Ron May's photo of himself standing in front of Elgen's
aircraft on the McMurdo ice runway, November/December 1971.

In 1969, Elgen M. Long (1927-2022) and his late wife Marie started researching the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. They published the book "Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved" in 1999, it was used as a major source for the movie Amelia which was released in October 2010.

His flight across Antarctica was part of a successful effort to fly solo around the world over both poles in a modified twin-engine Piper Navajo--added fuel tanks allowed him to carry fuel for 24 hours of flying if needed. He departed from San Francisco heading to Fairbanks, crossed over the North Pole to Stockholm with a refueling stop at Tromso, and continued south to London; Accra, Ghana; Recife, Brazil; Rio, and Punta Arenas. The flight over Pole happened around 21 November...he spoke with Palmer Station as well as McM as he headed south...but the weather was turning marginal and Pole was clouded over. But he beat the weather and landed at McMurdo. He then headed to Sydney (wanting to hit another continent). His next stops were Nadi, Fiji, and Howland Island (where Amelia Earhart had disappeared) before he landed at Wake Island. He then continued to Tokyo (his seventh continent) and then revisited Wake Island before heading to Honolulu, then finishing the trip in San Francisco. His wife Marie met him at a number of his stops. Of interest, his use of an inertial navigation system (INS) inspired VXE-6 to further pursue that system.

More details...this 2016 Nauticos site which depicts Captain Long in front of his aircraft, and this extremely detailed 2001 interview with Elgen Long by Brian Shoemaker as part of the Ohio State Polar Oral History Project.

Elgen Long's 22-year-old grandson Justin Long quotes his grandfather: "I was flying at 13,000 feet toward the South Pole with zero visibility and the heater went out. It was 37 degrees below zero and I had a six-hour flight ahead. I layered on extra clothing and tried to keep warm. And nothing ever looked better to me than McMurdo Air base, I can tell you that." This quote comes from an interview with Justin published in the Reno Gazette Journal in September 2010 (no longer online). More information about the family and the Earhart book is available in this This is Reno article published in September 2010; alas, the photo of Elgen in front of the aircraft he used for his 1971 round-the-world trip has disappeared, hence the above photo.