Navy Travels 6,000 Miles for Rescue : Antarctica: A severely ill man was flown to a New Zealand hospital. The 14-man crew is expected back at Point Mugu today.

A Navy cargo plane and its 14-man crew were due back at Point Mugu today after the rescue of a dangerously ill New Zealand man from an Antarctica research station.

It was the first midwinter landing at the Navy’s McMurdo Station in 25 years.

The crew, led by pilot Cmdr. Wayne Reeves of Camarillo, flew engineer Peter Harding to a New Zealand hospital, saving the man from what his doctor believed was a life-threatening bout with an ulcerated colitis.

“I am eternally grateful to all concerned,” Harding said from his hospital bed Friday. Harding said he was out of danger and would probably be discharged next week.

The Navy crew’s humanitarian mission took them 6,000 miles one way, with stopovers in Hawaii, Pago Pago and Christchurch, New Zealand, before they headed south through winter’s total daytime darkness and the subfreezing weather of Antarctica.

“It’s a big risk to land there in winter and that’s why we don’t do it often,” said Wistar Langhorn, an ensign attached to the Naval Support Force Antarctica at Port Hueneme. “It’s a dangerous operation.”

But luck was with the crew, Langhorn said. They encountered light from the full moon, winds of only 20 m.p.h and temperatures that were only 9 degrees below zero. The conditions were extremely favorable, Langhorn said, considering the area registered a breath-freezing minus 121 degrees only two weeks ago.

The Lockheed-built LC-130 cargo plane used in the rescue is part of the Antarctic Development Squadron 6 stationed at the Navy’s Point Mugu. The 300-member squadron is assigned to support the National Science Foundation in its research at McMurdo Station on Ross Island in the southern polar region.

Another 300 men and women in the Naval Support Force Antarctica based at Port Hueneme are also part of the support crew.

From February through August, most of the military returns to Ventura County. About 60 military people and another 150 civilian scientists and support crews for the National Science Foundation remain behind to continue their work.

Among other phenomena, the National Science Foundation is studying how global warming may be causing an ever-growing hole in the atmospheric ozone layer.

Harding was a maintenance engineer at a nearby base operated by the New Zealand government when he became ill May 31.

A doctor who had treated Harding there said he was “weak and incapacitated, and may have died without proper medical treatment,” Langhorn said.

The base, however, is 2,400 miles from New Zealand, and no planes there were equipped with skis needed to land on the snow-covered ice runway.

“The U.S. is the only one who has the ski-equipped aircraft,” Langhorn said. “We are the only ones who could go in and safely evacuate this patient.”

The crew was resting in Hawaii on Friday and was due back today.