Throughout the operations Commander Byrd kept in close touch with what was being done, with Stultz and Gordon, and with Commander Elmer, who was overseeing the technical detail. Necessary instruments were installed and gradually tried out; while varying load tests, countless take-offs from the bay, and brief flights around Boston were made. The radio was tested and the inevitable last minute changes and adjustments arranged.
With the radio, we were particularly fortunate because Stultz is a skilful operator. It is unusual to find a man who is a great pilot, an instrument flyer, navigator, and a really good radio operator all in one.
Finally the ship itself was ready to go, and our problems focussed on the weather. At this stage weather is an important factor in all plans of trans-oceanic flying.
Supplementing the meagre reports available from ships to the Weather Bureau, the Friendship’s backers arranged a service of their own. Special digests of the British reports were cabled to New York each morning, and meteorological data were radioed in from the ships at sea. All this information, supplementing that already at hand, was then coordinated and plotted out in the New York office of the United States Weather Bureau. There we came to feel that no flight could have a better friend than Dr. James H. Kimball, whose interest and unfailing helpfulness were indispensable.
The weather service for a flight such as ours must be largely planned and entirely underwritten by the backers of the flight itself. And, like so much else, it is an expensive undertaking.
Nearly three weeks dragged by in Boston. Sometimes Mr. and Mrs. Layman were there, hoping for an immediate take-off, sometimes Mrs. Putnam. Commander Elmer and Mr. Putnam were on hand constantly. Mrs. Guest’s sons, Winston and Raymond, followed the preparations as closely as they dared without risking disclosure of the ownership.
It was during this period that I had the pleasure of seeing something of Commander and Mrs. Byrd, at their Brimmer Street home, just then bursting with the preparations for his Antarctic expedition—a place of tents and furs, specially devised instruments, concentrated foodstuffs, and all the rest of the paraphernalia which makes the practical, and sometimes the picturesque, background of a great expedition. There I met “Scotty” Allan, famous Alaskan dog driver, who was advising Byrd as to canine preparations.
The weather remained persistently unfavorable. When it was right in Boston, the mid-Atlantic was forbidding. I have a memory of long grey days which had a way of dampening our spirits against our best efforts to be cheerful. We tried to be casual by keeping occupied. On fair days my battered Kissel roadster, dubbed “Yellow Peril,” was a means for sightseeing. On rainy days the top leaked too much for comfort, so we walked. We tried restaurants of all nationalities for variety and went, I think, to all the theatres.
One of the last plays we saw, I remember, was “The Good Hope,” with the charming Eva LeGallienne. The story is a tragedy; all the hopeful characters drown while the most tragic one survives to carry out a cold lamb chop in the last act. A recurring line is “The fish are dearly paid for,” and our crew adopted that as a heraldic motto, emblazoned under a goldfish rampant. I had the opportunity of thanking Miss LeGallienne for her cheering sendoff when I met her on returning to New York. She helped Charles Winninger auction off one of the flags we carried on the flight, at a theatrical performance for the benefit of the Olympic team which was about to sail for Europe on the ship which had brought us back, the President Roosevelt. Anyway, that evening she got us on the stage before 17,280,891 people, so we have two grievances against her.
As I look back on the flight I think two questions have been asked me most frequently. First: Was I afraid? Secondly: What did I wear?