Richard E. Byrd and the 1925 MacMillan Arctic Expedition

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One of the great themes of international rivalry in the early part of the 20th century was the race to the poles, the competition between nations to see whose flag would first fly at the North and later the South Pole. As the last great uncharted areas of the globe, the poles had a particular fascination for ordinary citizens as well as for scientists and statesmen. After Robert E. Peary won the footrace to the North Pole in 1909 (at least in the eyes of the American public, although his accomplishment is still subject to considerable dispute even today), the next great competition was to see who could be the first to fly over the pole.

The American people found aviation every bit as fascinating as exploration, and by the mid-1920s all kinds of exciting new achievements in flying were being reported. In 1925 an unusual first of sorts took place as two nations tried to reach the North Pole by air. Norway’s all-out effort was made by a team composed of the first explorer to reach the South Pole, Roald Amundsen, and a rich young American adventurer, Lincoln Ellsworth. The attempt by the United States was on the hidden agenda of a relatively unknown naval aviator who was eager to try such a flight during an expedition on which he had teamed up with a well-known Arctic explorer who wanted no part of an attempt to reach the pole.

Americans would soon read all about this curious airborne expedition that their country had sent to the Far North. Through regular newspaper coverage they learned much about the activities of the venture, which was known officially as the MacMillan Arctic Expedition, named for Donald B. MacMillan, the veteran explorer who was leading it. In the fall of 1925 several articles in National Geographic magazine described the work of the enterprise. One of these articles, written by the expedition’s senior naval officer, introduced the public to the man who would go on to become perhaps the most famous aviator-explorer of his era: Richard E. Byrd, then a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy.

The 1925 expedition was significant in several respects. It marked the first productive use of aircraft in Arctic exploration by Americans, and it thrust Byrd into the limelight as spokesman for the role of aviation in such efforts. As a joint operation with civilian and military components, it was well publicized and reported, with daily progress reports reaching the American public by radio. It also marked the convergence — or near collision — of the old and the new in Arctic exploration and in the careers of the men involved. It was only peripherally an attempt to reach the pole, and yet, even with its modest goals, the expedition was no more than a nominal success.

Richard E. Byrd, the scion of an aristocratic and politically influential Virginia family, had graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1912. Seemingly headed for success in the Navy, he found his career jeopardized by several injuries to his right leg — a fractured ankle while playing football at the academy, another fracture of the same ankle in a gymnastics accident while he was still a midshipman and yet another fracture in a fall aboard the battleship Wyoming.

Byrd was given a medical retirement as an ensign in 1916, but he was brought back onto active duty when additional officers were needed during World War I. With the help of well-placed friends, he obtained the ideal sit-down duty for a man with a limp: He was accepted for pilot training. After winning his wings, Byrd found himself largely in administrative positions in aviation. He never flew in combat during World War I.

After the war he became the innovator and principal planner for the Navy’s Curtiss NC-4 flight across the Atlantic. Disappointed that he could not make the flight himself, he nevertheless left his mark through his professional contributions to aerial navigation. These, according to a Navy news release, included not only the Byrd sextant, a bubble sextant he had developed, but also a drift and speed indicator, a course and distance indicator and a zenithal projection of the Atlantic that eliminated the difficult mathematical computations of the past.

For the next few years Byrd organized Naval Reserve air stations and units around the country. But he continued to think about the Arctic, an area that had fascinated him for many years. Even as a young man he had dreamed of reaching the North Pole, but after Peary had attained that goal, Byrd thought in terms of being the first to fly over the pole.

Byrd saw his chance in 1925, a time of intense activity in aviation as well as competition among the military services. In 1920 an Army plane had hopped from New York to Nome, Alaska, with frequent stops. In 1924 the Army made a spectacular flight around the world with considerable help from, but little recognition to, the Navy. Early in 1925 the Navy was forced to scrub a projected Arctic flight of the dirigible Shenandoah when the airship was damaged in a storm. That same year the service was planning a flight of twin-engine seaplanes to Hawaii. It appeared that Amundsen, the distinguished Norwegian explorer, would soon be ready to fly toward the North Pole. The timing seemed right for an Arctic flight with Navy planes. Teaming up with the veteran Arctic ship captain Robert A. ‘Bob’ Bartlett, who had been with Peary in 1909 and was considered the grand old man of Arctic exploration, Byrd launched a fund-raising effort on behalf of his project.

To obtain the necessary airplanes, he turned to the Navy Department. Initially he argued that the Far North needed to be explored hydrographically, because military and commercial flights would eventually cross the pole. As a clincher, he noted that the U.S. Navy needed a striking accomplishment to offset the harsh public criticism it was receiving at the hands of Brig. Gen. William D. ‘Billy’ Mitchell of the Army Air Service, who was campaigning for the supremacy of air power, delivered by a separate air arm, in future military operations. Eventually Byrd convinced Secretary of the Navy Curtis D. Wilbur of the benefits of the expedition, and Wilbur in turn sold the idea to President Calvin Coolidge.

The plane that the Navy furnished was a relatively new amphibian design built by the Loening Aircraft Company. Loening’s planes were unique in that they did not make use of a flying boat hull, as did earlier amphibians, but instead used a large single float faired into the underside of the fuselage. This two-seater, open-cockpit biplane was manufactured for several years, during which a number of modifications appeared, designated by the Navy as OL-1 through OL-9. Some were powered by Liberty engines, others by Packards and a later series by Pratt & Whitney air-cooled engines.

The model turned over to Byrd was an OL-2, which had an inverted 400-hp Liberty engine. It had a maximum speed of 122 mph, with an original range of about 500 statute miles — hardly impressive performance characteristics for a plane that was going to engage in exploration. Ultimately, three of these planes were allocated to the expedition. The Navy issued an announcement assuring the public that if the expedition encountered any serious difficulties, the Navy would have two dirigibles, Los Angeles and the recently repaired Shenandoah, standing by for a rescue.

Gratified that he had obtained planes and personnel, Byrd moved ahead with his planning. But he discovered that not only was the Norwegian Amundsen preparing for an attempt at the North Pole but also another American Arctic expedition was being planned for the same general time frame. This effort was being spearheaded by Donald MacMillan, a former college professor and longtime Arctic explorer who had also been with Peary in 1909 and was a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve. MacMillan had already approached the Navy about getting a plane for his expedition after lining up strong sponsorship by the National Geographic Society, with financial support from Chicago millionaire E.F. McDonald, Jr., who headed the Zenith radio manufacturing firm. McDonald was also a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve.

Sensing that his own effort needed broader support and that a joint expedition could achieve more than two individual ones, Byrd approached MacMillan about combining their efforts. The older man reluctantly agreed, insisting, however, that he must be in overall charge of the operation. Captain Bartlett was dropped out of the plans at this point.

Knowing that the Navy distrusted outsiders, Byrd managed to have his own orders drawn up so that he was put in command of a naval force that was in a cooperative support relationship with the civilian expedition, rather than a component of it. Nevertheless, that arrangement was fraught with problems. Throughout the expedition the two polar philosophies of MacMillan and Byrd — dog sled vs. aircraft and scientific research vs. military operations — would remain in conflict. McDonald, too, complicated the leadership struggle by proclaiming himself the commanding officer of Peary, one of the expedition’s two ships. He also controlled the radio traffic, even on occasion preventing Byrd from sending coded messages to the Navy Department.

The several purposes of the expedition were announced in advance. The National Geographic Society scientists would study the natural phenomena of the area, while the Navy planes would survey the great expanse of uncharted ice lying between Alaska and the pole. Among other things, this survey would try to determine whether the lands reported by Peary as ‘Crocker Land’ or by his rival Frederick A. Cook as ‘Bradley Land’ or by MacMillan as the ‘Lost Continent’ actually existed. Little was said officially about the North Pole, although one of the ‘proposed routes of exploration flights’ shown on a map published at the time of the expedition went close to the pole.

In the meantime, Amundsen and Ellsworth had taken off from Spitzbergen on May 21, 1925, en route to the North Pole, using two Dornier Wal flying boats configured as amphibians. Powered by two Rolls-Royce engines in a tractor-pusher arrangement, the planes had adequate range to make the trip, but they carried only enough gasoline for 200 miles beyond the actual distance to the pole and back, about 1,200 miles. When they failed to return (see ‘Polar Flight Survival’ in the May 1998 issue of Aviation History), a search was launched for the fliers. Byrd and MacMillan agreed that finding the missing explorer and his expedition would become a priority of the American expedition.

As it turned out, the two Wal aircraft of Amundsen and Ellsworth, after getting within 150 miles of the pole, were forced to make emergency landings on the ice. During three weeks of hard work, with their food nearly gone, the six men in the party were able to carve an airstrip out of the hummocked ice and then take off in one overloaded ski-rigged plane in which they returned safely to Spitzbergen. Byrd was unaware of that development when the American expedition left for the Arctic, but he apparently learned of it en route north.

The MacMillan Expedition left Wiscasset, Maine, on June 20, 1925, aboard two small ships. The Navy men and their crated aircraft were aboard Peary, a former Canadian minesweeper, while the bulk of the scientific party was aboard Bowdoin, an auxiliary schooner named for MacMillan’s alma mater that had been used in previous Arctic expeditions. The departure was late in the season, considering the distance that had to be traveled even before any of the time-consuming scientific work could begin on the way north.

The final destination was the port of Etah, a small settlement on Greenland’s northwest coast, about 700 miles south of the pole. MacMillan had helped to establish it on a 1912 expedition. After battling through icefields near the end of the voyage, the two ships finally reached Etah on August 1. While plenty of daylight remained, the chill winds of autumn were beginning to blow harder each day. At last, however, the American airmen could unload and reassemble their planes. Four days later they began the exploratory flights they had anticipated for so long.

The three aircraft, designated NA-1, NA-2 and NA-3, were crewed respectively by Lt. Cmdr. Byrd and pilot Floyd Bennett; Chief Boatswain’s Mate Earl E. Reber, a pilot, and Aviation Machinist’s Mate 1st Class Charles F. Rocheville, mechanic; and Lieutenant M.A. Schur and pilot A.C. Nold. Two other men were also in the detachment: Albert A. Francis, who served as the aerographer, and N.P. Sorenson, a mechanic.

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

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