What is amazing to me is that Byrd and Balchen are buried within
several feet of each other at Arlington National Cemetery.

Possibly arranged by some bureaucrat who was unaware of any animosity
between the two, and thought it would be appropriate to bury them
close to each other.

Balchen ..... was the victim of some
nasty smears by Byrd and then by Byrd's estate, which forced Balchen
to delete the performance data on the Fokker 3m from his autobiograhy
under threat of being suied by Byrd's estate (which had a lot more
money than a retired Colonel could lay his hands on).

I'm not a lawyer (I understand you are), but it's my impression one
cannot libel dead person; thus Byrd's estate did not have a case.

I suspect Byrd turned back too early, possibly because of concern
about the oil leak.

That is certainly a reasonable suspicion.

Modern weather reporting and forecasting developed during World War I
(which is why the use of the word "front" came about.

Never heard that before!

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"

Ah, ha! Just found the one I wanted, from Congressional Gold Medal
recipients, it's the one I referenced:
http://www.congressionalgoldmedal.com/RichardEByrd.htm

That's dated 1930, so it wouldn't have anything about later trips.

But fortunately, an old friend of mine remembered the name of that
navigator; it's Bob Spann. Googling, I found a site that lists
Antarctic peaks:

http://geonames.usgs.gov/stategaz/ANTARCTICA.TXT

and there I found:

Spann, Mount 00014312 8203S
04121W
A mountain, 925 m, marking the N extremity of the Panzarini Hills and
the Argentina Range, at the NE end of the Pensacola Mountains.
Discovered and photographed on Jan. 13, 1956 in the course of a USN
transcontinental nonstop plan flight from McMurdo Sound to Weddell Sea
and return. Named by US-ACAN for Staff Sgt. Robert C. Spann, USMC,
navigator of the P2V-2N Neptune aircraft during this flight.

So he wasn't a M.Sgt, and I couldn't remember his name, but I got part
of it right, anyway.

vince norris