Uncovering Admiral Richard Byrd's Mysterious Antarctic Base | Secrets in the Ice | Science Channel

Antarctica, one of the most brutally cold places in the world, a frozen desert where no life exists except for at its melting edges. On its southern side sits a deep bay known as the Ross Sea. It's here that America's McMurdo Station has become a hub of international polar exploration.

It's a bleak and inhospitable place. Blizzards and katabatic winds can blow in from nowhere and last for days. In 1963, a lookout on the American icebreaker USS Edisto spots a stadium sized iceberg in the Ross Sea and signals for the ship to stop.

The Ross Sea. It's a graveyard for these enormous icebergs that calve off the front of the Ross Ice Shelf. It happens all the time there.

The cliffs of the iceberg are an incredible nine stories high. But about halfway up there is a strange dark smear visible in the pristine ice. As the ship gets closer, it looks like debris stuck in the iceberg.

But what is it in Antarctica? Planes go missing at an alarming rate. So maybe these are the remains of a plane that crashed into the side of an iceberg.

To see better. The captain creeps the Edisto as close to the iceberg as he dares. Suddenly a dark shadow snaps into focus.

Huge boards of wood and large pieces of canvas are sticking out of the icebergs face. The crew of the Edisto Marvel at this strange sight. Could these materials be from a lost camp once used by Antarctic explorers?

In the early 1900s, adventurers were obsessed with discovering the South Pole. Famous Antarctic pioneers like Robert F Scott, Ernest Shackleton and Admiral Richard Byrd all built camps on the continent. If it is one of these famous explorers camps, how could it have gotten on to one of these giant icebergs in the first place?

A helicopter is readied and flies over the iceberg for a better look. The flapping sections of canvas appear to be large pieces of tarpaulin. The wooden boards look like the interior walls of a hut.

What is the tarpaulin covering? Could it be the roof of some kind of makeshift structure? When the helicopter lands on the surface of the iceberg, the crew are stunned.

Four thick poles are jutting out of the ice. They look like telephone poles. The presence of these poles clearly indicate that this was some kind of camp.

But to these poles provide enough of a clue to figure out whose camp it is. In 1940, just three miles into the Ross Ice Shelf, an American crew is building Rear Admiral Richard E Byrd's third Antarctic base, Little America three. By then, Bird had completed two successful trips to Antarctica.

He was well on his way to being considered a legendary explorer. He was the first person to fly across the South Pole. Little America three was bigger than his first two camps with room for more equipment and a powerful radio broadcasting station that required several large telephone poles for transmission.

Are these large poles sticking out of the iceberg evidence of Byrd's old camp? Well, they could be, but they have to be completely sure. There is one smoking gun piece of evidence that, if found, would confirm that this was Byrd's camp.

Byrd arrived in Antarctica with what at the time was the most advanced piece of equipment ever built for polar exploration. He called it the Antarctic snow Cruiser. Part ice tank.

Part ice bus, Part Invincible Travel Lodge. It was last seen partially buried on the Ross Ice Shelf. They can find that they'll have found a monumental relic of polar exploration.

It was supposed to have a range of 5000 miles. Bird wanted a five person crew to be able to explore Antarctica for days without ever having to leave the vehicle. The snow cruiser was 56ft long, 19ft wide and 16ft tall.

Smooth. Ten foot tall. Balloon tires were custom built to handle Antarctica's choppy ice and wide crevasses.

A pair of six cylinder diesel engines powered four diesel electric drive trains, generating an intimidating four wheel drive machine. They ran a combined 300 horsepower and a maximum speed of 30mph. Fully loaded.

The snow cruiser weighed 37 tons. And on the inside there were sleeping quarters, a workshop, a galley, plenty of storage space, and even a darkroom. But that's not all.

Byrd wanted room on top to carry a small plane that would fly ahead and scout safe routes for the snow cruiser. The snow cruiser cost $150,000, almost $3 million today. The price and the innovation of the design propelled the snow cruiser to instant fame.

After narrowly escaping a crash upon arrival, the snow cruiser struggles to live up to its reputation. This thing weighed 37 tons. If it went down, it's staying down.

Things went from bad to worse. Byrd learned the hard way that smooth wheels provide near zero traction on ice and snow. A research team managed to complete a 92 mile journey soon after arrival, but the smooth treadless tires frequently slipped and sank the giant vehicle deep into the snow.

The crew added chains to try and get better grip on the tires. They found they got the best traction going backwards, so they did the whole thing in reverse. The snow cruiser barely made it back to base camp and it never drove more than 100 miles.

His massive Antarctic exploration machine was a bust. It's thought that Bird would have parked it near the main building and it would have been used as extra storage or living quarters. If experts can establish where Bird parked the snow cruiser.

It could help them determine if the debris and the iceberg is, in fact, Bird's camp. The helicopter crew from the Edisto are not equipped to dig down through 20 plus feet of ice to further investigate the camp. So the helicopter crew, they just stood there on this iceberg.

They didn't really know what to do. Have they found the entire camp? Did only part of the camp break away?

And where is the snow cruiser? They have no idea. And the iceberg is too unstable to safely rappelled down to the building.

The captain of the Edisto makes a tough decision and calls the helicopter back to the ship. The helicopter pilot told them he thought it was Little America three, but that doesn't solve the second part of our mystery. Was the snow cruiser hidden in there, too?

The crew watched the iceberg and the camp with it float away toward the horizon.