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Br.*//Fu,/'Fr,.,, / Berntbalchen Jr

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Br.*//Fu,/'Fr,.,, / Berntbalchen Jr To the Editor July2, 2008 Universityof MissouriPress 2910LeMone Boulevard Columbia,MO 65201 F(e:Lisle A. Rose:Explorer. TheLife oJ:Richard E. B:lrd Dear Sir, Mr. Rose'sbook contains so many lies and innuendoes about our father,Bernt Balchen, that we respectfullysuggest that you stop thesale of thisbook. Please see attached list. Sincerely, /br.*//fu,/'fr,.,, / BerntBalchen Jr. LaurttzBalchen Lillevannsveien63 A 1834Mason Bay Road 0393Oslo 3, Norway Jonesport,ME 04649 CC: RaimundE. Goerler RogerD. Launius JohnC. Behrendt NorskLuftfartsmuseum TheExplorers Club AmericanPolar Society NorwegianPolar Society TheLibrary of Congress tlTheAntarctican Soc i ety ColinBull Lisle A. Rose: Explorer The Life of Riehard E. Byrd University of Missouri press, CoLumbra and London , 20Og University li: of Columbia pr acknowreasmeni .nonyrnou:":":j:,,;;".r:", erarerul support of _to.il the publicati;; ;;'";;:::,.:?::"_ eenerous srant in ussisted oursranding minu"".ipt" u"_rian this volume. n"" rn an interview 'vvith The Anet-ican Experience: nL:O://,r,.\^F*.l)bS,irl,a/Wqpt;;.arneX_,.:SS:_:--_r:Lu_jr_ll-,::i__g_::t_lrtle.,,::-:-_q,:-_,:e!:i tOje!_:-:t:t!:L!: Mr. Rose ,,Whethr says : (rrvrd)-actualry the g"oJt;'pnj.. northei: l" got to anorhermarrer. r o;;;i-ffiilu niJ"jr!1"rhe'sioue is On page I4Z of this book, NIr. Rose claim that the writes: ,,?o two a*"ri"un, r"ii"c top of the to reach the worLd i s i*pf wr ,, " V ong . Mr' Rose puts forth no proof North pole, j.n that Byrd reached but orJ., to ,,prove,, the that he who knew the did, he S:f:il:;.persons iruti,, mainty Bernt 3:i"f:i]:-::3";::H":'. Rose,sef f orts ro smear Page 113. "BaLchen flew for many hours over the North Polar ice scape, hundreds of miles from help should he himself qo down. " Reference ? 113. "Thereafter, the young flier considered himself an expert on porar aviation and a top-notch pilot. " Reference? Mr. Rose never met Bernt Balchen. 1-17: t'At this momeriL-.Balehe+jeegan t+ eRdear . himself to the Americans.,, Balchen worked on orders from Amundsen. rn a retter dated January 30, 1950, Amundsen's second-in- command Hjalmar Riiser Larsen wrote to Louis Ruppel, Editor of coll.ier, ,,Byrd sr had lot 1sic ) of troubres with his skis and asked Amundsen if anyone in his company courd herp him. Amundsen and r discussed the matter, and we picked out Bernt Balchen as the best one for the job, which he f inished to Byrd,s great satisf action.,, Amundsen and Errsworth had inspected Byrd,s sled and found it to be in bad snape. Amundsen asked Ferd. R. Arird, the expedition's carpenter, if he could make a better sled for Byrd, which he did, assisted by Barchen and others. (Arild; carpenter at svalbard, Norsk Luftfartsmuseum , Bod,o tg-gg. t 118: An aside: Mr. Rose has.missperled carr Ben Eielson. r24: "Balchen first pubricly raised his own doubts (whether Byrd had reached the North pore) in 195g, thirty years after Bennett, s death and a year after Byrd died. ', while Balchen was stationed in the pentagon in the early 1950's, Byrd made rife so miserabre for him that he decided to come out with the truth, but Byrd died before he could do so. on october 13, 1953, during the eirgrimage of the Air pioneer.s at Kitty Hawk, N.c., Byrd took Balchen to the side: 'r am going to let you know that what you have been getting ,, and are g.etting has got €o sLop [he meant pubricityl. r am demanding and r am ordering you ro stop this at once and forever. Do not ever beri-eve for a moment that r wirr stand for beinq stepped upon by you. ' Balchen papers. After thar, Byrd would carr Barchen r-n the middle of the night and even when he was waiting for a fright ar rdrewird Airport. The tapes can be found --at the Byrd..Potr+r Research eenter-, The Oirto State University, Columbia. L26 - "rn a 1999 terevisi-on interview, Bess Balchen urbahn reiterated her rate husband, s insistence that barnstorming around the country with Bennett...,, Mr. Rose didn't pay attention: Not barnstorming, but an around the country tour for the Guggenheim Foundation. However, it was on a trip to iinaaa that Bennett told Balchen the truth. Also, Bdlchen was my former, not my rate husband. 126. According to Mrs. Urbahn, her late husband boldly raised the matter with Bennett...,, ft was Bennett who confessed to BaLchen. r27 : "According j-ns, to Rawl Grovenor and his 'deriberately staf f doctored' Byrd,s navlgation report. Rawlins went so.far as to craim that he had 'obtai-ned elsewhere (presumably from Balchen) a copy of Byrd's originai report proving that he and Bennett had not reached th; pole. , Rawlins, report was published in 2000 , 27 years after Balchen's death. Barchen's rog from his flights in the Josephine Ford with F10yd Bennett 1tiights made for the Guggenheim Foundation) is in the Library of congress. rt shows an average of 7g mires per hour. With ski landing gear, the n.rt the plane could average was 6g mph. The distance from pole spitsbergen to the is roughly 1550 miles. IZB. ,,Nine years Iate_ri Byrd,s and sometime longtime. associate critic Charles ,ly, r was special Murphy, wrot€ that 'when Assistant simultaneously bot'h ( u. s . Ai; Force to chief ) secrerary Finletter of Sraff , Vandenb";;;-iri.n0= & the Air wett, f discovered of mine as Force rhar t;; ;lgl command was up with galcherr]=rn" of the Air complained_fed of nis i.nfi".r"lion= crA had and the Assistanr Ba,chenreported iil:;:'.':',iioo5i';:i:F';;';;:.If this had been an" Balchen,s :ase, it woul_d show 2OI file, whicn in it does not. 72e: ,,Balchen,s initial, charge o"t'""ni?:11:: Byrd hinged iff:.itff:i3 :il:nffn" himserrunJ-nroyo Ford on i:': rlvins rosephine coreyioJo:";;::.#:i:::"":"":i!*::i; "'-;;;.;;=*i3:, .the making rhe srory *oi:_oou*uii".] r,;:,":". _whicnrhough on l':i:"frl,f;1i".:*: trurh, Batchen ,_r_-v urr(= Bennetr Canada. :1"Ewo \,i/ere fJ-ying had fotXeis to 129: ,,Who- 'D"ewknew whatwrrdE was in *L^ _, . mindzii in the dying man,s feverish See the above. L29: ,,BalcheDr _dlld...other-s .. of rai.ruie ^,.r{;;_-.cohcocted_ and f raud, ,:r=;, varying ta j.es What,,varying a"i""i; 1.29t ,,As their theyears, Balch"; bittern-;;;"i;d::X?il:"iffT:::*:".. susceptible to a1l ih" =::l_.i:1skepticism level-edby -o'tand- contemporary .riti." "*- .ri;;;i"* rrighi 1,,-t ""..",io'.;;;" the 1926 what Polar does M: about I.. ;i;.ilii5';: Ba.r.chen,sreerinssr the '".,,1I angry that.Byrd;_;;;. success of rhe frights r.ur," owed to him, could and s"rin"rJr" atutlanticreat him the !{ay he did, 130. ,,But Balchen knew of anci shoul,d -have ackowledged Byrd's insistence that he and Bennett had been airborne nearry sixteen hours, because the Norwegian at some point obtained and kept a copy of a document titled ,,Navigation Report of FIight to Pole" signed by Byrd, which was the formal report submitted to the National Geographic society.,, where is proof that Barchen had such a repoitl The Norwegian journarist odd Arnesen wired his newspaper Af tenposten f rom spitsbergen: ,,Byrd over crossbay after fifteen and one-ha1f hours frying; ten mi.nutes later the two pirots landed in pirots 96oo shape. insisted to have been at the pole, judging but by the time away doubt having been there . " 135: ,,Froesch got back to Barchen some days rater with the concrusion that courd onry have L..n discouraging to Barchen i ,,T have looked over the North pole flight data of rhe Josephine Ford which you lef t with me and f ind nothing wrong with it. ,, rn fact, this corroborated Barchen,s findings, 136- "..-one of Barchen's earr-iest scandinavian champions, Gssta H. LiIjeguj.st, insisted in an article two years 1ater in a prestigious international aviation journal that the Josephine ford must h4ve. b-een as under:powered as ealchln c laimed . ,, No reference. Liljequist and Barchen met only once. Professor Harard sverdrup, president of the Norwegi-an porar society, initiated the meeting. rt took place on February 27, rg57 at the home of the swedish professor Hans Ahlmann, dD Arctic exprorer of note. Ahlmann had i-nvited Lil jeguist, and tirjequist asked to make a srudy of nyio,s flighr. why didn't Rose include r,ir juguist , s f indings Liljequist ? concrudes: "rt r.ruid seem appropriate that a committee of aeronautical and *.l"oiorogical experts be given access to the flight rog and all available data to study the question whether in actual f act he di-d t.-.th rt'ht* Po'Le':-/r- But there is no flight log' In the spring of 1957, Bdlchen was approached by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., the publisher, about writing a biography with Co::ey Ford as ghostwriter. After the treatment Byrd ha<i subjected him to, Balchen had decided to come out with the truth about Byrd's flight north. Though Byrd died before the--b'66k--ebUllJ""bd"pu'b-1isttell ll.* vras- agteed' among the three parties that the truth shottld be told. The book had been printed when 1:he Elyrd group got news of it. Dutton, Ford and Balchen were threatened with law suits by the Byrd family and friends. Dutton decided to destroy the first edition. f 39. ,,Balchen had more than one ax to grind. Not only did he come to dislike Byrd, but joining Byrd so quickly after Amundsen's departure for the pole also identified him with an American triumph over his home country of Norway.
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