Vince,

I did read two books
quite critical of Byrd, Richard Montague's _Oceans, Poles, and
Airmen_; and Dean Smith's _By the Seat of my Pants_, ten or more years
ago. I don't recall anything about his "going weird," though, or
refusing to navigate.

You've read two very good books, I still haven't gotten a copy of
Smith's book, but will do so. I'm also looking for Gould's as I've
seen some excerpts from his writings regarding strange behavior by
Byrd on the expeditions themselves and examples of his making his map
entries in pencil and then, on the ground, when challenged by other
observers aboard the airplane, going into another room and changing
the notations.

Perhaps you should entertain the hypothesis that he did NOT behave
that way; that the charges were fictitious, motivated by jealousy,
personal dislike, or some such reason. As you mentioned, he wasn't
generous about sharing the credit for his achievements. There was
also a lot of resentment, in Europe, that Byrd had beaten the Airship
Norge, a European venture, to the Pole.

Good points. It is known for certain that the Norge made it over the
north pole and carried on to Alaska. Interestingly, Amundsen never
claimed to have made it over the north pole prior to Byrd and always
gave Byrd great credit. Amundsen could have stopped Byrd completely
when Bennett and Byrd broke the skis on the Josephine Ford, but sent
Balchen over to Byrd and Balchen showed them how to rebuild the skis
by reinforcing them with lifeboat oars sliced lengthwise and then how
to use a blowtorch rather than wax to prepare the surface. He also
suggested they takeoff at night when the snow would not be sticky. A
year ago The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mi., redid its aviation
display (it's an amazing collection) and set up the Josephine Ford in
a diorama with life size figures of Byrd, Bennett and Balchen to
recreate the moment when Balchen approached the others about repairs
to the skis.

As to the North Pole flight, the pilot, Floyd Bennett admitted on his
death bed that they had simply flown out of sight of Spitsbergen and
made circles for 15 hours because of an oil leak on one engine.

I find that extremely hard to believe, Rick. It contradicts
everything else we (or I) know about Byrd. I do recall that Bennett
crawled out of the cabin in mid-flight to deal with that oil leak,
but I never heard of that death-bed confession.

Just checked a couple of sources. I was mistaken. The flying around
for 15 hours comment was made by a rival, not Bennett. Bennett, in
the hospital in Canada, simply repeated to Balchen that he and Byrd
had not gotten to the north pole. Bennett and Balchen flew the
Josephine Ford all around the U.S. following the artic flight.
Balchen was a test pilot for Fokker and kept extensive performance
data on the Josephine Ford during the flights because he and Bennett
intended to use it for a trans-Atlantic flight. It cruised on wheels
(without skis mounted) at 70 knots TAS. (A nearly identical Fokker
3m, the Southern Cross, cruised at roughly the same speed, within 2
knots.) Balchen and Bennett confirmed the performance data and
Bennett supposedly told Balchen that on skis the airplane cruised at
68 knots TAS. Balchen then asked Bennett how he and Byrd had made the
round trip in the time they were gone. Bennett said that they hadn't
and that it didn't matter anymore, apparently because the celebrations
and awards had taken place.

I have no trouble believing Byrd didn't reach the pole. His Sun
Compass was excellent at providing directional information, but it
provided no ground-speed info at all.

As you mentioned, Bennett died of pneumonia in Jeffrey Hale Hospital
in Quebec, Canada, the result of attempting, although he was already
ill, a flight to rescue the crew of the Bremen, who had made a forced
landing on Greenly Island in the Gulf of st. Lawrence. Given the
circumstances of his death, and his heroic reputation, he was no doubt
being hovered over by a staff of doctors and nurses, trying to keep
him alive. Did they report such a confession at that time?

The confession was made to Balchen, Bennett's best friend. The two of
them had flown the Ford that was later named the Floyd Bennett to the
Gulf to participate in the rescue (and to get publicity for raising
funds for Byrd's Antarctic expedition.)

Byrd's navigational markings on his charts were made on the steamship
on the voyage home.

How can we be certain of that?

Crew member's reports, I believe it's in _Oceans, Poles and Airmen_.

They did not match the weather data that was available for the flight (winds),....

I would imagine any data available for such a desolate, uninhabited
part of the globe, in those days, was hardly reliable. I'm sure you
know that even today, forecast winds are usually the most undependable
part of any weather briefing.

Agree, however, there were weather reporting stations in the Arctic
and there is a historical record of the location of the highs and
lows, thus the general wind direction is known (although I agree it's
not perfectly accurate). There is a detailed report on the weather
that was made after the fact when the National Geographic Society
accepted Byrd's rather sparse data without challenge, which upset a
number of folks who felt that Amundsen was first. At least one
meteorologist published data on the subject and I believe one is
reported in Montague's book, in an appendix.

The History Channel program implied strongly that Byrd was the pilot
on his flights. He never was. He never did any flying on his
expeditions.

Except for doing the flying while Bennett was out there dealing with
the oil leak, that is probably true. But I don't think that is a
criticism. Navigating that flight was a far greater challenge than
Bennett's stick-and-rudder chores, although I'm not slighting what it
takes to do them for 16 hours.

Good points. In doing an article that included the Josephine Ford a
while back, the museum let me "cross the ropes" and get in the
airplane. I hadn't realized until then that it was open cockpit.
Bennett and Byrd were truly men of iron.

As I recall, in aviations early days, it was customary for the
"captain" of an airplane not to do the flying, just as the captain of
a naval vessel does not hold the wheel. (I don't think the Commander
of NASA's space shots is the pilot, either.)

To my knowledge, only on Pan Am flying boats did the "Master of Flying
Boats" reach such an exhalted position that he no longer deigned to
touch the controls. Gotta check on the shuttle, I'll email a friend
who had four missions. No doubt that Byrd was the commander of the
flights.

It also implied that he was flying when the Fokker
Trimotor he purchased for the Atlantic flight crashed.

I didn't get that impression. IIRC, Anthony Fokker was flying it,
wasn't he? (In any case, programs on the History Channel are loaded
with mistakes, so such an error wouldn't be unusual. In fact, an
error-free program would be much more unusual.

You're right, Tony Fokker was flying. I felt that the program at
least implied that Byrd was flying and it didn't make it clear that
the accident was in no means the fault of the pilot.

For reasons no one knows, Byrd refused to take off. His continual
delays angered Fokker so much that he withdrew from the project and
nearly took his airplane with him.

I don't know, either, but I do seem to recall that Lindbergh had to
wait around for the wx to improve. "Refusing to take off" is one of
the smartest things a pilot can do. As you agreed, earlier, we can
hardly attribute his delay to cowardice.

Byrd was the first on the field (the Bellanca was going through all
sorts of problems due to the crazy owner of the airplane) and both
Fokker and Balchen wrote of frustration with Byrd not going when the
weather was reported to be good and then, three weeks after Lindbergh
went, abruptly decided to go when the weather forecast was awful,
making the public comment that "modern airliners must be able to fly
in all kinds of weather". Balchen was almost frantic after getting
the same forecast for improving weather that Lindbergh got, because he
was trying to get the crew together and launch but Byrd wouldn't go
due to the "christening" ceremony that was to take place the next
afternoon.

Balchen and Acosta both wrote that Byrd provided no navigational assistance to
them during the flight across the Atlantic.

Is that in Balchen's _Come North With Me_? I see we have that here in
the Penn State library. I can find nothing in the catalog by Acosta,
though.

Balchen wrote in either _Come North With Me_ or another book that he
and Acosta had gotten the airplane above the clouds and were enjoying
looking at the stars and wondering where they were when they got a
note from Byrd saying that the overcast precluded star shots.

For the South Pole trip there were four airplanes and four pilots
taken to Little America....

When I was in the Marines, I had the pleasure of knowing two
extraordinary men who had been selected to go to the South Pole with
Byrd on Operation High Jump in 1946. One was M.Sgt. Mincey, a radio
oerator in VMR 252; and another M.Sgt whose name escapes me in my
senility; he was a navigator in VMR-153; both squadrons were in MAG
21, as was I. (In the Marines, at least in those days, navigators
were enlisted men.) Regrettably, I have lost track of both in the
ensuing half-century; I suspect both are dead by now. Both were older
than I and would be pushing 90 by now.

As I recall the navigator had developed some kind of grid-system for
navigating in the polar regions, and was seriously injured in a crash.
A mountain in Antarctica was named for him. Did you encounter
anything about either of those men in any of your reading about Byrd?

There is a web site on Byrd that gives the names of those who served
with him in Antarctica (I found it on google by typing in: Byrd
Balchen "South Pole" Don't recall if those names were there. You are
correct that they use grid navigation. A friend of mine who flew
helos in Antarctica as a civilian contractor for a couple of summers
(I never figured out why an ex-Army helo pilot would go where it was
so cold) once explained grid navigation to me, but her eyes were so
captivating I'm afraid that I didn't pay as much attention to what she
was saying as I should have.

vince norris