Clifford J. MacGregor (23 February 1904 - October 1985) was a meteorologist, Arctic explorer and naval aviator. [1] [2]
MacGregor went to College in Michigan.[ where? ]
MacGregor was in the U.S. Navy until 1926 where he was trained to pilot Zeppelins at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. MacGregor was a Commander in the US Naval Reserve and returned to active duty during World War II as a PBY Squadron Commander in Greenland. He had left the Navy only 15 years earlier. After his military service he worked for the weather bureau.
In 1930 MacGregor was posted to Alaska for the establishment of the first Arctic weather observation network for Alaskan Airways Weather Service.
He was then appointed to the Point Barrow, Alaska Meteorological Station as Commander of the U.S. Arctic weather expedition for the Second International Polar Year (1932–33). While in Alaska MacGregor formulated a theory that Northern Hemispheric weather was bred in the Arctic.
MacGregor captained a boat in the 1935 California-Hawaii yacht race.
MacGregor was assigned to the Newark Airport Weather office before taking a leave of absence to lead his own Arctic Expedition from July 1, 1937, through October 4, 1938 to Etah, Greenland. It was MacGregor and his expedition that first proposed the need for a network of Arctic weather stations. [2]
In 1939, MacGregor was stationed at the Weather Bureau, in Horseheads, NY.
MacGregor retired in Milanville, Pennsylvania.
Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base, is the United States Space Force's northernmost base, and the northernmost installation of the U.S. Armed Forces, located 1,210 km (750 mi) north of the Arctic Circle and 1,524 km (947 mi) from the North Pole on the northwest coast of Greenland. Pituffik's Arctic environment includes icebergs in North Star Bay, two islands, a polar ice sheet, and Wolstenholme Fjord – the only place on Earth where four active glaciers join. The base is home to a substantial portion of the global network of missile warning sensors of Space Delta 4, and space surveillance and space control sensors of Space Delta 2, providing space awareness and advanced missile detection capabilities to North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the United States Space Force, and joint partners.
Donald Baxter MacMillan was an American explorer, sailor, researcher and lecturer who made over 30 expeditions to the Arctic during his 46-year career.
Etah is an abandoned settlement in the Avannaata municipality in northern Greenland. It was a starting point of discovery expeditions to the North Pole and the landing site of the last migration of the Inuit from the Canadian Arctic.
The MacGregor Arctic Expedition was a privately funded expedition which set out to reoccupy Fort Conger, Ellesmere Island, Canada, a site within flying distance of the North Pole. The expedition, which took place from July 1, 1937, to October 3, 1938, had four main objectives: To collect weather data; to make a magnetic survey; to photograph the aurora borealis and study its effects upon radio transmission; and to explore the area northwest of Ellesmere Island, in order to clear up the questions about Crocker Land, which Robert Peary placed on the map more than 30 years earlier.
Roy G. Fitzsimmons was an American Polar Explorer and Geophysicist. Born LeRoy Fitzsimmons, he was the youngest child of John and Alice Brown Fitzsimmons and was one of 10 children.
Isaac "Ike" Schlossbach was an American polar explorer, submariner and aviation pioneer.
Murray A. Wiener was a polar explorer and photographer.
Albert Gerald Sayre was an American radioman and Arctic explorer.
Edward Hanson "Iceberg" Smith was a United States Coast Guard admiral, oceanographer, and Arctic explorer. He was born 29 October 1889 at Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts. He received a Ph.D. in oceanography from Harvard, and commanded the USCGC Marion and the USCGC Northland. Most famously, he commanded the Greenland Patrol, and led Coast Guard efforts to defend Greenland against the Germans in World War II. After retirement from the Coast Guard, he assumed the directorship of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
A.W. Greely was a three-masted wooden schooner that became known for her role in the MacGregor Arctic Expedition, a privately funded expedition to the North Pole between July 1, 1937, and October 3, 1938.
John Johnson was an Arctic explorer and World War II veteran.
USCGC Northland (WPG-49) was a United States Coast Guard cruising class of gunboat especially designed for Arctic operations in commission from 1927 to 1938 and from 1939 to 1946. She served during World War II. She was the last cruising cutter built for the Coast Guard equipped with a sailing rig.
The Crocker Land Expedition took place in 1913. Its purpose was to investigate the existence of Crocker Land, a huge island supposedly sighted by the explorer Robert Peary from the top of Cape Colgate in 1906. It is now believed that Peary fraudulently invented the island.
Maurice Cole Tanquary was a professor of entomology, a member of the Crocker Land Expedition and is considered to be a pioneer in modern beekeeping.
David Haig-Thomas was a British ornithologist, wildlife photographer, explorer and rower who competed for Great Britain in the 1932 Summer Olympics. He was an army commando during the Second World War, and was killed in action during the Normandy Landings. Haig-Thomas Island in the Canadian Arctic is named after him.
Buskø was a small Norwegian sealer, seized by the U.S. Coast Guard in East Greenland in September 1941, before U.S. entry into the war, while bringing supplies and rotating personnel for Norwegian hunting stations. This caused an uproar in the American press when she was towed to Boston as a prize, frequently but incorrectly called the first American capture of an enemy surface vessel in the war. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had frequently asserted that Germany would try to gain a foothold in Greenland, and the way this was presented seems to bear him out. It was a notable early initiative in the North Atlantic weather war.
The USCGC North Star was a United States Coast Guard Cutter during the Second World War. It was originally built for the U.S. Interior Department and served in the United States Coast Guard (USCG) before being acquired by the U.S. Navy.
Surgeon Captain Edward W. Bingham, was a British Royal Navy officer and polar explorer who had the rare third clasp added to his Polar Medal.
Carl Wilhelm Max Dorno was a Prussian-born businessman and amateur meteorologist who settled in Davos, Switzerland for the recovery of his only daughter from tuberculosis. Interested in the effect of climate on health, he established a pioneering observatory, now known as the Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos (PMOD), for the study of solar radiation. He pioneered a field that has been termed as physiological, medical or biological climatology. Ultraviolet radiation was at the time also referred to as "Dorno radiation". The observatory continues to function as the PMOD World Radiation Centre.