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Richard Byrd

1888–1957 · 69 years Tier II

The First Family of Virginia son who erased his own sextant readings

Portrait of Richard Byrd — Underwood &amp — Underwood — 1928-10-11 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Byrd came out of the oldest money in Virginia, a line running back through William Byrd II to John Rolfe and Pocahontas, and his brother Harry ran the state's Democratic machine for 40 years. He spent two years at the Virginia Military Institute and transferred to the University of Virginia, then, when the money would not stretch, started over at Annapolis on a free appointment. He graduated on June 8, 1912. In the Caribbean he twice went over the side fully dressed to pull a sailor from the water, and was given the Silver Lifesaving Medal. On March 15, 1916, the Navy retired him on three-quarters pay for an ankle he had wrecked aboard the presidential yacht. He was 27 and, as far as the service was concerned, done.

The bad ankle pushed him into aviation, then a career backwater. He qualified as naval aviator number 608 in June 1918. On May 9, 1926, he and Floyd Bennett flew a Fokker trimotor out of Spitsbergen and reported crossing the North Pole, and Congress voted them both the Medal of Honor. The next year he crossed the Atlantic and crash-landed on the Normandy coast at Ver-sur-Mer. On November 28, 1929, his crew flew from Little America to the South Pole and back in 18 hours and 41 minutes. After that he built the American presence in Antarctica almost by himself: five expeditions, including Operation Highjump in 1946 and 1947 with 13 support ships and more than 4,000 men, and Operation Deep Freeze, which planted the McMurdo and South Pole stations that are still there.

His diary of the May 9 flight was released in 1996. It contains sextant sights he erased and that remain legible under the erasure, and they do not match the typewritten report he gave the National Geographic Society six weeks later. The diary puts the observed solar altitude at 7:07:10 Greenwich time at 19 degrees 25 minutes 30 seconds. The report gives the same instant as 18 degrees 18 minutes 18 seconds. Working from the diary, Dennis Rawlins concluded that Byrd navigated accurately, flew roughly 80 percent of the way, turned back for an engine oil leak, and then falsified the record. A defender answers with a following anticyclone that would have boosted his ground speed both ways. What nobody disputes is that the numbers were erased.

New York gave him ticker-tape parades in 1926, 1927 and 1930, and no one else has had three. By his death he had accumulated 22 citations and commendations, nine for bravery. He died in his sleep of a heart ailment on March 11, 1957, at his Beacon Hill house in Boston, and is buried at Arlington. Antarctica kept him — Marie Byrd Land carries his wife's name, the Ames Range her father's, and a bust of him stands at McMurdo. The Arctic did not. Since 1996 the North Pole claim has generally been read as short of the mark, though the Medal of Honor stands and the Josephine Ford sits in the Henry Ford Museum with the argument attached.

Lifespan

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Richard Byrd's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Little America building
The base camp on the Ross Ice Shelf that everything else ran from 1929
First flight to the South Pole and back mission
November 28, 1929 — 18 hours and 41 minutes 1929
Advance Base mission
Five months alone at a weather station, nearly killed by a leaking stove 1934
Alone book
His account of the winter at Advance Base 1938
Operation Highjump mission
13 support ships and more than 4,000 men — 10 new mountain ranges mapped 1947
Operation Deep Freeze I mission
Established the permanent bases at McMurdo Sound and the South Pole 1956

Life in brief

with age at each point

May 28, 1908 aged 19 Enters the Naval Academy after two years at VMI and one at Virginia The family money had run out.
March 15, 1916 aged 27 Medically retired at 27 for an ankle injury He was put on three-quarters pay and hated it.
June 1918 aged 29 Qualifies as naval aviator number 608
May 9, 1926 aged 37 Flies north from Spitsbergen with Floyd Bennett and claims the Pole Congress awarded them both the Medal of Honor that December.
July 1, 1927 aged 38 Crash-lands the America off the Normandy beach at Ver-sur-Mer Lindbergh had taken the Orteig Prize six weeks earlier.
November 28, 1929 aged 41 His crew flies to the South Pole and back
1934 aged ~46 Nearly dies of carbon monoxide poisoning alone at Advance Base His garbled radio traffic alarmed the base camp, which took three attempts to reach him.
March 11, 1957 aged 68 Dies in his sleep in Boston at 68
1996 aged ~108 His 1926 flight diary is released with erased sextant sights still legible They do not match the report he filed six weeks after the flight.