Show Me a Hero

by Jeremy Scott

  During the next three days Byrd’s party set up a field kitchen by the proposed airfield and manhandled supplies and drums of fuel up the ice slope from the shore – manhandled, because the settlement’s only tractor was being used by the Norwegians in their preparations for the arrival of the Norge. Meanwhile a massed pack of Byrd’s men were engaged in stamping down the deep snow to create an airstrip for the Jo Ford, laughing, shouting, ragging and throwing snowballs as they worked, playing up for the media who were photographing and filming everything. ‘Not having a level stretch smooth enough for a take-off with a heavy load, we were forced to try another stunt – to take off going downhill,’ Byrd writes. ‘Smoothing the surface of the take-off runway was the biggest job of all. The men had to work eighteen hours a day, but I never heard a single complaint.’

  The weather remained dire, squalls and snowstorms continued, but on 3 May it cleared and a test flight looked possible. The Jo Ford was slid from the snow-walled shelter built for her and positioned at the top of the runway. Floyd Bennett took the pilot’s seat. The aircraft shot off down the slope with its motors roaring but travelled no more than five yards before a ski and supporting rod broke and it slewed to a stop. The skis were replaced, struts reinforced, and the next day Bennett tried again. With the same result. The following morning he made a further attempt – and another ski snapped. Now they were out of skis.

  Amundsen sent Balchen over to ask if he could help. Balchen was a resourceful mechanic/pilot with experience of Arctic conditions and he was of enormous assistance. He suggested larger heavy-duty skis be made for the plane, together with a stouter strutting. The only lengths of seasoned hardwood available were the oars of the Chantier’s lifeboats and its captain felt strongly about losing them. Byrd had to intervene to settle the dispute. The oars were planed into skis and fitted to the aircraft. Balchen also suggested that, instead of waxing the skis, Bennett should coat them with a mix of pine tar and resin, then caramelise the confection with a blowtorch. Thanks to his advice the Jo Ford took off on a successful test flight of two hours next day.

  Without Balchen’s technical assistance at this point, and again two days later, it is probable that Byrd and Bennett would never have got off the ground in their attempt on the Pole. One wonders why Amundsen was so very helpful to his adversaries when only days before he had hindered the Chantier’s unloading. Balchen has an explanation: ‘Practical as ever he admitted to having more than one reason to wish them safely back: should something happen to them, he would have to call off his own expedition and go out searching.’ But that is scarcely enough. In his biography of Lincoln Ellsworth, Beekman H. Pool offers another interpretation:

  The Amundsen–Ellsworth Expedition was to be Amundsen’s swan song, his farewell claim to glory. No public acrimony should tarnish his name – above all, never again would he suffer the personal guilt that had eroded his South Pole victory over Scott. When Amundsen learned of Scott’s fate he told reporters that he would gladly have relinquished any honour or money if that would have saved Scott from his terrible death. But it was too late. Scott had become the hero, Amundsen the villain. Amundsen was haunted by the memory … If anything happened to Byrd as a result of hurrying off unprepared, once again he might be accused by the world of heartlessly allowing a competitor to die…

  The history of the 1925–6 air-race for the North Pole is well documented by its contestants in terms of action. But the plot turns on certain hinges which redirect that action, and the actual movement of those hinges is at times obscured, as the participants, for whatever personal reasons, chose not to reveal their motives when they came to record them. At each of those key instants in the tale’s development we know what happened, but in some we do not know exactly how it happened, and in this case we do not know why. Amundsen’s reasons for keeping his opponent in the race remain veiled (although we may guess at them from an understanding of his character and past). There are moments in this story about which we can never be entirely sure, and this is the first of them.

  On the evening of the Jo Ford’s successful test flight Amundsen and Ellsworth were at dinner on the Heimdal when Byrd came to announce that the aeroplane’s fuel consumption had proved so good that he and Bennett intended to take off in an attempt to reach the Pole as soon as the weather cleared.

  ‘That’s alright with us,’ said Amundsen with a breezy confidence he did not feel. Only hours before he’d telegraphed to Leningrad instructing the Norge to fly to Kings Bay immediately, addressing the message not to Nobile but to Riiser-Larsen: ‘For heaven’s sake hurry here. Getting awfully sick of this place and all the tension.’

  Monitored and reported over the airwaves by the lonely occupants of the weather stations perched around the Arctic rim, weather at the Pole began to clear as a zone of high pressure built up over the area. Temperature remained low but the cloud shredded away in the breeze and the sun shone in the ever-present daylight, glittering on the ice-field. Looking out from Kings Bay across the fjord to the high snow-covered mountains beyond, the sky was a pale and cloudless Arctic blue in which the first glimpse of the airship was a glint of reflected sunlight, resolving into what looked like a silver minnow swimming above the jagged peaks. In the extreme clarity of the light it was hard to judge distance, but as the airship drew closer it became bigger and bigger, a huge monster of a creature approaching with a silent eerie grace. The whole settlement turned out to greet it, for many it was the biggest thing they’d seen in their lives.

  The Norwegian/Italian support team formed up in a V. The Norge descended slowly toward them, its motors nosing the huge craft into the breeze to hold position. Orders to the ground were shouted through a megaphone in a mix of languages. The mooring ropes were thrown down and a man attached himself to each. A gust of wind caught the airship and they were all lifted bodily off the ground to dangle from the ropes till she resettled. Slowly, ponderously the Norge was pulled to earth.

  Colonel Umberto Nobile stepped from the gondola in his peaked cap, Tintina in his arms barking noisily. Both were in a highly emotional state, the little terrier at the prospect of urinating on solid ground, Nobile because he’d seen Byrd’s Fokker on the snow-covered runway beneath him as he flew in. Spotting Amundsen with Ellsworth among the assembled crowd, he marched straight up to him.

  A difficult flight, he announced. Snow, fog, headwinds, in all 5,000 miles and 103 hours of flying time, but he’d completed the long voyage successfully. Slight mechanical problems: a drive shaft had broken in one of the engines and needed to be replaced. He would order his mechanics here to effect the repair while he and his flying crew rested. But there was no time to lose, he told them. Amundsen and Ellsworth must prepare themselves, the Norge would be ready in six hours. He intended to start for the Pole at once.

  From his superior height Amundsen looked down in silence at the small man before him, who was gesticulating vehemently with his free hand while his other clutched the squirming Tintina. Having eaten his own, he had no sentimental fondness for small dogs; Nobile he regarded with sardonic contempt. ‘Nothing doing!’ he told him. That weary lecture tour of America last winter had yielded little profit, but it had taught him current slang. Amundsen writes:

  Safe as the journey was … Nobile grossly mismanaged even that. Besides the necessary foreign pilots taken aboard at Rome to guide the Norge over other lands, Nobile permitted on board a large number of newspaper correspondents, and guests … One result was … the wholly needless discomfort of the Norwegian members of the expedition … Dr. Adam of Berlin had generously made flying suits to measure for every member of the expedition … At the last moment, Nobile declared they could not be carried because of their weight. Riiser-Larsen, therefore, and the other Norwegians had to make the flight clad in ordinary street clothes. The Italians, however … appeared on the scene clad in magnificent fur coats and equipped with every other comfort of apparel. Throughout the journey the Norwegians suffered intensely from the cold. Nobile’s arrogance
and egotism and selfishness were unparalleled in my experience. I shall have later incidents of the same kind to report…

  Only a couple of days before the Norge’s arrival at the settlement Amundsen’s support team had been humping the last of the supplies up to the hangar from the quay. An item they left to the end was an enormous wooden crate weighing two tons addressed to Nobile and stencilled HANDLE WITH CARE! FRAGILE! Halfway up the ice-slope the tractor broke down and they were obliged to haul the crate on a sled the rest of the way to the top. It took them all morning. When finally they got it to the hangar they all hung around exhausted to see what it contained. Inside was a huge searchlight to guide the Norge on night landings. Here the sun had not set since 7 April and would not sink below the horizon until 10 September; there was no night.

  The work of replacing one of the airship’s motors and repairing its elevators and rudder took five days. Amundsen records:

  During that time the Italians spent their odd hours practising on skis … They were unbelievably clumsy. None of them could stay on their feet more than a few moments. Nobile fell on smooth ground and could not get up … It is merely amusing to suppose that men of this semi-tropical race, who had not the most rudimentary idea of how to take care of themselves in a cold country, could ever have conceived the notion of undertaking on their own account an expedition which required as its most elementary qualification an ability to survive on the ice in an emergency.

  But despite all problems the Norge was here in Kings Bay with her flying crew assembled, even if unable to remain upright. Only a short way from the airship’s giant hangar Byrd’s tri-motor, the Jo Ford, stood in her improvised shelter at the top of the runway, her engines kept warm in fireproof canvas bags. In Germany Professor Eckener and Nansen were preparing to start out in their Zeppelin. At Point Barrow Hubert Wilkins with his remaining Fokker (having wrecked the other) was delaying only until the zone of high pressure spread west into Alaska before he took off for the Pole.

  The four contestants in the race were lined up on the starting grid and waiting only for the green light to go…

  16.

  TRIUMPH AND APPLAUSE

  At last, after months and years of preparation, anticipation and false starts, the main event is about to take place. In the radio cabin aboard the Peary the shortwave and longwave wireless sets are tuned to the Arctic weather stations and Byrd is waiting there impatiently, already shaved and dressed, when the first morning met. reports come in. They confirm that a high-pressure area has continued to develop and now extends over the whole polar basin. Weather is stable from Spitsbergen clear across to Canada. A light southerly wind is blowing from the Pole and the prospect is excellent – now is the moment.

  Just before midday brightly dressed groups of Americans from the Chantier climb the hill to gather around the Jo Ford, which has been slid from her shelter and stands at the top of a snow ramp sloping down onto the runway. The photographers and movie cameramen are setting up their equipment. Miners with their wives and children stroll down from their huts to swell the crowd, for this is a Sunday and no one is working. Norwegians and Italians of the rival expedition emerge from the Norge’s hangar and stand watching as Byrd and Floyd Bennett tramp through the mushy snow to the Jo Ford, which swarms with mechanics topping up its fuel tanks and running last-minute checks. The two men pose beside the aircraft wearing fur anoraks with fur hoods over their flying suits, while the photographers obtain their departure shots. Then Bennett climbs the metal steps to the cockpit, waving a hand casually to the crowd. Byrd follows him, pausing at the top to turn and deliver a crisp salute to his support staff before entering the cockpit.

  One after another the three motors burst into life. All at once they accelerate in a roar of power. This is the critical moment. The plane shudders, vibrating convulsively, but does not budge. It bucks free, slides down the ramp, and stops. Bennett cuts the engines. He gets out, followed by Byrd, his mouth set tight. They examine the aircraft’s skis, and Byrd beckons Balchen from the crowd of onlookers to ask what he reckons. The Norwegian advises to wait till that night, when the sun and temperature will be lower and the slushy surface of the runway turned to ice…

  That anyway is how Balchen describes Byrd’s aborted take-off. Byrd tells it differently:

  We warmed the motors, heated the oil … Bennett and I climbed in, and we were off. Off, but alas, not up. Our load proved too great, the snow too ‘bumpy’, the friction of the skis too strong a drag. The plane simply would not get into the air. We over-ran the runway at a terrific speed, jolting over snow hummocks and landing in a snowdrift; the plane just missed turning over on her back. A dozen men came up, weary, heartsick and speechless. They had worked almost to the limit of their endurance to give us our chance. I waded through the deep snow to the port landing gear. Great! Both it and the ski were OK. Then I stumbled to the other side and found that they also had withstood the terrible pounding. My apprehension turned to joy …

  Finally, at a half-hour past midnight all was in readiness. Bennett and I had had almost no sleep for thirty-six hours, but that did not bother us. We carefully iced the runway so that we could make a faster start … we decided to stake all on getting away – to give the Jo Ford full power and full speed – and get off or crash at the end of the runway in the jagged ice. With a total load of nearly 10,000 pounds we raced down the runway, dangerously close to the broken ice at the end. Just when it seemed we must crash into it as we had done before, Bennett, with a mighty pull on the wheel, lifted the plane cleanly into the air, and we were clear at last…

  Immediately after the Jo Ford’s take-off at 0107 hours the attendant media crowded into the Chantier’s radio cabin to file their reports. A release announcing Byrd’s start for the Pole was transmitted to US radio stations and onward around the globe. The world waited for further news. Dawn came to the eastern seaboard of America and at home in Boston Marie Byrd and her three children waited near to a radio. As in New York did Nelson Rockefeller and Vincent Astor; in Washington, the Naval Secretary; in Detroit, Edsel and his daughter Jo Ford stayed tuned to the fortunes of the plane that bore her name. No radio reports of either progress, difficulty or disaster were received from the Jo Ford. No reports at all.

  Byrd and Bennett had taken off just after 1 a.m. on 9 May 1926. The three-engine Fokker was carrying its maximum load, most of this fuel. The rest was made up of survival gear and food supplies, in case they were forced down. They had a tent, a rubber boat, a sledge; also rifles, knives, a primus and smoke bombs. If they did crash-land it would be impossible to cross the open sea back to Spitsbergen, they would have to continue on foot across the continent to Etah in west Greenland, trusting to shoot bear or seals for food. Byrd estimated the trek could take them two years.

  To achieve the Pole (and back to Spitsbergen) precise navigation was all-important. The Jo Ford was equipped with wind-drift indicator, bubble sextant, chronometer, magnetic compass and two sun compasses, one in the nose, the other in the tail. These instruments, together with the flight log, would provide proof they had reached that – till now – theoretical spot at the summit of the globe, which formed the axis on which the world turned.

  After lifting off, Bennett took the plane to 2,000 feet, setting it on a ruler-straight course across the map (blank except for coastlines) toward their destination. The distance there and back totalled 1,550 miles.

  Byrd provides an account of his epic flight in Skyward, published in 1937. After two hours they were over the pack ice, which was cross-crossed by pressure ridges and open leads. The day was cloudless, both sun compasses were functioning smoothly. The plane, which had a hypothetical top speed of 120 mph, was flying at a steady hundred an hour, but for some reason it veered constantly to the right. Moving between the two sun compasses, Byrd corrected Bennett by hand signals. Every few minutes he would lower the drift indicator through the floor hatch to measure the crosswind, but this was a necessarily imprecise calculation.

  H
e looked down on land – or ice – that had never been seen by mortal eyes, his view extended fifty miles in every direction. ‘We were opening up unexplored regions at a rate of nearly 10,000 square miles an hour.’ He describes ‘an extraordinary exhilaration’, and ‘incomparable satisfaction’. ‘I felt repaid for all our toil.’

  At 8 a.m., when they were almost a hundred miles short of the Pole, he was aghast to notice a film of oil coating the wing and windshield. The starboard engine was leaking. The cabin was too noisy for conversation. Bennett passed him a note, ‘That motor will stop.’

  It was a dismaying moment. It seemed the end to all their hopes – and they were so close their objective. The two could not discuss the matter, everything had to be communicated in shaky scribbled notes. For the moment the oil pressure was steady, but if the reservoir ran dry the engine would seize, impossible to repair. On the other hand, if the leak came from a loose fuel line, Bennett could fix it if they landed. From this height some of the ice looked deceptively smooth – it might be feasible.

  Byrd recalled Amundsen and Ellsworth’s experience when they had come down on the pack ice, while he stared at the thin jet of oil spraying the windscreen, freezing as it struck the glass. The leakage was continuous, but slow. They studied it for several minutes, but it did not appear to be growing worse. On the gauge oil pressure stayed firm. Steadying his hand against the vibration of the plane, Byrd noted his decision: CONTINUE.

  ‘At 9.02 a.m., Greenwich time, our calculations showed us to be over the Pole,’ Byrd writes. ‘The dream of a lifetime had been realised.’ They made a circle around the spot, a full circuit around the world, losing then gaining back a whole day in the space of minutes. As Bennett threw the stick over to bank the aircraft, the sun compass Byrd had been using slid off the chart table, fell to the floor and shattered.