New Clues Add Doubt to Byrd’s Claim of North Pole Primacy

Richard E. Byrd, the famed American polar explorer who claimed in 1926--70 years ago today--to have been the first person to fly over the North Pole, may actually have turned back two hours and 150 miles short of his goal, according to new evidence released by Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar Research Institute.

The clues are in Byrd’s long lost diary of the expedition, which an archivist at the center recently found in a mislabeled box of Byrd’s memorabilia. The diary contains navigational notes that Dennis Rawlins, a Baltimore navigation expert and historian of polar expeditions, has interpreted to mean that Byrd failed in his attempt at the pole even though he claimed to have reached it.

One incriminating finding: The diary contains an erased--but still readable--sextant reading that put Byrd about 165 miles south of where he would later claim, in his official report, to have been at that moment toward the end of the flight north.

If confirmed, Byrd’s disqualification would hand the title of “first person to reach the North Pole” to Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer who traveled over the pole in a dirigible three days after Byrd’s airplane expedition--arriving there May 12, 1926.

Dismissal of Byrd’s claim to have reached the once-fabled spot on the globe--a goal of explorers for many decades--would be the second in recent years, at least in the minds of historians of exploration.

The long-controversial claim of Robert E. Peary, who said he reached the North Pole by dog sled in 1909, is now largely discounted by polar experts, partly because of research by Rawlins. Amundsen’s claim, by contrast, is documented by detailed navigational records and corroborated by experts who traveled with him. It has never been in doubt. Fifteen years earlier, Amundsen was also first to the South Pole.

Byrd’s claim to have flown over the North Pole was controversial in its day, for one reason because he failed to drop the hundreds of American flags he carried to prove his priority to Amundsen, a longtime rival who he knew would be arriving days later.

Critics in Byrd’s time alleged that instead of flying toward the pole, the explorer and his pilot, Floyd Bennett, simply flew out of sight of the international press corps that saw him off from the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, wandered for many hours and returned.

Rawlins said, however, that the diary establishes that Byrd, brother of Virginia’s then-Gov. Harry Byrd, did, indeed, attempt the pole, venturing some 600 miles over the ice in a primitive Fokker tri-motor. Just a year earlier, Amundsen had made a similar attempt at the pole but suffered engine failure that stranded him and his crew for several weeks on the ice. Moreover, the diary indicates that Byrd’s navigation was on target, disputing an old allegation that the explorer lacked the navigational skill to find his way above the trackless ice sheet.

But, Rawlins said, “what we find in his diary is not consistent with Byrd getting all the way to the pole.”

Rawlins, a longtime specialist in skeptical analyses of ancient claims involving astronomy or navigation, publishes a journal called DIO that focuses on these subjects and has carried articles critical of Byrd and Peary.