Show Me a Hero

by Jeremy Scott

  A week later the Balchens were in the SAS departure lounge at Idlewild (now Kennedy) Airport, about to take off on a short trip to Norway, when Bernt was told there was a call for him from Boston. Balchen had to take it in the Despatch Office, surrounded by activity and noise. Byrd demanded to know why Balchen was flying to Norway. What was his business there? Why had he repeated their Kitty Hawk conversation to the Air Force? He ordered Balchen to stop making false claims and trying to discredit him. Amid the hubbub of the Despatch Office Bess was attempting frantically to take notes of what was said. Often Byrd told Balchen to speak louder. Balchen was left with the strong impression he was taping their conversation.

  The Balchens were back in the US on 1 November when Drew Pearson on the Washington Post ran a garbled account of the incident at Kitty Hawk:

  … two Arctic explorers who almost got into a fist fight … Byrd backed Balchen into a corner and shouted angry threats at him … flew into a rage, accused the bewildered Balchen of stealing the limelight, and threatened to use political connections to wreck his Air Force career … Balchen flushed an angry red, but friends interceded before things got out of hand.

  The item provoked Byrd to call Balchen’s home number several times in the middle of the night. When Bess told him her husband was not there he slammed the phone down. On 8 November Byrd telephoned during the evening. Having got Balchen on the line he told him to hold on while he changed telephones. Their conversation was stilted, for Byrd seemed to be under strain. Again Balchen felt certain it was taped. Afterwards he sent the Admiral a short letter: ‘Dear Dick, I am glad you called, and believe that I have interpreted your remarks correctly. I must tell you quite truthfully that I was shocked and surprised at the accusations you made. However I hope these most unpleasant occurrences are now over…’

  They were not. On 13 November Byrd replied: ‘Dear Balchen, Neither of your letters was called for.’ He says that he now realises that he’s up against an enemy of ‘utter ruthlessness’ who will ‘utilise any method to attain the end desired’. He suspects that someone else is helping Balchen who must be a ‘bitter enemy of mine’ to be part of such malevolence and warns him that if he and co-conspirators think ‘that I’ve become a weakling with no ability to defend myself’ they are very much mistaken. He reminds him that he has powerful friends.

  To Bernt and Bess Balchen the words seemed the raving of a man in the grip of runaway paranoia. Balchen replied in the last note he would write to Byrd: ‘Dear Dick, Your letter has me completely nonplussed. I do not know what you are driving at. All I can say in answering it is to repeat and stress what I have said before, that I have never said or done anything that could have been detrimental to you. I have always expressed my gratitude for what you have done for me in the past.’ It was so. And it was also true that in the past Byrd had been reciprocally grateful to Balchen. He had publicly credited him as a superb pilot, a brilliant mechanic, and testified to his many-sided abilities. He’d said Balchen was capable, trustworthy and, even more important on an extended polar expedition, ‘he always played the game’. Balchen had, and look where playing the game had got him. He was a man of even temper, not prone to rancour; he had a slow fuse but it was well lit by now and smouldering. He remained in his basement cubicle in the Pentagon without a telephone, without work, and without promotion. In February he received a formal dressing down from his superior officer who, demanded what right he had to travel to Philadelphia to speak at an Army Ordinance dinner.

  Despite the inconvenience of no chair to seat him in, Balchen did receive a visitor in April 1954. This was Byrd’s close friend Dr James Mooney, who came with a suggestion as to how the unfortunate misunderstanding with the Admiral might be settled amicably on both sides. He proposed that a magazine article should be written about Byrd, the distinguished 66-year-old national hero who had so inspired his epoch with the idea of flight. It would pay due tribute to his skills as an aviator and navigator, as an explorer and charismatic leader. Mooney suggested that Balchen should byline this article with his own name and receive the fee for authorship. If he agreed to do so he had the guarantee of Senator Harry Byrd (Byrd’s brother) and the Admiral himself that he would be promoted brigadier-general within ninety days.

  Balchen was still only a colonel when he retired from the Air Force two years later. His first significant act as a civilian was to sign a contract with the New York publisher E. P. Dutton to write his autobiography. He’d taken enough shit. He had a story to tell.

  It was a bold move. Both Balchen and Bess felt an understandable nervousness. In choosing to confront Byrd they were taking on the Navy and the establishment, represented by his family and influential connections. But having made that move, the couple decided to make another equally significant. Flying to Norway, they met with Professor Sverdrug, a meteorologist and Arctic expert, and Gosta Liljequist, professor of meteorology at Uppsala University. Liljequist (who was planning to spend that winter in Spitsbergen) agreed to collate all weather data from around the Arctic rim for the period of Byrd’s flight, and to analyse and prepare a report.*

  To transform Balchen’s material into a publishable memoir the Balchens struck a deal with the journalist Corey Ford. Having embarked on the book, Bess was every whit as determined as her husband in going through with it, come what may. She’d been at Balchen’s side through lean times and good ever since he’d returned to America from the South Pole flight with Byrd. She knew he’d sought none of that glory and profit for himself – nor had he been offered it. He’d been denied a medal, denied promotion, now even due recognition was being denied him. It was grossly unjust, and her grip upon the sword of retribution was resolute as his own.

  Nevertheless both of them experienced moments of anxiety. By challenging Byrd they were challenging a myth. They discussed the book with Francis Drake, a journalist friend, and with Dr Larry Gould, the amiable scientist who had been second-in-command on Byrd’s first Antarctic expedition. ‘It might backfire, we know his power,’ Drake cautioned them. Gould said he fully realised Byrd had not made it to the North Pole ‘but they could crucify you’.

  In March 1957 Admiral Byrd died in Boston. His funeral, attended by everyone of note, was a grand and solemn occasion appropriate to a national hero holding the Congressional Medal of Honor. The Vice-President was there together with a fraternity of the great and good to honour him as a role model to American youth.

  In February 1958 the pages of Balchen’s book were already printed, but the edition had not yet been bound. ‘Then’, says Bess Balchen, ‘All hell broke loose.’ Richard E. Byrd Jnr, went to see Elliot Macrae, president of E.P. Dutton. Washington, the Navy, the family and an army of lawyers descended upon Dutton in well-funded massed attack. Under such pressure the book was radically amended. Any criticism of Byrd and all questions about his flight to the North Pole were excised from the manuscript. The book was issued without promotion in a limited print run, received no attention, failed to recover its advance and was remaindered.

  * It would be wearisome for the reader to wade through the dossier here, but this is available together with a detailed account of the Balchen/Byrd conflict, published by Bess Balchen on http://home.acadia.net/userpages/kikut/BBMainText.htm. Anyone further interested can examine the subject in the exhaustive archive at Ohio State University, where the collection of papers documenting the life and career of Admiral Richard E. Byrd amounts to 523 cubic feet. But before visiting either of these sites, perhaps read this book to the end.

  32.

  CURTAIN CALL

  Did Byrd reach the North Pole?

  Professor Liljequist’s meteorological findings conclude that the following winds Byrd claimed to have assisted his flight did not exist. The speeds he asserted were without substance, therefore his flight to the Pole and back was impossible in the time. There are further inconsistencies to his ‘win’. On his historic journey Byrd did not keep a flight log, as is customary. The evidence for his success, which he sub
mitted to the National Geographic Society, consisted only of his diary and a notebook. These controversial documents were published by Ohio State University in 1998. The diary includes messages he passed to his pilot, Floyd Bennett. One instructs him, ‘Radio that we have reached the Pole and are returning with one motor with bad oil leak but expect to make Spitsbergen’. But it also contains still legible erasures of navigational calculations and the note to Bennett, ‘How long were we gone before we turned around?’ If he had got to the Pole surely he would have known that, for the time must have formed the basis to his calculation that they had reached it.

  Perhaps he was concerned with different arithmetic. If he failed in this endeavour his newspaper, publishing and product endorsement contracts were worthless, he could not hope to pay back his debts, he was ruined. The family home in Boston would have to go, his children be removed from private school, his career end in shameful bankruptcy. The bottom line to his calculations, financial and navigational, was that he literally couldn’t afford not to reach the Pole.

  It is for the reader to judge Byrd’s achievement. He was a man of probity and honour. To conceive a fraud was foreign (perhaps fatal) to his nature. And, one wonders, how exactly was that fraud concocted between himself and Bennett in a cabin so noisy verbal exchange was impossible and all communication had to be by means of scribbled notes? How do you agree the detail of a lifetime’s deception in a few pencilled words blocked out on a scrap of paper in an ice-cold vibrating plane? A contract to duplicity which, once concluded, is shredded and scattered on the Arctic wind, never to be referred to again.

  And there is another possibility. Perhaps such a contract was never discussed. When, after the oil leak, Byrd ordered Bennett to circle while they saw how it developed, Bennett knew full well the attempt on the Pole was over. The fact must have been crushing, particularly for Byrd. Perhaps they passed no notes but remained silent, numbed by defeat or in denial. Not until their plane landed and that crowd of ecstatic fans came racing down the slope to greet them… not until then was Byrd driven to respond, and came up with the reaction psychologically forced upon him by their expectation. Given the consequences, it makes for a curious perception but, as Byrd observed himself, life turns upon a dime.

  The most compelling human testimony to Byrd’s deception exists in a letter Bernt Balchen wrote to an enquirer in 1960:

  For many years I thought Byrd himself would tell the truth about his flight … but after the war, while I was in Washington, Byrd tried everything to make my life miserable, I … started to collect data, fully intent on giving out the story as soon as I was out of uniform. Byrd must have known all along that I knew the truth, and this must have been the reason for his behaviour. My big disappointment was that he passed away before I was able to get it out … I had simply stated what I know to be a fact, that he had not reached the North Pole on his flight in 1926. I know this for two reasons, first, because the plane was incapable of making this flight in 15½ hours … and secondly because Floyd Bennett told me so.

  So it would seem Byrd lied… and as a result of that one historic lie he found the glory, the success, celebrity, respect and gratifying elevation to the ranks of the great and good which accompanies fame. For more than thirty years and until his death he lived the life of a public figure, attending banquets, delivering speeches, an honoured guest wherever he went. But the pedestal he stood upon was made of clay; all the time he knew he was a fraud – and so did another man. Inevitably the result was paranoia. What terrors must have swarmed around his mind as he lay sleepless in the long watches of the night with no one to confess to, no hope of absolution.

  The imagination falters in assessing the price Byrd paid for his fraud; the cost to others can be more precisely determined. Among the contenders who set their hearts on flying first to the North Pole only Ellsworth escaped unscathed. His marriage proved happy, his fortune grew; his ambition to be an explorer was never wholly fulfilled but he stayed true to the frontier tradition which inspired him. His name is unsung today, but he remains an understated American hero.

  Umberto Nobile – stripped of his rank, disgraced and ostracised after the disaster of the Italia expedition – emigrated to Russia, where he built airships for the government. There, his emotional nature led him to embrace Communism as a solution to this unfair world. He did so, as we might expect, con brio, putting fame and notoriety behind him. After Mussolini’s death in 1945, he returned to Italy (with his family though no longer Tintina), was rehabilitated, and elected a Communist deputy in 1948. The author’s father, who knew him in Milan, describes him as a benign, loquacious old man who passed his days on a café terrace, telling stories to strangers happy to pay for his drinks – which is not necessarily a sad end for those it suits.

  And Balchen, whose courage and achievement were equal to the rest, what did he receive in return? Not recognition, not a medal, not promotion with a general’s pension. Yet there were rewards: a new life as an American, a happy marriage, a son and wife so true her widowhood was devoted to the vindication of his name. More than most men’s, Balchen’s life was fully lived.

  So now the tale is told, the show is over. At the end of this epic drama the members of the cast now step forward individually to take their curtain call. They have played their parts and await our judgement, derision or applause. Only Amundsen yet remains to be acknowledged, that old man who towers like an ancient oak among these other trees. It is he who has suffered the hardest cut from Byrd’s deception. Condemned by it to remain bankrupt, suspect and diminished, not only was he denied the prize which would have restored his fortune and reputation, but the sequel cost him his life. Condemned to ignominious retirement, he’d put aside his rusty sword… then received a final trumpet call to arms. He’d been summoned by his country once again, called forth one last time to plight his troth. He’d flown north to rescue Nobile, a fool he despised. And in that gesture, that final gracious act of a proud and upright man, he went down forever on the great white silence of the ice. A little stiffly he takes his bow, the last to leave the stage.

  Byrd – Lied

  Amundsen – Died

  Nobile – Exiled

  Ellsworth – Disowned

  Balchen – Betrayed

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I’d like to thank several people who have contributed to this book in one way or another: Stephen Brough; Peter Mayle; Peter Nichols, Ernest Chapman; my agent Julian Friedmann. At Biteback my editor Sam Carter, James Stephens, Katy Scholes and Emma Young. My thanks also to the picture editor Nina Risoli, to Gill Hoffs for research and to Christine Groom at Valiant Services.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  This is not a work of history. It is a narrative account of a race, together with an examination of its principal contestants. My main sources are the reports which they and others wrote about the experience and their subsequent lives. I am most grateful to their inheritors.

  Amundsen, Roald, My Life as an Explorer (William Heinemann, 1927)

  Amundsen & Ellsworth, The First Flight across the Polar Sea (Hutchinson & Co., 1927)

  Balchen, Bernt, Come North with Me (E. P. Dutton & Co., 1958)

  Byrd, Richard, Alone (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1938)

  Byrd, Richard, Exploring with Byrd (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1937)

  Ellsworth, Lincoln, Beyond Horizons (William Heinemann, 1938)

  Freuchen, Peter, Book of the Eskimos (The World Publishing Co., 1961)

  Hoyt, Edwin P., The Last Explorer (The John Day Company, 1968)

  Jenkins, Alan, The Twenties (Heinemann, 1974)

  Jenkins, Alan, The Thirties (Heinemann, 1976)

  à Kempis, Thomas, The Imitation of Christ (Roswoyd, Atwerp, 1617)

  Leighton, Isabel, The Aspirin Age 1919–1941 (Simon and Schuster, 1949)

  Merton, Thomas, No Man is an Island (Burns and Oates, 1955)

  Nichols, Peter, A Voyage for Madmen (HarperCollins, 2001)

  Nobile, Umberto, My Polar Flights (Frederick
Muller, 1961)

  Owen, Russell, South of the Sun (The John Day Company, 1934)

  Pool, Beekman H., Polar Extremes (University of Alaska Press, 2002)

  Scott, J. M., The Private Life of Polar Exploration (William Blackwood, 1982)

  Underhill, Evelyn, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness (Metheun, 1911)

  INDEX

  Achilles 1

  advertising 1, 2

  Aero Club (Norway) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

  Aeronautics Bureau (US) 1

  Air Corps (US) 1

  Air Force Public Relations Office (US) 1

  airships 1, 2, 3

  Alone (Byrd’s memoir) 1, 2, 3, 4

  America (tri-motor plane) 1

  American Airways 1

  American Dream 1, 2, 3

  American Tobacco 1

  Amundsen, Leon 1

  Amundsen, Roald accomplishments of 1, 2

  advises Byrd’s Antarctic expedition 1, 2

  ambition of 1

  Antarctic expedition 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

  appearance of 1

  arrives in Seattle 1

  bankruptcy of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

  business acumen of 1, 2

  constructs ice runway 1

  courage of 1, 2, 3

  crash lands 1, 2, 3

  death of 1

  debt of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  house of 1, 2, 3, 4

  lecture tours (US) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  meets Byrd 1

  memoirs of 1, 2, 3, 4