Lt. Cmdr. Conrad Shinn, a Navy pilot who became the first person to land a plane at the South Pole, on Oct. 31, 1956, helping to open the frigid expanse of Antarctica to scientific research and bolster American strategic interests during the Cold War, died on May 15 in Charlotte, N.C. He was 102.

His daughter Connie Shinn said he died at a care facility. Until February, he had lived in Pensacola, Fla., since retiring in 1963.

During World War II, Commander Shinn, who was known as Gus, airlifted combat casualties in the Pacific. He was then assigned to a naval air station in Washington, D.C., but ferrying admirals and friends of President Harry S. Truman did not satisfy his craving for adventure.

When an executive officer asked whether he wanted to go to Antarctica, Commander Shinn said sure, knowing almost nothing about the bottom of the world.

“It was just a place to go,” he told the historian Dian Olson Belanger for an oral history project in 1999.

In 1946 and 1947, Commander Shinn flew photographic mapping missions over Antarctica on an expedition called Operation Highjump. He returned between 1955 and 1958 for a series of expeditions called Operation Deep Freeze.