is one of the bases that's closing the gap in the North in the defense of our continent. Colonel, in connection with Mr. Crawford, as just said, we saw some pictures the other day in the public papers of two Russian bombers that were supposed to be similar to our B-36 and our B-52. Did you happen to see them? Were you impressed by them? I saw them in the paper, and I haven't seen any more than you have seen. I was not impressed. I'm more impressed by what I've seen in our technical magazines that our designers have on the paper on coming strategic operational aircraft. You think, in other words, that we're still way ahead on strategic aircraft? I believe so. I'm firmly convinced so. Well, may I ask you, Colonel, something about your experiences in flying? What would you say was your most thrilling experience? Well, that's difficult to say, but I think one of the most difficult missions I've had was a rescue operation in Greenland in 1942-43. It took us six months to get a stranded bomber crew off the Greenland ice cap. We lost five men on the rescue. We got the rest of them out after trying all kinds of means to get in and get them back to civilization and get them back to their own. Well, Bernd, did that give you your greatest satisfaction of your career? It has given me some of the greatest satisfaction of a career to help other people in distress, to get them back so they can meet their relatives and their dear ones again and to get them back to the services. Colonel, is Tully developed as far as it will be? Tully is now completed practically. It's a chain in our Arctic defenses. When that is completed, that's a thing that's open to opinion, what we mean by a complete defense chain. That is elastic. Well, Colonel, without breaching any security regulations, could we ask you just what is up on that Tully air base? It's a city in itself up in the high Arctic as a military installation, as we said, built there for the sole purpose of the defenseable continent. Whether the defense is a pure defensive operation or it's an offensive defensive operation, the situation will call for that. Would you locate that, Colonel, how far from the pole, how far above the circuit? It's 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle at 76 degrees and 30 north latitude. It's 810 miles from the geographic north pole. But how far between New York and Moscow? Unpleasant place to live? No, I wouldn't say so, to be so high up in the high north. We are right of favor there by a milder climate and comparative latitudes, not a place. We call it the garden-spotted Arctic. Certain people are different with us, but there are always differences of opinion. You've looked at a good deal, have you not? Yes, I have in the Arctic. Well, Colonel, you've been up there for many years and many visits. Have you ever seen anything suspicious up there, like, say, flying saucers? No, not yet. But we have. One thing that's very peculiar about a characteristic of the Arctic, very weird displays of war over Borealis, another light and optical phenomena still sometimes a light sun rays, but the saucers haven't arrived as yet as far as I know. This is what you paint, Colonel. I try, and one of my hobbies, to paint, to depict the colors as I see them in the Arctic, to try to convey some of my impressions of the high north. They have a richer color center. It's not dark, cold, and bleak. Colors are cold, but they have a lot of color all the same. Colonel, I attended your exhibition here the other day, and I wondered how you actually were able to paint from the cockpit of an aircraft high up in the air. Well, you can have many ways to compose a painting and to get your impressions home with you. You can set it down on a large sheet of paper, then you can handle it in a cockpit. Your space is confined there, and with a small watercolor box and a small pad, you can catch the colors and put them on the paper. You can also make a thumbnail sketch, the outline, and write down there, and it's your turn. You develop what you see and then take it home and also train your memory to remember his beautiful colors you have. Colonel, as the first man to fly over both poles, could you tell us, do you still have any unsatisfied ambitions? Well, that's a difficult question to answer, but one of my greatest satisfactions for my interest in the Arctic and the defense of our continent here was to see when it was decided a tool would be built. Yes, I have some unsatisfied areas to see the completion of a network over the fence chain across the Arctic. That will in the future sometime be the airways across the polar regions. Well, as a final question, can I ask you, Colonel, do you think it's really possible to prevent the enemy from going across those vast Arctic wastes into our homeland? Nobody can prevent an intruder there unless you have a very strong defensive chain across there. But it's always of great value to our defenses back here and to our fighters to know when they are coming, from where they are coming, and how many they are coming. And there is a mission for a defense chain across the Arctic. I see it will alert us against their coming. Yes, to find out there is an uncalled for visitor coming. I see. Thank you very much, Colonel Block. It's been a great pleasure to have you here tonight. It's a pleasure to be with you. I can assure you. Thank you. The opinions you've heard our speakers express tonight have been entirely their own. The editorial board for this edition of the long-geamed chronoscope was Larry LeSere and Kenneth Crawford. 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