[5] Some of the place names given by the research team to specific features were later incorporated by the Norwegian government into official maps, including ‘Mount Balchin’, now ‘Balchinfjellet’, a 5000 ft glaciated peak at 78° north latitude.
[6][7] In World War II, Balchin worked on marine charts in the Hydrographic Department of the UK Admiralty in Bath, Somerset.
As well as making marine charts, including those for the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, in 1945, he also helped devise special air maps with scales suited to aircraft speeds and colours that maximized legibility in cockpit lighting.
[2] Towards the end of the war, with Norman Pye, a colleague from the Hydrographic Department and the Spitsbergen expedition, Balchin initiated a micro-climatological survey of Bath and its district, launching a new research field of local climatology.
He and his wife Lily (née Kettlewood, born 1912, died 1999), who were married in December 1939, settled in her original home county of Yorkshire, in the town of Ilkley.