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Richard Byrd North Pole flgiht in 1926...
Richard Byrd North Pole flgiht in 1926...
Item # 553230
May 10, 1926
FITCHBURG SENTINEL, Massachusetts, May 10, 1926
* Aviator Commander Richard Byrd
* North Pole flight
This 14 page newspaper has one column headlines on the front page: "BYRD'S FLIGHT IS FIRST OVER POLE" "Second Successful Expedition, Like First, is Made By An Intrpid American"
Other news of the day throughout. Light browning with minor margin wear, otherwise in good condition.
source: wikipedia: On May 9, 1926, Byrd and pilot Floyd Bennett attempted a flight over the North Pole in a Fokker F-VII Tri-motor called the Josephine Ford. Byrd claimed to have achieved the pole. This trip earned Byrd widespread acclaim, including being awarded the Medal of Honor, and enabled him to secure funding for subsequent attempts on the South Pole.
From 1926 until 1996, there were doubts, defenses, and heated controversy about whether or not Byrd actually reached the North Pole. In 1958 Norwegian-American aviator and explorer Bernt Balchen cast doubt on Byrd's claim based on his extensive personal knowledge of the airplane's speed. In 1971 Balchen speculated that Byrd had simply circled aimlessly while out of sight of land.[1]
The 1996 release of Byrd's diary of the May 9, 1926 flight revealed erased (but still legible) sextant sights that sharply differ with Byrd's later June 22 typewritten official report to the National Geographic Society. Byrd took a sextant reading of the Sun at 7:07:10 GCT. His erased diary record shows the apparent (observed) solar altitude to have been 19°25'30", while his later official typescript reports the same 7:07:10 apparent solar altitude to have been 18°18'18".[2] On the basis of this and other data in the diary, Dennis Rawlins concluded that Byrd steered accurately, and courageously flew about 80% of the distance to the Pole before turning back due to an engine oil leak, but later falsified his official report to support his claim of reaching the pole.[3]
Accepting that the conflicting data in the typed report's flight times indeed require both northward and southward groundspeeds greater than the flight's 85 mph airspeed, a remaining Byrd defender posits a westerly-moving anti-cyclone that tailwind-boosted Byrd's groundspeed on both outward and inward legs, allowing the distance claimed to be covered in the time claimed. (The theory is based on rejecting handwritten sextant data in favor of typewritten alleged dead-reckoning data.)[4] This suggestion has been refuted by Dennis Rawlins[5] who adds[6] that the sextant data in the long unavailable original official typewritten report are all expressed to 1", a precision not possible on Navy sextants of 1926 and not the precision of the sextant data in Byrd's diary for 1925 or the 1926 flight, which was normal (half or quarter of a minute of arc).
Some sources claim that Floyd and Byrd later revealed, in private conversations, that they did not reach the pole. One source claims that Floyd later told a fellow pilot that they did not reach the pole.[7]It is also claimed that Byrd confessed his failure to reach the North Pole during a long walk with Dr. Isaiah Bowman in 1930.
Category: The 20th Century
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