Famous Flyers Part 14

"On April 5, 1926, all of the plans being completed, and the last supplies of food to last fifty men for six months being stowed away, the Chantier sailed from New York for King's Bay, Spitzbergen. They got there on April 29th, after an uneventful trip, and anch.o.r.ed in the Bay.

But the problem of getting the plane to sh.o.r.e arose. They solved it by building a huge raft, loading the heavy s.h.i.+p onto it, and towing it to sh.o.r.e through the choppy, ice-blocked water.

"When they got the plane onto the sh.o.r.e, the wheels sank into the snow, and they had to replace them with skis, which seemed ample to sustain the weight of even that great craft. How frail they really were was to be proved later.

"Byrd and his men set up camp, and prepared for the take-off to the Pole. They had to work fast. The Amundsen-Ellsworth-n.o.bile Expedition with its dirigible the Norge was well on its way with its preparations, and while there was no bitter rivalry between the two expeditions, nevertheless the distinction of being the first to fly over the Pole was one not to be sneezed at. Everybody worked-eighteen hours a day, with meals taken on the run. And n.o.body thought to complain-the morale never broke once. That's the sort of man Byrd picks to take with him-and that's the sort of respect they have for a man who chooses them. Byrd's a leader. No matter where he has come in contact with men, he has won their love and respect, and has got more work out of them by his kindness and gentleness than anybody else could have by slave-driving.

They worked for Byrd because they liked to, not because they had to. He imbued them with his spirit of adventure, so that every man of them was determined that his expedition should be successful, and that Byrd should be the first man to fly across the Pole.

"One of the hardest jobs of all was packing down the snow into a hard, smooth runway for taking off. They had to take off going down hill, since there was no level stretch of snow for their start, and this hill had to be smoothed and leveled. The first attempt at a take-off was disastrous. The plane landed in a snowdrift, with a broken ski. The carpenters worked for two days and nights to make new skis, and the s.h.i.+p was ready for its second attempt.

"The second trial flight was a huge success. The s.h.i.+p rolled down the incline and took gently and gracefully into the air. At least they would be able to get off. The landing, too, was beautiful. So far, so good.

They discovered by this trial flight that they could make the North Pole and return without landing once, as they had planned before.

"The Josephine Ford was a mighty heavy craft, and loaded with fuel and supplies, which they would need in case of a forced landing and overland trek, she weighed five tons. This accounts for the terrible job getting her off the ground and into the air.

"Well, finally everything was ready, the weather was just right; the motors had been warmed up, and Bennet and Byrd climbed into the plane, ready to start. Down the runway they coasted. There was a tense moment.

Would she lift? With a groan, the men on the ground saw her lurch, roll into a snowdrift, and all but turn over.

"A lesser man, as I said once before, would have been discouraged. But not Byrd! He got out, inspected the plane, and found to his joy that it had not been damaged. No delay! Off again. They lightened the load as much as they dared by taking off some fuel, then taxied the Josephine Ford up the hill again. The men worked like Trojans to get the runway lengthened and smoothed out again. At last everything was ready.

"Byrd and Bennett decided to stake everything on that last trial. They decided to give the engine all the speed they could, so that at the end of her run she'd either rise into the air, or crack up once and for all.

Even as they planned, they hoped against hope that it would be the former, and not the latter. The weather was perfect. It was a little past midnight. The men of the expedition were gathered about, anxiously awaiting the take-off. Byrd and Bennett shook hands with them, stepped into the cabin of the s.h.i.+p and started down the runway. The great s.h.i.+p rose laboriously into the air. There was a shout from their comrades.

They were off for the North Pole! Those on the ground cheered l.u.s.tily.

The Great Adventure, for which one of those men in the air had been preparing all his life, had begun.

"They had to navigate first by dead reckoning, following the landmarks in the vicinity of King's Bay. They climbed to a good distance so that they could get a perfect view of the land below them, and looked down upon the snowy mountains, scenery grander than any they had ever seen before, and terrifying, too. In a short time they left the land behind, and crossed the edge of the polar ice pack.

"There are no landmarks on the ice, and when they reached the ice pack, they had to begin their careful navigating. In the first place, they had to hit the Pole exactly, chiefly because that was the place they had set out for, and then because if they didn't hit it exactly, they would have no way of reckoning their path back to Spitzbergen, and would be lost in the arctic wastes.

"But expert navigating was d.i.c.k Byrd's strong point. He had developed a s.e.xtant by which the alt.i.tude of the sun could be gaged without reference to the horizon line, and that was exactly what he needed now, because due to the formations of ice, the horizon was irregular. But figuring out position by means of the s.e.xtant requires at least an hour of mathematical calculation, and by the time the position had been figured, the men in the airplane had advanced about a hundred miles or more. So they used a method that they had learned, whereby their position could be judged by means of taking the alt.i.tude of the sun and laying down the line of position on a sort of graph.

"Their compa.s.s was of little value. They were too near the North Magnetic Pole, which had a tendency to pull their magnet from the geographical Pole to its own position, about 1,000 miles south. So they used a sun compa.s.s, that indicated their position by means of the sun.

Of course, the fact that they had sun throughout the whole trip was an advantage. I doubt if they could have made it otherwise. Navigating up there is too difficult. Then they had to figure on wind drift. The wind, blowing pretty hard, say, about 30 miles an hour at right angles to their plane would cause it to drift thirty miles an hour out of its course. This they were able to make up for by means of the drift indicator, which compensated for the drift.

"Bennett piloted first. He would glance back to the cabin where Byrd was busy with the navigating instruments, and Byrd would indicate to him how to steer his course by waving his hand to the right or the left. When they were certain of their course, Byrd looked down on the land that he had desired to see since he had been a boy in school. Below them, stretching for mile upon mile was the ice pack, criss-crossed with ridges, seeming like mere b.u.mps in the ice from their alt.i.tude, but really about 50 or 60 feet high. Every now and then they saw a lead, opened by the movement of the water-those treacherous leads that had led many a hardy explorer to his death.

"Byrd took the wheel. He steered with one hand while he held the compa.s.s in the other. Bennett poured gasoline into the tanks, and threw overboard the empty cans, to relieve the plane of weight. From then on they took turn and turn about at the wheel, Byrd navigating incessantly, until he had a slight attack of snow blindness from looking down at the snow so constantly.

"Soon they came to land where no man had ever been before. It was then that Byrd felt that he was being repaid for all the planning, all the hard work and heart-breaking disappointments that he had experienced.

The sun was s.h.i.+ning, the Josephine Ford functioning perfectly.

"Perfectly? Just a minute. They were about an hour from the Pole. Byrd noticed through the cabin window a bad leak in the oil tank of one motor. If the oil leaked out, the motor would burn up and stop. Should they land? No. Why not go on as far as they could, perhaps reach the Pole? They would be no worse off landing at the Pole than landing here, and they would have reached their goal. So on they kept. Byrd glued his eyes to the oil pressure gauge. If it dropped, their motor was doomed.

But they would not land, or turn back.

"Luck was with them. At about two minutes past nine o'clock, they crossed the Pole. It takes just a minute to say it, but how many years of planning, how many years of patiently surmounting obstacles had prepared for that minute's statement!

"Below them was the frozen, snow-covered ocean, with the ice broken up into various formations of ice fields, indicating that there was no land about. Byrd flew the plane in a circle several miles in diameter, with the Pole as a center. His field of view was 120 miles in diameter. All this while he was flying south, since all directions away from the Pole are south. And now, his purpose accomplished, his hardest task faced him. He had to fly back to Spitzbergen.

"Soon after he left the Pole, the s.e.xtant that he was using slid off the chart table, breaking the horizon gla.s.s. He had to navigate the whole trip back by dead reckoning! With the oil fast spurting out, and the motor threatening to stop any minute, and no s.e.xtant to show his position, Byrd had his hands full. They lost track of time. Minutes seemed like hours, hours like ages. Then they saw land dead ahead. It was Spitzbergen! Byrd had flown into the unknown, 600 miles from any land, had turned about, and come back to the very spot from which he had started.

"Maybe you don't realize what wonderful navigating this was. But anybody who has navigated a plane by dead reckoning knows that it was a feat that called for great skill.

"n.o.body was prouder of what Byrd and Bennett had done than the men who had worked so hard to make the trip a success, and who had stayed behind at Spitzbergen, without glory or reward except in knowing that they had been a necessary feature in the success of that journey. The whistle of the Chantier blew a shrill whistle of welcome. The men ran to greet Byrd and Bennett, and carried them in triumph on their shoulders. Among the first to greet them were Amundsen and Ellsworth, whom Byrd had beaten in the race to be the first to cross the Pole by air. But they shook hands with vigor. They were glad that it was Byrd who had beaten them, if it had to be anybody. Byrd affects people that way. He's just as well liked after successes as before them. That's the sort he is.

"They were pretty glad to see him when he got back to the United States, too. There were plenty of whistles blowing, plenty of ticker tape, and parades for the returning hero. But d.i.c.k Byrd stayed modest through all of it. In the first place, he never gets fussed. He isn't a southern gentleman for nothing. And in the second place, he realized that the shouting wasn't so much for him as it was for the thing that he did. He had brought the United States the honor of sending the first men over the Pole. And the United States was applauding the deed, not himself.

But he seems to have forgotten that if it hadn't been for his years of planning, striving and struggling the deed never would have been accomplished.

"Well, d.i.c.k Byrd had accomplished his life's ambition. But it didn't mean that he was ready to quit. There were new fields to conquer. How about flying the Atlantic? He'd always wanted to fly the Atlantic.

Anything that was all adventure appealed to him. So when they hoisted anchor at Spitzbergen after the flight across the Pole Byrd said to his companion Bennett, 'Now we can fly the Atlantic.'

"The plan to fly the ocean had its origin in the same motives that the North Pole flight had. Byrd wanted to make America aviation conscious; and he wanted to make American aviators conscious of the benefits of careful planning. Dozens of lives had been lost in unsuccessful trans-oceanic flights-the lives of young men full of the love of adventure, who made hasty plans, or no plans at all for spanning the ocean-who had no qualifications except a great ambition to see them through the great grind that was before them. Byrd wanted to show all fool-hardy young flyers that care, care, and more care was needed in their preparations. He had to prove to the United States, too, that if care were exercised in these flights, they were not necessarily dangerous. All this Byrd had to prove. And in the meantime he'd have the time of his life, steeped in the adventurous sort of work that he craved.

"So Byrd and Bennett started their plans. The first step, of course, was the choosing of the plane. Opinion was in favor of a single-motored plane for a cross-Atlantic flight, since a single-motored plane would have a greater cruising range; offer less resistance in the air; and be less complicated to handle than a multi-motored craft. But Byrd held out for the tri-motor, the same type of plane as the Josephine Ford, which had carried him over the Pole. There was this to say for it: if one motor stopped, the other two would still function; and it might be the solution to the problem of what kind of plane would cross the Atlantic in the future, when planes ran on regular schedule. They wanted a bigger plane than the Josephine Ford, though. So they had one designed with a wing spread of 71 feet, which meant that they got an increased lifting power of about 3,000 pounds. That enabled them to take along about 800 pounds of equipment above what they actually needed, to show that a pay load could be carted across the water in a plane.

"They needed plenty of equipment, though. There was a special radio set, rockets to shoot off as signals if anything went wrong; two rubber boats for the crew; and emergency food and equipment of all sorts for forced landings; and even a special apparatus for making drinking water out of salt water so that they would not go thirsty. In fact, they could have survived for three weeks in case of an accident. They? Why, Byrd decided that besides himself and Bennett, they would take along pa.s.sengers, also to prove something-this time that pa.s.sengers could be carried across to Europe by plane.

"They successfully pet.i.tioned the Weather Bureau to make predictions for the trans-Atlantic flights, and for the first time in history regular weather maps for aviation were made of the North Atlantic.

"At the end of April, in 1927, the plane was ready for its factory test.

Byrd planned to make his flight in May, which he figured was a good month. It happened that there were at the time several other planes preparing to cross the ocean. Byrd was in no race, however. Of course, it would have been nice to be the first man across the Atlantic, as he had been the first man over the Pole-but he encouraged the others who were preparing and made no effort to be the first to start. However, his plane was ready before the others.

"Byrd, Bennett, Noville, who was going with them, and Fokker took her up for her first flight. Fokker was at the controls; the other three, pa.s.sengers. Everything went smoothly. She took off well; her motors functioned perfectly. But as soon as the motors were turned off for the glide, they felt her nose dip. She was nose-heavy. When they tried to land, they knew definitely that she was nose-heavy, and zoomed into the air again to plan what they should do. However, they couldn't stay up indefinitely-they hadn't much fuel. Down they glided again. The wheels touched the ground. Fokker jumped. But the other three were caught.

"Byrd felt the fuselage heave up. The plane went over on her nose, turned completely over. Something struck him with an awful impact, and he felt his arm snap. They had to get out of this! They were trapped in a ma.s.s of wreckage which might at any moment burst into flames and burn them to death before they had a chance to escape. Noville, beside Byrd, broke a hole in the fabric with his fist, and they crawled out. The wreckage did not burn. Someone had turned off the switches of all three motors.

"Bennett? He was hanging head down in the pilot's seat, unable to free himself. His leg was broken; his face bleeding. He was badly injured-so badly that for a week it was thought that he would never recover. But he did-of course. His iron nerve and grit pulled him through. But any thought of his going on the trip was out. This was a blow to Byrd. There was no man he would rather fly with than Bennett, Floyd Bennett, the cheerful companion, the willing worker, himself an expert pilot, and able to divine instructions before they were even given. Tough luck!

"But tough luck, too, was the fact that the plane was almost irreparably damaged. Byrd set his arm on the way to the hospital, had them put it in a sling so that it would be out of the way, and went back to the factory to supervise the repairing of the America. It took over a month of work night and day to repair the damage that had been done, and re-design the nose so that the craft would be balanced.

"May 21st was set for the christening of the plane. The christening-was changed into a celebration of the successful flight of Lindbergh.

Bennett was pleased with Lindy's achievement, since Lindy had proved the very things that Byrd himself had set out to prove-that with careful preparation, the ocean could be spanned; and that a successful ocean flight would stir the imaginations of the people, making them more conscious of aviation and its strivings. Then, too, Lindbergh cemented relations.h.i.+ps between France and the United States, which was one of Byrd's purposes in flying to France instead of to England, or any other country.

"Well, after the ocean had been crossed, there was no need for hurry.

Not that Byrd had been in a rush; but there was a great deal of criticism concerning the delay of his trip. n.o.body knows how these things start, or why. It seems that it should have been Byrd's, and Byrd's business alone, as to when he chose to cross the ocean. After all, it was his life being risked, and his glory if the flight were successful. But a great many people in the United States felt that there must be some ulterior motive in his not starting immediately; and that he had been bested by a mere boy when he let Lindbergh be the first man to conquer the ocean.

"But Byrd didn't care. He knew what he was about. He was a southern gentleman, and he said nothing to his defamers. And he went on completing his preparations. Chamberlin, with his pa.s.senger Levine, broke the world's record for flying to Germany, in a remarkable flight.

Byrd hailed their success.

"Then at last, on June 29th, early in the morning the weather man reported that weather conditions, while not ideal, were favorable. d.i.c.k Byrd decided to delay no longer. He called together his crew, and met them on the field at 3:00 o'clock in the morning. It was a miserable morning, and a light rain was falling. By the light of torches the crew was putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches on the huge' America. There she was, atop the hill that they had built for her, so that she would get a good fast start. And a good fast start she needed, all 15,000 pounds of her.

Think of the speed they had to get up in order to lift that bulk from the ground! They'd have to be going a mile and a half a minute!

"Bert Acosta was at the wheel; Noville, recovered from his serious injuries in the trial crash, sat with his hand on the dump valve, by means of which he could dump a load of gasoline if they didn't rise into the air; Bert Balchen, the young Norwegian relief pilot and mechanic, was busy with the spare fuel.

"The engines were warmed up. The great s.h.i.+p was ready-no, not quite ready. But she was eager to be off. The America broke the rope that held her, and glided down the hill on which she had been held. It was a tense moment. Would they be able to get this great hulk into the air? Along the ground she sped, gathering momentum. Her wheels lifted. There was a shout. She had cleared the ground. But the danger was not over. They must fly to at least 400 feet. Then the America showed her metal. She climbed on a turn, and they were flying at an alt.i.tude of 400 feet. They were off!

"On they sped to their destination at last. The wind was behind them, helping them; the weather was disagreeable, and slightly foggy, but this did not bother them. They reached Nova Scotia easily. But when they got there they got a horrible shock. They had run into a fog. But what a fog! One so thick that they couldn't see the land or ocean under them.

And they flew for 2,000 miles like this, absolutely blind, with black towering clouds ahead of them, below them, and when they ran through them, all around them.

"The strain was terrible. In addition, Byrd calculated that they had used more fuel than he had expected, because of climbing so high to get over the clouds, and they might not have enough to take them to Europe.