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Home , Bernt Balchen, Floyd Bennett

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,, 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 , 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 , 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 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 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

140. ,,Bennett never indicated to anyone else that he and Byrd had not reached the pole. Indeed, he wrote his own account of the flight that corroborated Byrd's report, publishing it just shortly before the alleged confession to Balchen... The only man who could corroborate or refute Balchen's claims, first made public in the late 1950s, was , who had been dead for thirty years. " Balchen's claims were not made public in the late 1950' . The Byrd group stoppr:d publication of Come North, see above. Balchen would not.have come out with the, truth about Byrd's flight, oo matEer what Floyd Bennett had told him, if it weren't for Byrd's const.ant persecution, abetted by a group of friends. OnIy after Balchen's death did letters from Byrd to various friends come to light. In a memorandum to James E. I"looney, dated November L2, 1953, Byrd wrote: ,,Ever since Balchen has been working with Americans he has been a traitor to whose 1sic ) with whom he worked. First of aII, he betrayed Amundsen at Spitzbergen lsic) ivhen he Ief t him and went over to the Byrd camp beeause he wanted to come to the ...Now Balchen is ::eady to betray the Air Force if the Air Force doesn't do what he wants. " The Byrd Polar Research Center.

L42. ,,Conspi-racy theorists, such as Balchen, his wives, Rawlins, and others are adept at creating and rigidry maintaining arternarive realities based on a single highly questionable assumption, be it that Byrd and Bennett courd never. have reached the North Pole, Harry Truman dropped the atomic bombs as a military demonstration aganst starin, or John F. Kennedy was the victim of a plot by the crA and Soviets or perhaps FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. such peopre wilr raise new perspectives and propose fresh arguments. Theories and theorists are serdom if ever amenable to reason or common sense.,, Why didn't Mr. Rose consult any of ,,the conspiracy theorists" when he wrote this book?

161. ,,vaughan's account is the most bizarre of arr. He claims that , one day, Balchen told him what really happened on the flighr. Acosra flew the first several hours over t,he ocean, then Noville relieved him and was forced to fly low, nearly clipping the ground. ,, (They were over water I I ) Vaughan, if indeed Balchen had discussed the fright with him, got it all wrong: Noville was not a pilot, Vaughan went on: ,,NovilIe and Acosta kept drinking and getting more and more obstreperous until Byrd at last picked up a wrench arid knoeked both men out.. Nowhere did Barchen mention Novirle's and Acosta,s drinking, nor about Byrd knocki-ng both men out . writes Mr. Rose: ,,They (Byrd and Barchen ) got the two drunks out of the cockpit...,, Had the two drunks been in the cockpit, the plane wourd have randed in the drink. wrote Byrd durj-ng the f right: ,,Lights don't work so well. Found a long stiak urra nit Noville on the shoe with that.,, *( To-the-Pole1 --The -dtary ,and' rn6tdbo6k of Richard E. Byrd. Raimund E . Goer1er, Ohio Stat.e University Press r 1998. ) Tony was the person who insisted that Barchen go on the fright si-nce he was the onry instrument pilot. Balchen was then employed Fokker, by and they wour-d-be frying a Fokker plane. writes Fokker in The Flying - butlhnanz , rD the light of what, actuarr-y , occurred, Byrd s description in skyward sounds' iaintly ridicurous. About this-"VrO stage (when they: wele apprbaching V-er_=,rr_l,r"ii, wrotei ,r felt myself entirely responsible for the rives of my shipmates . r don, L berieve they thought there was much chance gI getting down s ateiy, Urrt still rhey faced it galrantly... to the tasl they calmly obeyed orders . Bar-cne'n happened to be at the wheer-- (The itarics are Fokker,=. ) Balchen set ship down the on the frares r so accurately did land.... -ti he Balc'rrelT"s. nerv'es are of iron, r"t judgment, a ,rs'"" his, too. He has not gotten the credit deserves, he r suppose, because his extraordinary modesty shames the shrinking vioIet.,,

161 : ,,Balchen's self -serving recolrections particlarly are suspect. Thirty years later he remembered many exact *oment= of the f1ight...... ,, Mr. Rose must' ref e' 'to c?*?',rrgrth wi,th-i;:, il couta he ever forget that flight????

233, he ,,True, (Balchen) had exhibited a tendency to allow ,publicity' to go to his head a bif;- ,considerably' so ,in New York.' Fortunately, the Norwegian had , snapped out of it after several bawlings out, and I could not ask for a better attitude than his has been for weeks. ' See Fokker's statement above.

24Iz ,,...Smith was one of the few ,,Byrd men,, along with Balchen, and AIan Innes Taylor who came to harbor a bitter disike of his commander. " Balchen',s ,,bitter dislike,, for Byrd came at a much later stage, when Byrd did everything in his power to rui-n his career in the Air Fo::-ce.

2'73 : ,,Balchen, who became close Eo Srnith in their mutual campaign to discredit Bvrd...,, What campaign?

27 6 : ,,Whi Ie Byrd kept dr i nk i ng , accordinq to Balchen and June...,, No reference.

273t "In I972, fifteen years after Byrd,s death, whiLe Balchen was in the midst of his own c ampai gn to discredit his former emp1oyer...,, What campaj-gn?

275t ,,BaIchen believed they were close, within firre miles, perhaps, but not at t,he pole itse If ..." No reference.

275: ,,ShortIy af ter leaving the pole he ( Byrd ) allegedly pu1led a pint bottle of cognac out of his bag and began drinkiD9...,, Who alleqes?

2762 ,,While Byrd kept drinkjng, according to Balchen and June..., Where did June and Balchen relate this?? 281: ,,Sitting of f by himself , the perpetually suspicious and cr'1t'icar'Ba'lchbn wrote:' ,,The readbr 'jiist of the expedition now prom<>red to thg rank of Rear AdmiraI..." No reference.

28Iz ,,Like Dean Smith and, later , Finn Ronne, Balchen concluded that Bvrd was not only a poseur but an ignoramus. ,, No reference.

28r: ,,The man was a victim, his own witting victi.m, in fact, af ,public adurati.n and unde=er,r"d know how,' which in a nuniber of instilnces that Balehen chose not to discuss allegedly placed BAE r in j eopardy . ', No reference.

305. ,,Linco1n Ellsworth, Wilkins and Balchen ,never: abandoned the idea. " No reference.

305. ,,Ba1chen wrote in his diary---,, No reference.

30 7 . ,,They were Bernt Balchen,s partisans.,, No reference.

434 . Btr€r--Greentand -CataIyst ,, ,. not i.Lsfory , wa-Sthe that sent the Byrd-Balchen feud i-nto orbit. ,, No reference.

fn January, 1949, BaLchen, the' head of Rescue the 10th Sguadron in Alaska, wrote to Byrd: ,,r have studied the situat.ion s.rnce r came to this comrnandand have come to the conclusion that for efficient work polaq in the Basin, wg.mrls.t:have,. .: three key points estabrisiied 'j,n the North sector, Ame::ican'rh... about synmerrically alo'q .h;-;j;"'-o'f Arcitc ocean. with stations at nirrer rsrand, Melville rsrand in the cantrdi.an Arichperago and at

|0 ThuleinGreenl'and'wecansatisfactorilycoverthe Siberia.and No5way....., across to f uture wha'tever that may Looking towards the ' will be of the utmost value bring, these stations inquicklocationofdownedair:craftoutoverthe give usi oportunity to polar ice. It wilt also 'a'n in high latitude train and perfect our crews' navigation.... for a central arctic I have sent in a proposal arong these rines, search and rescue organi:ea.EiOn only"" worXing with one type of aircraft " BalchenneverheardfromByrdinthisconnection. force and the navy 434;,,Thereafter, both the air direction to moved swiftly under Byrd,s overall strategic air implement p:'lns to establish both nases and weather stations in GreenIand. " that No reference. It was under Balchen's direction senator Thule Air Force Base was br:ilt.'; it was then project stuart symington who got the T'huIe about underways afier Balchen brieferd the Senator No his ideas during symington's visit to AIaska. paperSaboutByrd,spart.icipationoroverall the directions to implement these plans exist in Byrd LibrarY. further 438. ,,Finn Ronne suddenly emerged as a source of irritation. The Norwegian came out of modest wartime service determined to carve his own niche in exploration. Like BaIchen, he fancied that Byrd was out to block him"' No reference ' be 435. ,,Whether this incident took place, or can characterized as Balchen reported it, is highly questionable. " Rose accuses Balchen of IYing '

ll 435.,,only.themoStfooIj.sh,navaI.offi'.cercouId 'the,;.,oj:rl",.fQrqgpr_omotlon,, wish or hope to inf ].r:rbnce . process--. " .'." a l.et Ler ittut Byrd tried is evident ln {rom !i= friend James E. Mooney dated De':ember 8, 1953 (Byrd in a pos it ion Library ) : ,,Further , Admiral , I am now should any steps be made for congressional initiation of a plan to have Balchen made a B'G. (Brigadier General) over the heads of the military establishment, that it wilI be squelched' -;lFhere-fteht fertEti*+$ -€+!fL -+ba+-9ast--of--lzo'u.r- regu es t to me covering the problem as to who outside of the Air Force is sponsoring Balchen, and if such sponsorship involves you as an individual as to prejudices or other grudges. f can assure you that we shall have these answers also."

454z ,,Ba1chen created, stirnulated, or reflected the central anxiety that would dog the Antaractic . ',, community f or years, to. come'.i' No ref erence;" A s€-rious ,accusat ir>n such a,s this should have been documented..

o-to say that Dick Byrd dicln't make it to the poJe or Dick Byrd did nake it: to the Pole, f think ls too categorical-. I don't think .you can say that. " Li-sIe e;--Ros€; ?|tT€American Experienee.-

Bess Urbahn 115 Barnestown Road Camden, ME 04843

Julv 2008

ll Byrd and Balchen

The question remains : What caused Byrd, s animosity against Balchen? The answer is simple: Fear and jealousy. Fear, because he knew that Balchen was an excelrent mathematician and had figured out that the Josephine Ford courd not have made it to the North Pore; jearousy because Barchen made headrines on his own. It wasn't always that way: On January 16 , 19 3 1 , Byrd wrote to George palmer putnam: Bernt is a prince. r shar,r- never r-et go by en opportunity to show how I feel- towards hin. But then Barchen got attention from the press. rn March, 1931, Merian c. cooper, producer of King Kong, had sent a crew to Newfoundland to make a movie about sear hunting. But an exprosion occurred onboard; cooper caIled Barchen for herp. wrote Cooper: BaLchen was wonderfuL the greatest Arctic piTot who ever l-ived. hle f Lew in bad weather Low among icebergs, dropped supplies, blankets, food, etc. , to scattered survivors, and guided them to shore three or four days' desperate work, Balchen made incredibTe Tandings in broken ice--we should have been kilLed a dozen times. During World War ff, Balchen made more headlines . Along with Doolittre and chennaurt, he was interviewed by Jon Hersey and sketched by Tom Lea; each of the three fryers had two ful_l pages in the March 29, L944 issue of Life. Several newspapers wrote about the rescues Balchen hao performed in ; then came the book, War BeLow Zero It didn't help that L-i.fe printed an article, How We Built a Giant New Air Base at the Top of the World, mentioning Balchen but not prrrri rr r^r:q reprinted in The Readers Di.gest. But it was Francis anci Katharine Drake, s story in The Digestz Bernt BaLchen, Vjking of the Air, rhat rea1ly got Byrd's goat. Byrd and friends wrot€r to the editor, Dewitt WaIlace , to compTi-n . Tn f'ebruary 27 , 195 3 , Michae l- J. Brennan, captain of the Chantier, wrote a four and a half page letter i "The story in the Digest incensed me and r thought about ny friends, living and dead, so I decided to write you.,, what Brennan's living and dead friends had to do with the articre is a question. Byrd forrowed up with a letter on February 2g; however it was not sent because Mrs. Wal_l_acewas sick Then on January L4 ther" aclmir:ar carred Francis- Drake to complain; on Aprir 29 he sent :Drake a brrr for the phone carr, which Drake refused co pay. Alt this correspondenc:e, arong with a re-page critique of the Drake articre, can be found i; the Byrd Iibrary. when Bal-chen was transferred from Araska to the Pentagon as project officer of the , thq_ cqr:_qgwe,re stAcked against him. Byrd l-rad his rerative, senator Harry Byrd; the Air Force chief of Staff, General Thomas D. white, was a relative. The fact that Bal-chen frad direct contact with secretaries of the Air Force Finretter and Tarbott made his superior, Generar Roger Ramey, furious. Bal,chen at that tirne had a desk in the pentagon basement, and somebody or other had resrri.a;; him: he was popular ' a speaker but was not permiaa.J ;; give more than one speech .a mdnth. He'rhad nat;i;; ' to do. An article in Nevtsweekappeared z will- ine' Air Force Force fire a G.reat Arctic Expert? -'t

refuge in his hobby' this period he took During - the Grand Central Art' . on Junttuty 6 195 3 painting ' exhibit of his -calleries i; New yoiX gave an came 'the Doolittles \,,ratercolors. tn" Finletters ' ' smith, Trygve Lie and others ' Gene Tunney, i . *. not of the sponsors' he did Though Byrd'tu" one Co|Jrels had a big spread attend the opening ' snowing his Paintings ' I got Barchen 1e5 s ,"??il-"a'" it thF Pe:Fagon rn where he spent his transferred to Newfoundlan{' under Ceneral Glenn Barcus ' Iast year rn service I Barcus presented-him with the when he retired, citation: Service ueial read the DistinguisneO tgi"tinguished-tnd. hjmseJ't by CoIoneI Bernt nalcien service----. His firm exceptionuirl-i"rii.orious and self Tess l-eadershiP, extensive backgtound devotiontodutywereinstrumentaTfactorsinthe successfu].accompTishmentofseveraTmajorprojects otvitalsignificancetothedefenseoftheentire North American Continent '

Bess Urbahn IL5 Barnestown Road Camden, ME 04843

July 2008