Richard E. Byrd and the 1925 MacMillan Arctic Expedition

 | Aviation History  | one comment  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

Byrd had planned that two advanced bases would be established for the planes, one at the farthest edge of the large islands to the west, either on Ellesmere Island or Axel Heiberg, and the other at an intermediate location on the way to those sites. From these locations, with their caches of gasoline and other supplies, flights to the northwest would then be made to the outer limits of the planes’ capabilities.

Initial test flights showed that the planes were tail-heavy when loaded with the planned cargoes for the advanced bases. The problem was partially solved by removing a 33-gallon forward gas tank and stowing the cargo there, but the reduced gasoline capacity affected the range of the aircraft. These early flights, which went low over nearby ice floes, convinced Byrd that the ice was so rough that his planes could not land on them, even if skis were added to their landing gear.

In view of the ruggedness of the terrain below, the speed with which the weather could change and the unreliability of the compass, every flight became a dangerous mission into which Byrd chose not to order his men, accepting only volunteer participation instead. As expected, all the men volunteered.

The compass problem was, of course, endemic to Arctic exploration. Magnetic compasses point to the north magnetic pole, a moving phenomenon now generally thought to be at about 77 degrees north and 101 degrees west in the Queen Elizabeth Islands — a location well to the southwest of Ellesmere Island, where the expedition was operating. Earth inductor compasses were also in use in planes of that era, but those, too, depended upon magnetic fields. Gyro compasses of the type used aboard ships were not suitable for aircraft because of their inability to accommodate frequent changes in course. Consequently, the only compass with any reliability in high latitudes at that time was the sun compass, based on a sundial-time relationship, but it was useless when the sun did not shine, a frequent occurrence in the Arctic.

On the first extended flight on August 8 Byrd discovered that the error in the magnetic compasses was 113 degrees. Using visual bearings of known points of land, pilots of the three planes were able to work their way westward over some of the rugged fjords of Ellesmere Island before worsening weather forced them to return to Etah.

During the next few days the weather remained foul, but a few flights were carried out. On August 11 the three planes were able to fly together in an attempt to put down a base. However, only one suitable open-water landing location could be found, which was in an area southwest of Axel Heiberg. After returning to Etah, the planes were refueled and took off again in the evening, the men still hoping to find a landing site. This time they were marginally successful, landing on the water in Hayes Sound, one of the many deep-ocean indentations in Ellesmere Island, but no advanced base was established there.

On August 13 there was reason for hope, but that hope soon faded. ‘Good weather has at last come,’ noted Byrd in his diary. He went on, however, to record other problems. ‘The NA-2 and 3 are out of commission. Bennett and I are going tonight for the blessed old navy. We must make a showing for her. Everything went wrong today. NA-1 lost cowling overboard. NA-2 went down by nose. Almost lost her. NA-3 nearly sunk by icebergs and injured lower wing on raft. Later, MacMillan wouldn’t let me go. He seems to have given up. MacMillan seems to be in great hurry to pack up and go back. Wonder what is in his mind.’

NA-2 was successfully salvaged and hoisted out of the water. Her engine was replaced with a spare, but she did not fly again during the expedition. The following day, NA-1 and NA-3 were flown to a fjord on Ellesmere Island where open water had been spotted on the earlier flight. There the pilots were able to bring their planes within 50 feet of the shore, enabling them to wade to the beach carrying a total of 200 pounds of food and 100 gallons of gasoline. At last an advanced base had been established, and the two crews could return to Etah knowing that longer flights were possible.

The next day, August 15, both planes returned to their new base, only to discover that the ice had closed in around it, making landings impossible. As they searched unsuccessfully for another landing site, the enlisted pilot Nold in NA-3 became separated from Byrd’s plane. Alone in the plane, the result of a decision to save space for cargo, Nold had become disoriented and flown north. NA-1’s pilot pursued him, finally overtaking him after an hour and leading him home to Etah, where Nold observed that he had never felt as lonely in his entire life as he had during the time he was flying alone.

On the 16th the two operable planes returned to the air, exploring more of the fjords of Ellesmere Island. NA-3 developed an engine knock that prevented pilot Schur from accompanying Byrd and Bennett across the highest mountains, but he was later able to follow NA-1 back to Etah. Byrd reported to the secretary of the Navy: ‘The jaggedness, irregularity, and many deep valleys presented a magnificent but awful spectacle. The air was the roughest ever experienced by us.’

At this point a diplomatic problem arose. The Canadian government’s steamer Arctic arrived at Etah, and the officials on board communicated the concern of their government, which felt its territory was being used by outsiders without permission. MacMillan insisted that he had obtained such permission. The diplomatic Byrd was able to defuse this potential unpleasantness more effectively than he was able to handle MacMillan and McDonald.

On the 17th their bad luck continued. Gasoline on the water around Peary caught fire, and NA-3, which was tied to the ship, was cast adrift to prevent a disaster. Although the plane’s wings caught fire, the crew put out the flames with a fire extinguisher — but there was already substantial damage to the fabric. During the next several days the Navy men installed replacement wings and a new engine in the plane. During that time the fjord at Etah began to freeze over.

It was soon clear that only a few more days remained before the expedition would have to head south. Byrd’s biographer, Edwin P. Hoyt, asserts that Byrd and Bennett wanted to use the remaining time to try to reach the Pole in NA-1, but that the plan was vetoed by MacMillan, who cited the dreary record the planes had achieved thus far. Published portions of Byrd’s diary, generally more candid than his diplomatically worded reports and magazine articles, do not mention this incident, although the editor of that diary, Raimund E. Goerler, indicates that ‘Byrd’s goal was to test aircraft in the Arctic and, if possible, make a flight over the North Pole.’

One additional major flight was attempted, however, out over the Greenland icecap. This operation turned into one of the more successful ventures of the expedition, but it, too, was not without problems. The new engine of NA-3 threw a connecting rod shortly after takeoff from Etah. After a forced landing, NA-3 had to be towed back to Peary, where it was taken aboard and stowed for the trip home alongside NA-2. Byrd and Bennett completed their reconnaissance and then returned to the ship to stow their plane for the voyage home.

On the homeward journey, the two small ships encountered storms and ice. The last vestiges of summer had vanished from the high latitudes. Along the way, Peary was called upon to rescue the crew of a sinking Danish naval vessel and to pull Bowdoin free after the schooner had run aground. These delays added to the frustration of Byrd and his men, who were forced to endure MacMillan’s continual disparagement of heavier-than-air aviation in his public pronouncements.

During the journey the airmen heard news of two other Navy flights that had experienced difficulty — the crash of the dirigible Shenandoah in Ohio with the loss of 14 lives, and the forced landing of the Hawaii-bound flying boat PN-9, built by the Naval Aircraft Factory, whose crew had been forced to sail the ungainly aircraft hundreds of miles to reach their destination after the plane had run out of gas. Billy Mitchell, the critic of naval aviation, was having a field day.

The public, however, was never allowed to regard the 1925 Arctic expedition as a failure. In the pages of its magazine, the National Geographic Society made much of the venture’s scientific accomplishments. Byrd, always the optimist as well as the diplomat, had good things to say about MacMillan and his leadership of the expedition, and nothing but praise for the Loening aircraft and the future of Arctic flying.

When the expedition reached the States in the fall of 1925, the scientists and the Navy men went their separate ways, with no plans to work together again. While the mishaps of the MacMillan Arctic Expedition were fresh in their minds, Byrd and Bennett began to think ahead to the next Arctic summer and the possibility of reaching the pole.

In retrospect, the aviation operations of the expedition proved beneficial in the long run in that they taught the Navy and future Arctic fliers, particularly Byrd and Bennett, several important lessons. One was that the advanced base concept was not feasible for polar flying; flights to the North Pole had to be just that, from their inception to conclusion, and not the cumulative results of several short flights made from advanced aviation bases by planes that worked their way step by step like the dog teams of the past. Byrd and Bennett would use this lesson the following summer, when they went on to fly a ski-equipped Fokker trimotor from Spitzbergen directly to the pole and back.

As to Byrd’s claim of having flown over the pole in 1926, for many years the unavailability of his navigation charts and the condition of his disorganized and sometimes erased log entries for that flight have bothered experts. In addition, the speed apparently made by the Fokker aircraft seemed unrealistic. Reaching the pole required a round trip of at least 1,330 nautical miles; the fliers were gone 151ž2 hours in fairly calm air. This would mean that the plane flew at about 86 knots. Yet the same plane, in her triumphant round-the-country flight in 1927, averaged only 72 knots, even after all the engines had been overhauled. In 1927 another Fokker with more powerful engines averaged 81 knots with a tailwind on a flight to Hawaii. Thus, doubts have long existed about Byrd’s ability to have reached the pole in the time he was aloft.

Bernt Balchen, who later flew with Byrd on transatlantic and South Polar flights, joined Floyd Bennett on the round-the-country tour of the Fokker and led Bennett through the arithmetic of the speed and distance relationships of the North Pole flight. When Balchen suggested that the plane must have turned around short of the pole, Bennett did not disagree, shrugging it off with the reply, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter now.’

But it did matter; the Byrd family forced the publisher who had printed Balchen’s book containing that conversation to sanitize the passage in a subsequent edition. The issue of the North Pole flight remained unresolved, and it eventually resulted in an irreparable rift between Byrd and Balchen.

Another lesson of the 1925 flights was that multiengine aircraft were a necessity for Arctic work, and that conventional amphibian aircraft with wheels were useless. It is impossible to say whether another amphibian model would have done any better on the expedition than the Loenings. Loening aircraft went on to have a good record with the U.S. Navy (which used them for aerial surveying in Alaska and Latin America), the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Marine Corps and particularly the U.S. Army, which employed several of the amphibians in a long and successful flight to the southern tip of South America the following year.

Finally, it should have been clear that split command relationships created insurmountable problems on the expedition. A military operation that depended on support ships of a philanthropic agency for transport, decisions by a civilian director for permission to fly and a private donor for access to radio transmissions ceases to be a military operation. It is virtually a miracle that the expedition did not disintegrate into a messy public quarrel between Byrd and his rivals MacMillan and McDonald that could have hurt the future of Arctic aviation.

That future still seemed promising in 1925. Perhaps one could even conclude that the failures of the 1925 Arctic expedition in concept, equipment and leadership helped assure trouble-free flying for Byrd and Bennett in 1926, regardless of whether their flight actually reached the exact coordinates of the North Pole.

This article was written by David H. Grover and originally published in the March 2001 issue of Aviation History.

For more great articles subscribe to Aviation History magazine today!

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to

Tags: Adventurers & Trail Blazers, Aviation History, Expeditions, Exploration, Historical Discoveries, Historical Figures

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.