Science: Polar Pilgrims: May 17, 1926

Last week, the history of earth’s north polar cap approached the climax of its most stirring chapter, One great event, a sporting feat, came to pass—the first visit to the Pole by a man in an airplane. Other events impended hourly.

In Alaska, the Australian-born soldier of fortune Captain George Hubert Wilkins, leading the expedition backed by citizens of Detroit, was in something of a hole but was summoning his final resources for a flight to see if land exists between Point Barrow and the Pole. In Spitsbergen, the young Virginian, Lieut.-Commander Richard E. Byrd U. S. N., backed by Vincent Astor, Edsel Ford, John D. Rockefeller Jr. and others, rested after an historic 1,600-mile round-trip flight to the Pole, and laid out his next course—to wing westward from an advance base on north Greenland and search for unknown land where Explorers Peary and MacMillan each thought they descried it on different occasions years ago. Most formidable and promising of all, the dirigible Norge lurked in her Spitzbergen shed ready to nose forth and explore earth’s last big “blind spot” from Spitzbergen clear over to Alaska. The Norwegian Roald Amundsen, the Italian Colonel Nobile and the American Lincoln Ellsworth, biding their hour for this trip, denied that there was any competitive spirit between themselves and the two parties of heavier-than-air flyers. Theirs seemed the best chance of completing the map of the world, judging by the past performance of their craft, though Byrd’s Fokker Josephine Ford had flown with astonishing success where Amundsen’s planes failed last year. There would be fame enough for one and all. Yet it was absurd to deny rivalry. Each party of polar pilgrims carried flags to plant, or drop, for the U. S. or Norway, upon whatever continent or islands have lain hidden to date in the polar fastnesses.

Events of the week among the polar pilgrims were as follows:

Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile. The bitter winds droned, the ether pulsed with wireless signals, blank white leagues of steppes and frozen lakes passed underneath for 21 hours before the staunch dirigible Norge swooped slowly to her mooring mast at desolate Vadso on the north tip of Scandinavia, 700 miles from Leningrad (where she had waited two weeks for repairs and good weather on her way from Rome-to-Nome). Pausing only long-enough to refuel and bundle themselves more thickly in furs, Colonel Nobile and his mates cast off again and sailed all through another Arctic night, out over Barent’s ice-strewn sea for Spitzbergen. The headwinds that had buffeted the Norge over Russia, causing her to wallow and pitch like a great grey air whale, changed to following winds that added speed and made life more endurable for the wakeful voyagers, forced to stand close-packed in their unheated gondola. Bear Island was raised and passed without the fog complications that had been feared. Then the southern capes of Spitzbergen loomed dimly and the aeronauts established radio contact with operators at Kings Bay, who had listened all night to the whine of the Norge’s instrument asking for compass directions, reporting all was well.

Amundsen and Ellsworth stood a little apart, on the hillside above the hangar, as the weird invader nosed through the dawn into the Bay, frowned upon by towering Three Crowns and a 200-foot glacier before whose vast age the works of man looked puny yet miraculous. Guided by a streaming red wind-pennant at the mooring masthead, the grey shape hovered inland, wheeled, returned and shot down a twisting rope, upon which a gang of shouting Italians and Spitzbergen coal miners flung themselves, to heave amain and flounder in the snow. In the monster’s snout, hydrogen valves hissed open and the arrested bag sank swiftly, being checked by a discharge of water ballast, pink with anti-freeze solution. As the gondola touched ground, Amundsen and Ellsworth hurried over to grip their Italian partner by the hand and rejoice that the most-feared leg of the Norge’s epic travels had been safely, excellently covered—some 1,400 miles in 38 hours’ flying time, with great fuel economy and no harm from fierce winds.

Byrd. Several furlongs downhill from where the Norge was cushioned behind green curtains, Explorer Byrd’s wide-winged Fokker monoplane, the Josephine Ford, sat out on the snow, while hearties from the S. S. Chantier shoveled and tamped down a white esplanade half a mile long—the takeoff from which Byrd and his aide, Pilot Bennett, hoped daily to spring into the air for their first flight, direct to the Pole instead of via Peary Land as planned earlier. A blizzard delayed matters for a few days. A landing-ski crumpled. Then the huge craft, whose three thunderous motors had run perfectly during a two-hour trial flight, refused to rise when a start was actually tried. Commander Byrd readjusted his impedimenta and watched the weather.

The commanders of the Norge were fast asleep when Byrd and Bennett went to the Josephine one midnight, whirled the huge propellers and soared gracefully aloft, heading north. Kings Bay slept on. Morning came and the news spread that Byrd had gone forth to “try it.” The long day began to wane; excitement waxed. At 4:20 in the afternoon, a whizzing speck came down the twelfth Eastern meridian, landed superbly, and Byrd and Bennett stepped out to receive a ringing ovation that was echoed all over the world. They had reached the Pole, circled it three times, dropped a box of “certification” papers, unfurled a U. S. flag and returned some 1,600 miles in 15½ hours. Their sealed instruments would, they hoped, bear out their testimony that they had circled within a very few miles of Earth’s upper hub.

Wilkins. Diametrically across the polar cap from these scenes, Explorer Wilkins effected a third safe return from Point Barrow to Fairbanks in the monoplane Alaskan. He freighted carefully once more, ousted a woman he found stowed away in his baggage compartment, and told Pilot Ben Eielson they would stop at Barrow this trip only to pick up all available gasoline. Then they would strike out into the unmapped solitude for at least 500 miles, perhaps keep on going over the Pole to Spitzbergen. But the staunch Alaskan’s luck ran out. As she taxied down the Fairbanks field she struck a soft spot, careened, rent her right wing, shattered her propeller. Wilkins and Eielson crept out of the wreck unhurt, and bent their energies to loading the biplane Detroiter, their last hope. Wilkins determined to pilot this craft himself, despite his lately fractured arm, leaving Eielson in Fairbanks and taking with him his second-in-command, Major Lanphier, official U. S. representative. The Detroiter’s success hung very largely upon Wilkins’ ability to find and steer her through a pass in the lofty Brooks Range, over which (10,000 ft.) her three motors would not lift her.