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Home , Bernt Balchen, Floyd Bennett

For Byrd and Balchen, the epic flight began 75 years ago this month. Poles Apart

By Bruce D. Callander

© Corbis

N 1968, the late Rear Adm. Rich- ard E. Byrd was enshrined in Ithe National Aviation Hall of Fame. The hall, in its statement about the great polar explorer, noted that, in November 1929, he participated in the first-ever flight over the South Pole. Five years later, in 1973, the hall Honors. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Richard Byrd (left) and his 1926 expedition enshrined USAF Col. . pilot, , both received Medals of Honor. Bennett died before the 1929 South Pole expedition. Bernt Balchen took his place. It said that Balchen, who served as chief pilot of Byrd’s during the 1929 expedi- tion, was the first man to pilot an aircraft over the South Pole. It is a well-established fact that, C-54 that beyond doubt went over aftermath of those cooperative years, on Nov. 29, 1929, Byrd and Balchen— the North Pole. however, Byrd and Balchen became with two other crew members—be- Some have questioned whether, estranged. Byrd evidently believed came the first men in an aircraft to in 1926, Byrd’s monoplane Balchen was plotting against him. reach the South Pole. That epic could have reached the North Pole Balchen believed that Byrd was bent feat unfolded 75 years ago this in the amount of time it was away on sabotaging his military career. month. from its base on , an is- Balchen had suspicions about Byrd’s It turns out that Byrd, an Ameri- land north of Norway. Byrd always self-proclaimed 1926 North Pole can, and Balchen, a Norwegian na- said the 1926 trip was quick be- flight. He raised them after the tive, had quite a bit of mutual history, cause he enjoyed tailwinds in both admiral’s death, provoking an out- and their 1929 South Pole adventure directions. Weather reports did not raged response from the admiral’s was only a part of it. support that claim, but it was widely family and friends. The hall’s biographies describe accepted; Byrd and his pilot, Floyd Byrd as the first to “fly” over both Bennett, were awarded Medals of Balchen and Bennett the North Pole and South Pole. Honor. Balchen, however, later con- Their story begins in the early Balchen is described as the first to tended that Byrd never made it. years of aviation. Byrd was a hand- do so as a pilot. In 1926, Byrd and a Byrd and Balchen actually worked some, ambitious naval officer. A Navy pilot made a flight that was together on that 1926 flight, as well 1912 graduate of the US Naval said to have reached the North Pole. as on a 1927 and Academy, he earned his aviator In 1949, Balchen piloted an Air Force the 1929 South Pole flight. In the wings in 1918 and spent the last

62 AIR FORCE Magazine / November 2004 months of in Canada, responsible for two air bases in Nova . After the war, Byrd was reassigned to Washington and was credited with helping convince Congress to establish a Bureau of Aeronautics.

For his part, Balchen began his mili- © Underwood & Underwood/Corbis tary flying career in 1920 when he joined the Norwegian naval air force and attended flying school. He served as a test pilot and maintenance engi- neer. In 1924, Byrd was picked to be navigator for a US Navy dirigible flight from Alaska to Spitsbergen. When President Coolidge called off that flight, Byrd went on leave and orga- nized his own, privately financed mis- sion to the North Pole. In 1925, in the months leading up to that attempt, Polar Stars. Bennett (left) and Balchen, two of the world’s premier polar Balchen signed up to help Byrd and exploration pilots, became friends. Balchen and Byrd, however, apparently Bennett prepare their Fokker trimotor never understood or trusted each other. ski plane for that controversial mis- sion. For his part, Balchen disliked the balanced the cargo, which included Byrd claimed that he and Bennett admiral’s habit of taking different emergency food and supplies. At the conquered the North Pole during an members of the expedition into his last minute, Byrd ordered two more epic flight on May 9, 1926. confidence, apparently inviting com- 150-pound sacks of food put aboard, After that flight, Byrd and Bennett petition. making the airplane dangerously planned to fly across the Atlantic in While he served with the expedi- heavy. another trimotor. On a test flight tion, Balchen kept his mouth shut There are three different versions with aircraft designer , and gave Byrd the respect due him of the flight. In the early 1930s, Byrd however, the airplane crashed. Byrd as the boss. And, while Byrd may and McKinley wrote separate articles and Fokker were only slightly hurt, have disliked Balchen personally, for National Geographic. Balchen’s but Bennett suffered major injuries. he recognized his true talents and version of the expedition appeared He was unable to make the Atlantic picked him as pilot for the South in his 1958 autobiography, Come flight. Byrd invited Balchen to join Pole flight. North With Me. his crew, and he did. McKinley’s description deals large- Byrd soon began making plans for Four Pilots on Board ly with his photographing the Ant- a South Pole flight. Bennett, despite All four men on the mission were throughout the flight, to cre- his injuries, continued his strong re- pilots. Balchen took the controls, ate a long montage from which maps lationship with Byrd and was to have while Harold I. June was co-pilot could be drawn. He gives little detail been on the crew, but he was the and radio operator. Ashley C. Mc- about the flight itself other than to victim of terrible luck. In 1928, when Kinley, a former Army captain, was praise Balchen’s flying. a German airplane crash-landed near aerial photographer, and Byrd was The other two accounts mostly Newfoundland, Bennett joined the flight leader and navigator. The air- agree, but Byrd and Balchen put rescue effort. He contracted pneumo- plane, a Ford trimotor, was named themselves at the center of the ac- nia and died in a Canadian hospital. Floyd Bennett, for the man Byrd tion and minimize the contributions With Bennett dead, Byrd again would have preferred to have with of the other. chose Balchen to fill the gap. As a him. Byrd’s narrative deals with his role skilled pilot and mechanic experi- The crew’s main concern was the as mission organizer and leader. He enced in cold weather operations, weather. Laurence M. Gould, ge- takes credit for supervising the air- Balchen was ideal for the job. He ologist, geographer, and expedi- plane loading and making certain was responsible for the maintenance tion second in command, had gone every safety precaution had been and operation of the three airplanes ahead weeks earlier with a small taken. that would make exploratory flights party and 42 sled dogs. From a In his account, Balchen says Byrd and, eventually, try for the pole. base camp in that Byrd emerges from his quarters “in a big Byrd was the expedition leader. called “Little America,” they were fur cap and parka and polar bear Byrd and Balchen apparently to explore the region, check the pants, poses a moment beside the never understood or trusted one weather, and be ready to rescue the plane as the movie cameras grind, another. Balchen kept compulsively crew if necessary. On Nov. 27, and waves to the crowd.” detailed flight logs, and Byrd seemed Gould radioed that the weather was The weather was clear and the air suspicious that the Norwegian was good. team was able to find and follow the trying to catch him at something. Balchen had weighed and precisely tracks of the dog team. Before long,

AIR FORCE Magazine / November 2004 63 photographs and keeping the record of the exposures, the plane began to wallow.” As June emptied a gas can into the reserve tank, McKinley wrote, “he would pass it back to me to drop through the trapdoor, between ‘shots’ with the camera. Then came word © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis from the commander that we must drop the emergency rations. Again, it was necessary for me to leave the camera to drop the bags of food.” Ultimately, the lightened airplane lifted—but still not enough. Balchen gambled on finding an updraft he could ride up and over the ridge. He found it, and the aircraft reached the flat polar plateau. There was another tense moment when the right engine backfired and North. On May 9, 1926, Byrd and Bennett took off for the North Pole in their missed. Balchen adjusted the setting Fokker trimotor, Josephine Ford—named for the daughter of , a key and the engine smoothed. “At our backer of Byrd’s expedition. altitude of 11,000 feet, two engines could never could keep the Ford air- they caught up with the men and “Above the roar of the engines, borne,” he wrote. There was no fur- dropped supplies, cigarettes, and Balchen yelled, ‘It’s drop 200 or go ther trouble on the approach to the messages. back.’ South Pole. “ ‘A bag of food overboard!’ I Balchen wrote, “According to my Toward the Mountains yelled at McKinley. Over went a dead reckoning, we should be at the Soon, however, the crew faced a 150-pound brown bag. ... Slowly, pole in another 14 minutes. Our po- problem that could have ended the we went higher. Again, the wheel sition is Lat. 89 degrees 40 minutes mission. Their route lay over the turned loosely in Balchen’s hands. south, about 20 miles away, so our Queen Mountains, and, as the ‘Quick,’ he shouted. ‘Dump more.’ goal must actually be in sight.” heavily loaded airplane strained for “I pointed to another bag. Mac Fourteen minutes later, at 1:14 a.m., altitude, it was unable to get high nonchalantly shoved it through the Byrd sent a message to the cockpit enough without losing weight. June trapdoor.” for June to broadcast to the base. poured several five-gallon cans of McKinley, meanwhile, treated the Byrd’s version read, “That imagi- fuel into the fuel tanks and threw incident as an interruption in his film- nary point—the aloof and lonely bot- the cans overboard. It made little ing. He wrote that as he was “me- tom of the Earth—was beneath us. I difference. thodically and carefully snapping the handed June a message to radio to In his memoirs, Balchen recalls being at 8,200 feet, “just about the Ford’s ceiling with its present load- ing. I wave frantically to catch the attention of June, who is bent over his radio, and signal him to jettison some of our weight. His hand reaches for the gasoline dump-valve, and I shake my head and point to the emergency food. He kicks one of the 150-pound © Underwood & Underwood/Cornis sacks through the trapdoor, and the plane lifts just enough to clear the barrier. “A final icy wall blocks our way, steeper than all the others. A torrent of air is pouring over its top, the plane bucking violently in the downdraft, and our rate of climb is zero. June jettisons the second sack, and the Ford staggers a little higher,” Balchen wrote. In his National Geographic ac- South. For the audacious South Pole flight, Byrd chose the tougher, more count, Byrd gives a different version powerful Ford trimotor, which he named Floyd Bennett. The 1929 flight drew of events. He wrote: worldwide attention, particularly to Byrd.

64 AIR FORCE Magazine / November 2004 Little America! ‘My calculations in- dicate we have reached the vicinity of the South Pole. Flying high for survey. Soon turn north.’ ” McKinley, still busy with his cam- era, almost missed the big moment. He wrote, “Between each shot, I glanced at the commander, hoping to have him signal that we had ar- rived.” Suddenly, the airplane turned to the right and circled. “The com- mander opened the trapdoor and sa- luted as he dropped the Stars and Stripes,” McKinley said. The flag Byrd dropped was weighted with a stone from Bennett’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery. Balchen was introspective, writing that he was glad to leave the pole. “Somehow our very purpose here seems insignificant, a symbol of man’s Recognition. Balchen (left) became a US citizen by act of Congress in 1931 vanity and intrusion on this eternal and joined the Army Air Forces in 1941. Here, Gen. Frank Armstrong Jr. pre- white world,” he said. “The sound of sents an award commemorating Balchen’s 1949 flight over the North Pole. our engines profanes the silence as we head back to Little America.” develop a new type of weather test- In 1951, he came to USAF headquar- The return was uneventful. “Eight ing lab. McKinley suggested a re- ters as a special assistant on Arctic hundred miles more of terrain were frigerated hangar. On June 12, 1971, problems. to be photographed, but this was the facility was dedicated at Eglin Byrd died in March 1957. Evi- done almost without incident,” Mc- AFB, Fla., as the McKinley Climatic dently, Balchen had by that time Kinley said. Hangar. McKinley had died in 1970. begun writing a book. In a letter Byrd described the scene as the Byrd continued to return to the dated March 9, 1960, Balchen wrote airplane landed: “We were deaf from Antarctic to explore by dogsled and to a friend about his book: “I had the roar of the motors, tired from the air. On one visit, he spent six months not written anything derogatory strain of the flight, but we forgot all alone in a hut, almost dying of car- about Byrd. I had simply stated what that in the tumultuous welcome of bon monoxide poisoning from his I know to be a fact, that he had not our companions.” stove. He continued his polar re- reached the North Pole on his flight Of the landing, Balchen says, “The search until his death in 1957. in 1926. I know this for two rea- whole flight crew is picked up and Balchen also continued to work in sons: first, because the plane was carried on swaying shoulders to the the Arctic and Antarctic. He was incapable of making this flight in mess hall for a celebration. I have made a US citizen by act of Con- 15-and-one-half hours, which is the been sitting so long in the pilot’s gress in 1931. In 1941, he joined the time Byrd was away from Kings seat that I am cramped and sore, and AAF as a captain and was given Bay and, secondly, because Floyd so I slip out of the mess hall qui- command of Bluie West Eight air Bennett told me so.” etly.” He went skiing. base in . In 1942, he was a Eventually, Balchen’s suspicions colonel, and, the following year, he about the supposed North Pole flight Fame for Byrd joined Eighth Air Force in Europe came out publicly. The late admiral’s The flight drew worldwide atten- and established an evacuation route son and other supporters protested tion, particularly to Byrd, who was between the UK and Sweden for those what they considered a slander on promoted to rear admiral on the re- fleeing occupied Europe. the aviation pioneer. tired list. Of the others, only June Late in the war, Balchen worked Historians remain divided on the returned to Antarctica with Byrd. He with the underground in occupied subject of whether Byrd actually made served as chief pilot on the second Norway and commanded the air op- it to the North Pole in 1926. Some expedition. erations that chased the Nazis from now concede that Byrd’s claim is McKinley returned to the Army northern Norway and Finland. After disputable. Many others continue to Air Corps, ferried airplanes to the the war, he returned to Norway. credit him with having accomplished Soviet Union, and was involved with In 1948, he asked for recall to active what he set out to do. The argument is cold weather testing and operations duty with the US Air Force and was likely to continue for some time. It is in Alaska. In 1943, he and another named commander of the 10th Rescue not the sort of thing you can settle officer were given responsibility to Squadron at Ft. Richardson, Alaska. with DNA testing. Balchen retired from the Air Force Bruce D. Callander is a contributing editor of Air Force Magazine. He served in 1956 and died in 1973. Like Byrd tours of active duty during World War II and the Korean War and was editor and Bennett, he is buried at Arlington of Air Force Times from 1972 to 1986. His most recent article for Air Force National Cemetery, across the Potomac Magazine, “Tricare on the Rise,” appeared in the October issue. River from Washington, D.C. ■

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