From Pole to Pole

by Garth James Cameron

  “His face is expressionless and we cannot read it. Beneath the thick tufts of his eyebrows, white as hoarfrost, his eyes in their deep sockets are hidden in shadow. His cheeks are leathery and folded into hard creases, with a fine network of wrinkles spreading out from the corners of his eyes like a map of all the dog trails he has run. The most prominent feature of his face is the thin arched nose, which gives him the look of an eagle. It is a face carved in a cliff, the face of a Viking. We wait for him to speak, but he pivots on his skis without a word and strides back to the headquarters building.”

  The Chantier asked for permission to dock, but Captain Tank-Nielson of the Heimdal refused as he was taking on coal and water and there was only room for one ship at a time. Tank-Nielson explained that Heimdal had to be ready to sortie if Norge had to force land. His instructions from the Norwegian government were to be available 24 hours a day for rescue work, if this became necessary.

  The Chantier dropped anchor 300 m out and immediately started to discharge its cargo, including the Fokker tri-motor to be used for the flight to the North Pole. The crew was mainly volunteers, students, and lawyers working for no pay, who had signed on to be part of the great adventure. Life boats were lowered and four were rafted together. It snowed as the crew tied the boats together in two pairs, nailed on beams and then planks to deck over the life boats. Pieces of ice of various sizes drifted past as they worked. The 14.5 m fuselage was swung out over the raft and lowered on to it. The next item was the massive one piece wing. The 21.71 m wing was lowered on to the fuselage and bolted in place. The sailors in the boats slowly rowed the raft through the drifting ice to the shore. A fifth lifeboat was tied to the front end and sailors in it fended off the larger icebergs. Movie cameramen from the Pathé news organization could not get close-up shots from the ship, so they set up their cameras on floating ice. The crew had improvised a slipway at the ice-edge and a pair of wheels under the plane. The plane was rolled carefully ashore with four men on each side of the fuselage and another 15–20 men pulling on ropes.

  As soon as Byrd arrived there was a conflict between cameramen covering the two expeditions. Each expedition had given exclusive rights to one organization, but that meant that rival organizations were trying to prevent film being shot of their expedition’s activities while doing their best to get footage of the rival expedition. It was a hopeless situation, but caused considerable friction until all involved saw that there was no way of preventing the other-side from capturing some images they were not entitled to.

  On April 30, the red-painted eight-ton steel cone was winched to the top of the mooring mast by a diesel powered winch and fixed in place. Everything was now ready for the arrival of Norge, and Nobile was informed by radio.

  A day and a half after all pieces of Byrd’s aeroplane had been rafted ashore it had been assembled. The aeroplane was a Fokker F.VII A/3M with three uncowled wright whirlwind radial engines, each of 200 hp, with one in the nose and one on a pylon beneath each wing. The aircraft was mounted on skis, one large ski under each wing engine and a small ski under the tail. The aircraft, with its one-piece, thick-section wooden wing was an early production model of a design which was to be used successfully all over the world. The air-cooled radial engines were a new design and were reliable and efficient by the standards of the day. The machine was beautiful in a functional sort of way. The fuselage, tail, and engine nacelles were painted royal blue and the wing was clear-varnished wood. The aircraft was named the Josephine Ford (Edsel Ford was a major sponsor of the flight and the aircraft was named after his daughter) and the words “Josephine Ford Byrd Arctic Expedition” were painted in white on both sides of the fuselage. The flight was an advertising opportunity for the manufacturers of the airframe and engines. Photographs and movie footage featuring the aircraft would be shown around the world. The Fokker name was painted on both sides of the fuselage, the leading edge of both wings and in huge letters below the wing. ‘Wright “whirlwind” engines’ was painted on both sides of the nose and on the outboard side of each of the nacelles housing the outboard engines.

  The expedition also had a Curtiss Oriole (a single engine biplane two-seater with open cockpits) of the type carried by Amundsen’s Maude in 1922–23. The ground was snow covered, and a firm runway was prepared by shoveling and patting down snow. Soon after the arrival of the Chantier, Balchen struck up a friendship with Byrd’s pilot Floyd Bennet. Bennet was a warrant officer in the USN who had been on the MacMillan-Byrd Expedition to the Arctic in 1925 and was both a mechanic and a skilled pilot. Balchen found him to be approachable and modest.

  Balchen saw Lieutenant Oertell waxing the bottoms of the skis fitted to the Fokker and told him that they would not glide easily and suggested a change. The hard crystalline snow at that time of year would stick to the wax and rub it off. The skis needed to have a mixture of pine tar and resin burned into them with a blow torch. His advice was ignored, and the machine was started for its first test run. The Fokker had trouble accelerating, and news film shows it lumbering along at about 30 kt. before yawing suddenly to port and stopping. When the undercarriage was dug out from the snow it could be seen that the left ski was broken. At this point Amundsen, very sportingly, offered Balchen’s services to Byrd.

  Balchen had experience of flying on skis in the Norwegian winter and knew what type of ski worked and what didn’t. The second time, Balchen’s advice and expertise was accepted with gratitude. At Balchen’s suggestion, the skis were reinforced with hard wood strips cut from some lifeboat oars from the Chantier. Members of both expeditions worked together creating the new, stronger skis.

  On May 6, Kings Bay received a wireless message that Norge was at the mast at Vadsø and would depart for Spitsbergen in a few hours. The wireless station had been picking up messages sent by Norge on its way north and heard the exchange of signals with Bear Island as the airship passed it. At 05:00 on May 7, Radio Operator Olonkin on Norge signaled that the airship was over the head of the Bay and Höver called out the landing party. The weather was now clear, and at 06:00 the men waiting at Kings Bay spotted Norge approaching from the southwest. The airship circled the base, and then the handling guys were dropped and the airship sank into the hands of the ground crew. The wind was light (“the smoke from our pipes went straight up,” wrote [insert name]), so the airship did not have to dock at the mooring mast and could be walked into the hangar with the ground crew holding on to the ropes. The ground crew was surprised when a sudden gust dragged the airship sideways and the ground crew with it. After control was regained, Nobile alighted to be greeted by Amundsen and Ellsworth. The band from Heimdal played the national anthems of Norway, Sweden, the United States, and Italy. The crew was honored with three times three cheers. Amundsen, Ellsworth, and Nobile walked over to the manager’s house while the ground crew walked carefully to the hangar, bringing the airship with them. The crew was cold after the flight and the housekeepers, Berta and Klara, made cup after cup of hot, strong coffee for them.

  Norge at Kings Bay with the mooring mast to the right. The Norwegian flag flew from the stern throughout the flight from Italy to Alaska.

  Balchen joined the others in the office to find them in the middle of a dispute about what to do next. Nobile, supported by Ellsworth and Riiser-Larsen, wanted to leave as soon as the airship has been supplied with fuel, oil, and gas. They want to be first to fly to the North Pole, and only by leaving as soon as possible would they be able to beat Byrd. They are also aware that Hubert Wilkins and pilot Ben Eielson were in Alaska waiting to start their flight to the North Pole and on to Svalbard. The Wilkins expedition had a single engine Fokker and a Fokker tri-motor like Byrd’s. Accidents with both aeroplanes would mean that Wilkins could not attempt the North Pole flight in 1926, but the knowledge that the Norge was only one of three expeditions attempting to fly to the Pole increased the pressure on Nobile and the others. Norge needed to have its damaged engine replaced and extra fuel tanks installed. This work kept it in
its hangar for at least three days. Amundsen was in charge and he would not do anything hasty. Balchen heard him say:

  “We will not be rushed, we will take every precaution, we will leave only when the ship and the weather are right . . . Our flight is not a race. Its purpose is bigger than that. We’re trying to chart a shorter route to the new world, and the North Pole is just a point we will pass on the way.”

  Amundsen put it this way in First Flight across the Polar Sea:

  “. . . Byrd’s object was the Pole only, whilst in our plans the Pole was merely a station on the way. We agreed then to make all necessary preparations quietly and steadily, so that nothing would suffer on account of hasty work.”

  If Amundsen could have been first to fly to the North Pole he would have but his restraint, in the interests of safety, was admirable. On May 8, 1926, the weather forecast was favorable and just after midday Byrd and his pilot Floyd Bennet said their goodbyes, started the engines and taxied out only to find that a rise in temperature had made the snow sticky. Balchen advised them to wait a few hours for an expected drop in temperature to make the snow icy again.

  Some hours later, after the snow had become icy Byrd and Bennet took off and disappeared on a heading of due north. If Amundsen was disappointed at this development he hid it well.

  When they returned from the flight Amundsen was the first to greet and congratulate them, and kissed Byrd and Bennet on both cheeks. Byrd and Bennet were carried on the shoulders of Chantier’s crew to a celebration aboard the ship. Amundsen never expressed any doubt about Byrd’s claim to have reached the North Pole, although there are serious doubts in many people’s minds. Balchen’s diary notes take-off at 00:37 on April 9, 1926, and return at 16:07 the same day, for a total flight time of 15 hrs. 30 min. and Byrd had spent 15 minutes circling the Pole. Balchen thought that they could not have done it in the time they were away. Bennet did all the flying and Byrd (out of sight in the Fokker’s cabin) all the navigating, so only Byrd knew if they really reached the Pole. Weather conditions, including estimates of the wind encountered, make an out and back flight in the time recorded unlikely. Also unlikely is Byrd’s claim to have continued on to the Pole when he could see oil leaking from one of the outboard engines. The heavily loaded Fokker could not have remained in the air had that engine failed. Balchen later flew the Josephine Ford all over the United States, sharing the piloting with Floyd Bennet, and came to know as much about the plane’s performance as anyone. This knowledge confirmed his suspicion that Byrd turned around about 150 nm south of the Pole.

  When Balchen submitted the manuscript of his autobiography shortly after Byrd died, it included an assertion that Byrd could not have been to the Pole with facts and figures in support. The best cruising speed with skis was 74 kt. The greatest distance that could be made good (assuming no wind) in Byrd’s stated time of 15 hrs. 17 min. was 1,131 nm. The return distance is 1,330 nm. The Fokker could not have flown further than to 88° north.

  The debate about Byrd’s claim went on long after he was dead, and a detailed analysis of Byrd’s written record has confirmed that his claim to have reached the North Pole was false. History has judged Byrd’s flight to have been a heroic failure, redeemed by his later real achievements in the Antarctic. The diary in which Byrd made his navigational calculations only became available for inspection long after his death, but when it did it confirmed that his claim was false. An article written by Dennis Rawlins and published in the Polar Record in 2000 provided a careful analysis of Byrd’s diary, and established beyond reasonable doubt the falsity of Byrd’s claim. Amundsen was too mature to buy into the doubts, and always said that he accepted Peary’s claim to have walked to the Pole in 1909 as well as Byrd’s 1926 claim to have flown there. After his flight, Byrd gave Amundsen some of his navigation instruments, including a sun compass, escorted Norge for the first hour or so of its flight to the Pole, and made the Josephine Ford available in case Norge was forced down on the ice of the Arctic Ocean.

  Shortly after Byrd’s return, Norge was ready and the only issue was whether or not all the crew could be taken. Nineteen men were available and keen to make the flight including Bernt Balchen and Gustav S. Amundsen. The structure of the airship had been made as light as possible during the modifications made at Ciampino to give it the maximum disposable lift. Weight was so important that Nobile had every crew member weighed. The ship needed to carry fuel for at least 75 hours at 43 kt. All weight going aboard the airship was carefully tabulated by Balchen. Basic physics would decide how many men would be carried. The airship’s lift increased with each degree the temperature dropped and with each increase in atmospheric pressure. If the temperature is low and the barometer is high the airship will lift more than on a warm day with a low barometer. These variables change by the hour, and so a decision on who can fly had to wait until just before take-off. Balchen wrote later that Nobile wanted to carry dress uniforms for each Italian member of the crew, but Amundsen ordered them to be removed. The uniforms are destined to be part of the post-flight controversy.

  During the wait for departure Amundsen skied 20 km every day to keep fit. Balchen did the same and, at Amundsen’s request, taught the Italians the basics; if Norge was forced down all aboard would need to know how to ski. Balchen picked a shallow slope and watched as his pupils fell over time after time or slide out of control to thud into the wall of the hospital building.

  On the evening of May 10, Norge was ready and Nobile made a final decision. Three of the crew must remain behind. Balchen was one of them and Gustav S. Amundsen another. Radio Operator Genadii Olonkin had an ear infection and had to be replaced by Norwegian Frithjof Storm-Johnsen. Olonkin had been aboard Maude with Amundsen on the voyage through the North East Passage and Amundsen was loyal to his men. This time there was a suggestion that the ‘ear infection’ was a cover story and an excuse to exchange Norwegian Storm-Johnsen for Russian Olonkin.

  Although the sun was above the horizon 24 hours a day, there was a time of day when the air was at its coolest and most dense, giving the airship its greatest lift. This was about 01:00. Nobile decided to take off late on May 10, but at 23:00 there was a strong wind across the entrance to the hangar and he postponed the departure. He decided that the ground crew were to be available at 04:00 and set 05:00 as the take off time. The ground crew and Amundsen, Ellsworth, and Riiser-Larsen appeared between 07:00 and 08:00. By Nobile’s account Amundsen, Ellsworth, and Riiser-Larsen had compromised the flight by not being available at the earlier time set by him. Amundsen ignored this accusation and wrote in his autobiography that Nobile was in a state of great indecision, and only Riiser-Larsen’s intervention got the airship out of the hangar and the flight started. There is little doubt that the temperature rose steadily and Nobile had to valve-off gas three times and unload about 200 kg of petrol. The wind got up again, and at 08:00 Riiser-Larsen and Horgen picked a lull and Norge was walked backwards out of the hangar with a horizontal fin narrowly avoiding a scrape on the wall.

  When Amundsen wrote about the interaction of Nobile with Riiser-Larsen before Norge was walked out he had this to say:

  “Here again Nobile demonstrated his conduct in an emergency. We were to have yet further demonstrations on the flight.”

  This implied that Nobile should have directed the walking out, but the real reason was that most of the ground crew were Norwegian and Nobile did not speak this language. Just before take-off Nobile weighed off the airship and loaded some tins of petrol and sand ballast, at a total weight of about 75 kg.

  Last to board was Amundsen with a roll of charts under his arm, and Balchen described him thus:

  “He pauses at the bottom of the steps, and the meteorologist hands him a final weather reading. He studies it, and lifts his carved face for a moment to the sky, weighing his decision. It is a face that lived a thousand years ago, and will live a thousand years from now. I continue to see it in my mind long after the Norge becomes only a silver dot in the north.”
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br />   Chapter Twelve

  Hour of Gold

  Svalbard–North Pole–Alaska May 11–14, 1926

  On May 11, 1926, the headline of the Italian newspaper Il Piccolo read:

  “Under an Italian flag, in the spirit of fascism, Norge sails in the polar sky!”

  Newspapers in Rome and Oslo printed special editions to mark the departure of Norge from Kings Bay, bound for the North Pole, Polar Ocean, and Alaska. The editor-in-chief of Oslo newspaper Aftenposten had traveled to Rome to report on the Italian response to the expedition and wrote that more newspapers were sold on the day of departure than were sold during the black shirt “March on Rome” of 1922.

  At 09:50 on May 11, 1926, Nobile had ordered hands-off, and Norge rose slowly into the air leaving the ground crew and the settlement of Ny-Ålesund below. The engines were started, the engine telegraphs set at 1,200 rpm, and the airship steered for the western end of Kings Bay at an altitude of between 1,200 and 1,350 ft. The people turned into dots, and the buildings of the settlement, the green hangar, and the 130 ft. mooring mast with its bright red cone got smaller and smaller. Spectators at Ny-Ålesund watched the airship dwindle to a dot and then disappear into the northwest.

  Amundsen biographer Tor Bomann-Larsen makes the point that the flight received worldwide press coverage, but that it had important political overtones for Italy and Norway. Both were young nations with something to prove to the world.

  Norge cruised beneath a cloudless blue sky with the snow covered mountains of Spitsbergen reflecting the bright sun. There were 6,959 kg of petrol and a proportionate amount of oil aboard. The configuration giving the greatest range was 1,200 rpm on two engines with the third stopped. On two engines, Norge cruised at an airspeed of about 43 kt. and could stay airborne for about 75 hours. In still air Norge could cover about 3,225 nm. At first the port and rear engines were running. The rear engine was used throughout the flight with the port and starboard engines each running about 50 percent of the time. The airship was slightly light at take-off, but the slipstream cooled the gas, making the ship heavy. Nobile ordered 3° to 6° of up elevator to produce dynamic lift. The sum total of static lift from the gas, and dynamic lift from the airflow over the hull equals the weight of the ship and it maintains height. This kind of adjustment would continue throughout the flight as the static lift changed with changes in temperature and volume of the hydrogen gas. If the airship is light, down elevator produces negative dynamic lift off the hull which is subtracted from the static lift and the airship again maintains height. Maintaining height in this way is standard practice, but does increase the total drag of the airship, and the cruising speed is reduced, as is the range. At Cape Mitre, Norge turned on to a heading of 360° and steered directly for the North Pole.