Byrd
ACHIEVEMENTS: Arctic exploration
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: October 25, 1888, Winchester, VA
DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: March 11, 1957, Boston, MA. Aged 68
DISCIPLINE: Aviator/Polar Explorer
FIELD: Exploration
LANGUAGE: English
PARENTS: Richard Evelyn Byrd; Eleanor Bolling Flood
SIBLINGS: Unknown
SPOUSE: Marie Donaldson Ames
CHILDREN: Four
EDUCATION: Shenandoah Valley Military Academy; Virginia Military Institute; University of Virginia; U.S. Naval Academy
MAJOR WORK: "Into the Home of the Blizzard", "Skyward", "Little America", "Alone"
LIFE AND TIMES:
In 1917, after learning to fly at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Byrd commanded naval air stations in Nova Scotia and conducted anti-submarine patrols during World War I (1914-18). He helped pioneer over-water aerial navigation and invented a bubble sextant as an aid. It was his idea that the U.S. Navy fly large planes to the war in Europe, and after the War, in 1919, he organized the Navy's first successful transatlantic flight (in a flying boat) from Rockaway, Long Island to Lisbon, Portugal. He also helped with the navigation of airships (dirigibles).
Byrd first became interested in polar exploration in 1925 when he accompanied Commander Donald B. MacMillan on an expedition to make aerial surveys of northern Greenland and Ellesmere Island. Byrd was determined to fly over the North Pole, and when he was released from active duty, set about raising money for the project. John D. Rockefeller Jr. contributed, as did Edsel Ford, the son of automobile magnate Henry Ford. (Byrd later named his Fokker Trimotor plane "Josephine Ford", after Edsel's daughter.)
On April 29, 1926, Byrd and his pilot, Floyd Bennett, arrived at King's Bay, Spitzbergen, Norway, where they found Amundsen*, waiting to make his flight over the Arctic in the Italian dirigible "Norge". Byrd and Bennett took off for the North Pole just after midnight on May 9, 1926, and reported they had reached the Pole at 9.02 a.m. After circling the Pole, they returned to Spitzbergen, after a flight of 15 and a half hours. Doubts arose almost immediately, particularly about whether the pair had accomplished what they said they had in the time they recorded. Byrd angrily rejected the doubts, but 23 years later, Dr. John Bowman, Director of the American Geographical Society, told explorer Finn Ronne that Byrd had confessed to him he had missed the Pole by 150 miles. (In 1996, a long-lost diary of Byrd's tends to corroborate Bowman's story.)
After the supposed crossing of the Pole, Byrd was promoted to commander and was given the U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Medal, and the National Geographic Society's Hubbard Medal.
Byrd then began to plan a non-stop flight over the Atlantic, with Bennett once again as his pilot. His aim was not to compete with aviator Lindbergh* (in fact, Byrd gave Lindbergh some navigational tips) but to show that commercial transatlantic flights using multi-engined planes were feasible. A test flight in an enlarged Fokker Trimotor, the "America", ended badly when the plane overturned on landing. (Aboard the flight was Fokker*, who for a time had taken the controls.) Byrd broke an arm, but Bennett was badly hurt, and was unable to make the transatlantic flight.
In June, 1927, Byrd set out across the Atlantic with three companions. When weather conditions over Paris made it impossible for the Byrd to land there, he ditched the plane offshore at Ver-sur-Mer in Brittany. Even so, the French made Byrd a member of the Legion of Honor.
In 1928, Byrd mounted the largest and most expensive expedition ever to set out for the Antarctic. Forty-two men in two ships were equipped with four aircraft, 94 dogs, and enough scientific and medical supplies to last two years. They arrived at the Bay of Whales in the Ross Sea in December, 1928, and established a base on the Ross Ice Shelf, which they named Little America.
They wintered at the base, at the same time conducting geological and aerial mapping expeditions over 150,000 miles of previously unknown territory. A range of mountains was named the Rockefeller Mountains.
In November, 1929, Byrd navigated a flight over the South Pole. More honors followed, and he was promoted to rear admiral. Returning to the Antarctic in 1934, Byrd saw to the expansion of Little America. He took part in a wide range of scientific research, including auroral phenomena. He spent five winter months alone inland from the base in a specially built hut, where he conducted weather observations. (Ronne records that he and others had doubts about Byrd's ability to survive because Byrd was not used to doing things for himself.)
When the Second World War broke out in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* recalled Byrd to active duty and appointed him commander of the newly created U.S. Antarctic Service. When the War ended in 1945, Byrd was appointed commander of Operation Highjump, a Navy aerial expedition to map more than 1.5 million square miles of the Antarctic continent. Byrd made a second flight over the South Pole during this time.
He was made head of the U.S. Antarctic programs in 1955 and that same year, he supervised the planning of Operation Deep Freeze I, a major scientific and exploratory navy expedition that required Byrd and his crew to remain in the Antarctic aboard the icebreaker "Glacier" from December, 1955, to February, 1956. During this expedition, he made his last flight over the Pole to assess the possibility of landing aircraft.
ASSESSMENT: The first to bring polar exploration into the modern age with his use of planes and technical innovations
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
EB
Ronne, Finn, Antarctica My Destiny, Hastings House, New York, 1979.