NavList:

In the Navy, I served as desk-officer in charge of all types of tenders for submarines, destroyers and repair ships. This was exactly in line with my experience and education as a naval architect and marine engineer. I was also engaged in a number of interesting activities related to the Arctic and Antarctic. The Navy, in fact, appointed me a member of a coordinating committee for the Development of the Arctic. Another activity was my work with the "Place-name Committee" under the U.S. Board on Geographic Names which was under the jurisdiction of the Department of Interior.

I was often in consultation with Lieut. Comdr. Robert A. J. English, who had been the skipper of Bear on Byrd's Second Ex­pedition. He had also served as Executive Secretary of the United States Antarctic Service while we were down south conducting geographical and scientific investigations. Now, English was assigned to write the history of the Antarctic in a volume entitled “Sailing Directions of the Antarctic” for the Navy's Hydrographic Office. I was often in consultation with him in his office in the Main Navy Building on Constitution Avenue in Washington.

As such I came in contact with many individuals and assisted in settling some of the problems that spring up from nowhere. Some of them could be rather ticklish, as is related here in detail in order to let the reader in on back-stage activities. It also indicates the thoroughness necessary, specifically when it pertains to the United States Government's activities.

One day Admiral Byrd came down and joined us in discussing names of recent discoveries to be listed in Bob English's publication. Bob English had read him what had been written about Byrd's famous flight from Little America on the 29th of November, 1929. After having read the short chapter once, Byrd read it the second time. I noticed his lips tighten. Soon a little heated discussion was underway. Byrd did not agree with the wording describing his flight to the South Pole that bright November day 14 years earlier. Bob English had written:

"On November 28, 1929, Byrd with pilots Balchen and June, and photographer McKinley, flew southward over the Liv Glacier to the polar plateau. The homeward flight course was over the Axel Heiberg Glacier."

That sounded very good to me, and for a while I could not understand why the Admiral objected to the statement. He was upset because it did not have anything about him having flown to the South Pole. Byrd wanted the paragraph changed to:

"On November 28, 1929, Byrd with pilots Balchen and June, and photographer McKinley, flew southward over the Liv Glacier to the polar plateau and on to the South Pole, making a 12-mile circle. The homeward flight course was over Axel Heiberg Glacier."

Bob English stated: "Admiral, I shall be happy to change the wording as you suggest provided you give me evidence to prove that you flew over the South Pole." He said it should include sun observations taken, times and distances flown as well as wind velocities and directions.

Byrd's comment was: "English! that is none of your business! You do as I tell you!" English replied, "No Sir- Admiral. I have the responsibility to write these sailing directions on orders from the Navy Hydrographer. Nothing will go under my name unless I have some evi­dence that it is correct!"

Byrd, still determined to have things his own way, threat­ened: "You do as I tell you! If not I shall have you court­-martialed."

After that statement, I noticed that Bob English was getting hot under the collar. Clearly and distinctly he said:

"Admiral, nothing would please me more than if you would proceed as suggested because I would welcome the opportunity for a court­martial to clarify some points."

Byrd, ashen-white, his lips tight, stared Bob English straight in the face. Then, without saying another word, he turned around, walked to the door, opened it slowly, and left.

English would not be intimidated. He never changed a word.

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Byrd usually got what he wanted. As a result of his 1928-30 expedition, special Congressional medals were authorized by Congress. Similarly, medals were again struck to honor the Second Byrd Expedition. But after the return of the United States Government Expedition, no attempt was made to gain recognition for its members. At an Explorers Club meeting one evening, Senator Shipstead of Minnesota questioned me on why no attempt had been made in Congress to give members of the most recent expedition recognition. 1 replied that it would have been up to Byrd to initiate such action since he had been appointed by the President of the United States to head up the expedition. The Senator thought that Byrd was not interested since it was not his own private expedition. I was asked to send him a memorandum, stating in detail all of the circumstances surrounding this official ex­ploration of the Antarctic. He wanted to know the number of people involved, and what was accomplished.

I did as the Senator had suggested. He introduced a bill; it passed the House and Senate, and was signed by the President. A medal was struck, to be presented in the office of the Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal. Present at the ceremony were about 30 of the recipients, plus friends and relatives. Forrestal, who had been pressed into doing the presentation, agreed to pin medals on only three persons during the gathering - Siple, representing West Base, Cruzen for the sea-going forces and myself on behalf of the personnel for East Base.

After the presentation ceremony, I noticed a number of medals still lying on a small table. One I saw was for Richard Byrd. I stuck it in my pocket and walked out into the corridor where Byrd was talking to a group of expedition men. I joined them. Moments later Byrd asked if anyone had seen his medal on the table. Smiling, I said: "Yes" and passed it on.

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My association with Dr. Bowman led to a startling disclosure about a much publicized North Pole flight in 1926. The conversation took place at Dr. Bowman's summer home on Lake Wentworth, New Hampshire in September, 1949. I later made a memorandum of our talk and had it notarized.

"Finn, I'll tell you something I don't want repeated to any­one as long as I'm around," Dr. Bowman confided. "Will you promise me that before I go on?"

I assured him I would, and he continued approximately as follows:

"Upon Byrd's return from the Arctic in 1926, I had doubts that he ever flew over the North Pole. I asked to see his compilations and what navigational aids were used to prove that he had reached 90 degrees north. Byrd always gave evasive answers and said no one should question his integrity. But he had no proof of having passed the northernmost point of Ellsworth and Amundsen the year before. I got my answer to my suspicion when Byrd returned from the Antarctic in 1930. Byrd visited the AGS and after lunch we went for a walk with one other person, whose name I will not mention, but you know him. It was raining that afternoon and with raincoats on we kept walking and talking for almost four hours around the blocks of Broadway and 156th Street. By that time I managed to break down Dicky-Byrd, and the time it took do so was worth it. Byrd confessed to the two of us then that he had not reached the North Pole, but had missed it by about 150 miles."

At that time Dr. Bowman was Director of the American Geographical Society in New York. Why, I wondered, had he not immediately let the American people know the truth about it? He replied that no one would have believed him, for Byrd was a worshipped national hero. What a dreadful thing it would be to reveal him as a liar.

My obligation to remain silent about the matter was of short duration. Within four months Dr. Bowman died of a heart attack. The third man, incidentally, on that walk in the rain was, as I suspected, W. L. C. Joerg of the National Archives in Washington, who, at the time of Byrd's confession, was Dr. Bowman's assistant.

Byrd's deception grew out of his ambition to be the first to reach the North Pole by air. He faced strong competition for the honor in the redoubtable Roald Amundsen, as determined to blaze trails in the sky as he did on the ice with sledge and dogs.

There was never any doubt as to how long the flight took. The reporter, who sent the cablegram, had timed it. Bernt Bal­chen also checked his figures with officers of the Norwegian Navy ship Heimdal which was in Kings Bay at the time.

The distance flown was 1,500 miles. The flight took 151 hours. The plane was capable of a speed of 89 knots (equal to 99 miles per hour). Taking into consideration the drag of the plane's landing skis, the average speed during the flight was prob­ably no more than 70 knots (78 miles) per hour. Therefore, in order for the Josephine Ford to have flown from Kings Bay to the North Pole and back, the flight should have taken 18'/z to 19 hours. Winds were not a factor, for meteorological records prove there were almost none in the entire polar basin on the day of the flight. However, if Byrd's figures are to be believed, the following conditions had to exist: First, there had to be a tailwind blowing from south to north at approximately five knots per hour. Then after spending about 12 minutes flying around the pole to make certain he crossed it (and that was what Byrd said), he would have had to be blessed with a tailwind of 22 knots per hour to help push him back to Kings Bay.

Bernt Balchen, who later flew the Josephine Ford while barn­storming with Floyd Bennett, knew first hand its limitations and was aware of what actually happened from the beginning. But at that time, although bothered by it, he chose to remain silent. Even had he spoken up it is doubtful anyone would have listened to him. Before Floyd Bennett died, he revealed the truth to Balchen and eventually Balchen disclosed at a press conference that Byrd's claim was "based on fraud."

In the spring of 1926, I returned to Norway on my first visit since I emigrated. Shortly after my arrival, my father, who had been at Spitsbergen with Amundsen, also returned home. At the time, I had read reports in the Oslo Evening Post that some doubted Byrd's claim to have flown to the North Pole. I asked my father's opinion. "We all thought the two Americans returned to Kings Bay too soon. The officers on the Heimdal timed them and thought they had not gone farther than Amundsen and Ells­worth last year (1925)."

Amundsen recalled the enthusiastic reception when Byrd'splane set down on the air-strip crowded with onlookers:

 ". . . we were close enough to pull (Byrd and Bennett ) out of the plane and give them . . . each a real and thoughtful kiss on the chin." But in the excitement, "none of us thought of asking them: `Have you been to the Pole?”

Although Amundsen conceded he had been beaten to the North Pole, he was determined to carry on with his plan. Two days after Byrd's return, he with Ellsworth and the Italian airman Umberto Nobile took off in the dirigible Norge. They flew from Spitsbergen to Teller, Alaska, crossing the pole in a 2,700­mile flight spanning three days.

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On an April evening in 1949 some 2,500 people assembled in a Washington auditorium as the American Polar Society com­memorated the 40th anniversary of Robert E. Peary's attainment of the North Pole. His daughter, Mrs. Marie Peary Stafford, was seated in the audience between me and my wife. I was privileged to introduce the principal speaker, Sir Hubert Wilkins, who had pioneered polar exploration by plane and submarines.

Choosing his words extremely carefully, the goateed Australian outlined the general plan of travel claimed by Peary, lay­ing particular stress to the phenomenal daily distances covered. Peary was no ordinary man, Wilkins said; he was a super human, a man whose accomplishment no other would be able to dupli­cate. Just think of it, Wilkins said, Peary covered no less than 186 miles in two consecutive days, running on crippled feet along­side his sledge.

The subtlety of Wilkin's remarks was completely lost on some of the guests. He had written the speech in my presence. We had discussed Peary's claim to the North Pole many times over the years, and I knew that Sir Hubert put little credence in the polar claim. Wilkins had sledged in the Arctic, flown over it and cruised under the ice floes in a submarine and knew that of which he spoke. Neither did I believe Peary. Having sledged as many - if not more - miles as any explorer who ever strapped on a pair of skis, I had learned from painful experience just how much a man could push himself.

While Peary's longest distance in one day's travel was something like 93 miles, the most I was ever able to cover in a day was 61.5 miles. That happened on a sledge journey I made with Albert Eilefsen in 1934, when we raced back to Little America from Byrd's Advance Base. A more meaningful comparison would be the sledge-trip made with Eklund in 1941, when our best day's work was 49 miles. Carl and I were then 33 years old - 20 years younger than Peary when he made his dash in 1909 - and we were in the pink of condition. Also, we were both expert skiers, having participated in cross-country racing over long distances. In 1941 we were skiing and sledging under ideal conditions, which meant that each step we took resulted in a forward movement of 15 to 20 feet.

Peary, shuffling along on snow-shoes with most of his toes amputated because of frost bites from a previous expedition, could not have covered more than two or three feet per stride. The surface we skied on was as smooth as a waxed kitchen floor, with ridges no higher than a foot. Peary, on the other hand, well aware this was his final attempt, had to cross pressure ridges up to 40 feet high and detour around open water leads - several miles wide.

Amundsen, an excellent skier as well as a man of great endurance, averaged about 27 miles per day when crossing the Ross Ice Shelf. On one earlier occasion, when surface conditions were ideal, his lightly laden sledges returning from a cache-laying trip, tore across the ice for 71 miles before calling a halt. The effort left them totally exhausted.

Needless to say, they did not cover 71 miles the following day. Not even iron-man Amundsen had that kind of stamina. And it is asking too much to expect us to believe that Peary did.

In 1910 Peary's claims caused a rumpus in the United States' Congress, and a special committee was formed to conduct an investigation. But it did not get very far, since Peary was not a cooperative witness and there was very little scientific evidence to examine. His navigational log has not been produced for an analytical scrutiny to this day in 1979.

Nevertheless he became a national hero in America, due in large part to his success in obtaining laudatory publicity.

It would appear that Byrd profited later by using the same techniques. Those were the years before modern technology in navigation and communication could dispute the fanciful claims of some cele­brated explorers.

According to a staff member of the American Geographical Society, there is a full report on Byrd's alleged flight to the North Pole in the Society's files. However, few have ever seen it, for it is marked "Secret."

I am confident from what the staff members and others said, in addition to my own personal knowledge, that the report would discredit Byrd's claim of being first to fly over the North Pole in May, 1926.

Excerpts from “Antarctica, My Destiny” by Finne Ronne  (pages 122 – 124; 182-183; 186-189)