A Hundred Years Back, an Adventurer and His Aviator Asserted They Were the Initial Individuals to Soar Above the North Pole. Here’s Why Specialists Question That Accomplishment

Although the achievements of Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett during their polar flight have been questioned, Byrd continued to undertake expeditions in Antarctica

On May 9, 1926, two naval aviators, explorer Richard Byrd and pilot Floyd Bennett, were said to have achieved a new milestone in aviation. They claimed to have flown over the North Pole that day, potentially making them the first individuals to do so.

During the 1920s, significant aviation achievements captured public attention, showcasing the looming importance of air travel.

“It wasn’t until the mid-1920s that aircraft became sufficiently reliable and spacious, allowing for more ambitious flights, whether crossing oceans or reaching the polar extremes,” states Bob van der Linden, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum. “This was an exhilarating time, particularly since aviation was a novel invention.”

Using a Fokker trimotor airplane, Byrd and Bennett departed from Spitsbergen, Norway’s largest island in the Svalbard archipelago, in pursuit of the Earth’s northernmost point. They reportedly completed a roundtrip journey exceeding 1,500 miles in roughly 15.5 hours, indicating they circled the pole for 13 minutes before returning to Spitsbergen.

Upon their return to the United States, Byrd and Bennett were honored with a ticker-tape parade and Medals of Honor. Nevertheless, navigational specialists raised suspicions regarding the feasibility of completing the flight in under 16 hours, along with concerns about the plane’s power, which had been noted to have an engine leak.

Byrd provided his flight logs to the National Geographic Society (a trip sponsor), which backed his assertions of reaching the pole. However, questions resurfaced when Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar Research Center disclosed Byrd’s diary contents in May 1996, revealing possible miscalculations. Further, evident erasures implied that they had turned back over 100 miles short of the North Pole. As reported by the New York Times: “After a thorough review of the diary’s contents, including critical erasures, a navigation and science history expert has concluded that Lieutenant Commander (later Rear Admiral) Byrd most likely did not reach his polar destination and was likely aware of his failure at the time.”

In 2013, another examination led by Ohio State discovered that Byrd might not have met his intended goal.

Van der Linden remains uncertain if Byrd and Bennett truly made it, but he believes “it was a good-faith endeavor, and they genuinely believed they succeeded.” If Byrd and Bennett did not reach the pole, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, Italian aviator Umberto Nobile, and American adventurer and financier Lincoln Ellsworth became the first to fly over the North Pole in a well-documented dirigible expedition just three days after Byrd’s attempt.

During this era, which celebrated airplane achievements and the discovery of Earth’s natural marvels, Byrd emerged as a globally recognized explorer. Born into a distinguished Virginia family in 1888, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and later solicited funding from affluent backers such as Edsel Ford and John D. Rockefeller for his Arctic and Antarctic explorations.

Despite the uncertainties regarding the North Pole flight, Byrd’s adventures deeply influenced American culture. In 1927, he executed the first trans-Atlantic airmail flight from New York to France. Between the 1920s and the World War II era, aviators aspired to uncover “how far, and how fast, how high you could fly in an airplane,” asserts van der Linden. “It appeared that nearly every day, a new record was established for traveling from Point A to Point B.”

Writer Marionne Cronin framed the period, observing that “U.S. aviation had a long-standing connection with public entertainment, and the rise of barnstorming in the early 1920s, together with early Hollywood films that featured airplanes as a backdrop for spectacular, life-risking stunts, reinforced this notion.”

Byrd embraced challenges but was not reckless, according to van der Linden. While his Arctic accomplishments garnered much attention, he directed numerous expeditions to Antarctica, enhancing scientific understanding of the frigid continent. On his first visit to Antarctica, he and three others became the inaugural group to fly over the South Pole in November 1929, and he was awarded a Navy Cross for this milestone.

His most debated action while studying Antarctica occurred during his second expedition, wherein he spent several months in solitude within a small hut throughout the winter of 1934. Brave as it was, the extreme cold and isolation, with only a radio link to his team, raised concerns about the safety of this endeavor among colleagues. He fell ill and suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning from his stove until he was finally retrieved by crew members operating tractors.

In “Alone,” Byrd’s narrative of his solitary time in Antarctica, initially published in 1938, he reflected: “Out there on the South Polar barrier, in the chilling darkness reminiscent of the Pleistocene, I imagined having time to catch up, to study, ponder, and enjoy music; perhaps for seven months, distanced from almost all but the most fundamental distractions, I could live as I wished, accountable only to the necessities imposed by wind, night, and cold, and to no one else’s laws but my own. That’s how I envisioned it.”

He continued, “perhaps there was also a desire to test a more strenuous existence than any I had previously experienced.”

Byrd later spearheaded the 1946 Navy expedition known as Operation Highjump, which deployed thousands of personnel along with various aircraft and ships to establish the Little America IV research facility.

Bennett passed away from pneumonia in 1928 at the age of 37, while Byrd died of heart failure in 1957 at 68. Many believed he never fully regained his health after his illness during the 1934 isolation. Although their claim of reaching the North Pole sparked widespread debate, Byrd’s legacy turned out to signify much more. “These weren’t self-serving PR endeavors that many pursue nowadays,” notes van der Linden. “He earned fame not for being famous but for undertaking serious, courageous work—especially his flights.”