Williams Field | |||||||||||||||
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Summary | |||||||||||||||
Airport type | Public | ||||||||||||||
Location | McMurdo Station, Antarctica | ||||||||||||||
Elevation AMSL | 68 ft / 21 m | ||||||||||||||
Coordinates | 77°52′03″S 167°03′24″E / 77.86750°S 167.05667°E | ||||||||||||||
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Runways | |||||||||||||||
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Williams Field or Willy Field (ICAO: NZWD) is a United States Antarctic Program airfield in Antarctica. Williams Field consists of two snow runways located on approximately 8 meters (25 ft) of compacted snow, lying on top of 8–10 ft of ice,[3] floating over 550 meters (1,800 ft) of water.[4] The airport, which is approximately seven miles from Ross Island, serves McMurdo Station and New Zealand's Scott Base. Until the 2009–10 summer season, Williams was the major airfield for on-continent aircraft operations in Antarctica.
Williams Field is named in honor of Richard T. Williams, a United States Navy equipment operator who drowned when his D-8 tractor broke through the ice on January 6, 1956. Williams and other personnel were participants in the first Operation Deep Freeze, a U.S. military mission to build a permanent science research station at McMurdo Station in anticipation of the International Geophysical Year 1957–58.
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: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) Data current as of October 2006. Source: DAFIF.
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