Rick, a retired USAF friend passes his copies of _Air Force_ magazine
on to me when he finishes them; the one he gave me yesterday, the
November 2004 issue, has an article on Byrd and Balchen. I thought it
might present some new evidence, but I found nothing startling in it.
It did say that Byrd and Balchen had become "estranged" and that
Bennett had told Balchen that he and Byrd had not reached the North
Pole.

Just checked a couple of sources....... The flying around for 15 hours comment was made by a rival, not Bennett.

Since Byrd and Bennett were out of sight of any human being, and there
was no radar in those days, no rival can know what they did. Sounds
like "sour grapes."

Seems to me that the possibility that Byrd never intended to fly to
the Pole, that the whole expedition was a hoax, is just too wild to
have any credibility.

That leaves us with three possibilities:

1. Byrd intended to fly to the pole, but after the oil leak
developed, he aborted the attempt and circled for 15 hours.

2. Byrd intended to fly to the pole, even after the the oil leak, but
made some kind of error in dead reckoning, and failed to reach the
Pole although he thought he had. Perhaps he recognized this at some
point and "adjusted" the data.

3. Byrd reached the Pole.

It seems to me that 2 is much more likely than 1; and 3, although
questionable, cannot be ruled out entirely.

It is virtually impossible to imagine that Byrd, an Annapolis-trained
navigator, would have neglected to calculate, while planning the
flight, an ETA at the Pole and an ETA back at Spitzbergen.

Now, if he *knowingly* turned back before reaching the pole, wouldn't
he have made certain he did not arrive back at Spitzbergen too early?
It would have been pretty dumb not to do that, wouldn't it?

He could have instructed Bennett to throttle back, or to circle.
Consider that Bennett had no navigational gear in the cockpit. How in
the world would he, Bennett, know they had not reached the Pole,
unless Byrd had told him, either (a), explicitly, or (b) by tipping
him off by requesting he circle or otherwise delay their arrival back
at Spitzbergen? There is no way, just by looking out the windshield,
that Bennett could know whether he is is, or is not, over the Pole.

......... there were weather reporting stations in the Arctic

Sorry, Rick, I still remain stubbornly skeptical about wind reports.
It's about 700 miles from Spitzbergen to the Pole, and it's all water
or ice. Rarely if ever would the winds be the same over such a large
area. I doubt very much there was a single weather reporting station
anywhere along that route, or even near it, much less one capable of
measuring winds at altitude.

...and there is a historical record of the location of the highs and
lows,....

How could the locations of highs and lows over the polar region be
known with any accuracy back in 1926, when no one was there, and
meteorology was primitive compared to today?

Perhaps I'm ignorant of the state of meteorology in those days, but
I'm willing to be enlightened.

To my knowledge, only on Pan Am flying boats did the "Master of Flying
Boats" reach such an exalted position that he no longer deigned to
touch the controls.

I think it was common in military aviation. I recall reading that in
WW I observation aircraft, the observer was typically an officer in
command of the aircraft, and the pilot was an enlisted man who did
what the observer told him. I believe that was also the practice in
the U.S. Air Service.

... 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".

Now that raises an interesting question in my mind! Do you suppose
Byrd was deliberately waiting for BAD weather, to prove that "modern
airliners" can fly in all kinds of weather?

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"

After several ties, I've been unable to get that site. Could you
possibly send the URL?

A friend of mine....... 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.

I don't blame you one damn bit. Could you get her to explain it to me
sometime?

vince norris