“It might have floored a lesser man. But not Dick Byrd. In 1917 the United States went into the World War, And Byrd, who had been rejected by the Navy, and who doubtless could not have found a place in the army, decided to go into the branch of the service that wouldn’t ask questions about his bad leg—because it didn’t matter whether he had a bad leg or not—in aviation. So to aviation he turned.
“He entered the Naval flying school at Pensacola, Florida. It was a lucky day for Byrd and for aviation that he took to the air. It seems that the air was where he belonged. He was a Byrd by birth, and might have been born with wings, for the ease with which he took to flying.
“He became assistant superintendent of the school, and was on the commission to investigate accidents. There were a lot of them, then. The planes were not so highly developed as they are now—and the green youngsters who were entering the service could not handle them. You can imagine how horrible it was to see some friend’s plane come crashing down into the ocean, and have to be the first to go out in the rescue boat, in order to do what was possible to rescue him, and to discover what had caused the accident. A warning from the observation tower—somebody was in tailspin. A deafening crash! And the rescue boat would be put out before the waves from the great splash had subsided. At this work Byrd learned that more than half of the accidents could have been avoided with care—either in inspecting the machine before going up, or in handling it up in the air.
“Dick Byrd was just too good. That was his tough luck at this point in his career. He was too good to be sent over to France, where he wanted to go. He was sent instead to Canada, where he was chief of the American air forces in Canada. At this job, as well as at any other that he undertook, Byrd acquitted himself admirably. And even though he chafed at being kept in America, he did his job well.
“But his mind was soaring across the ocean. As early as 1917 Byrd wanted to fly the Atlantic. But there was always something that interfered. After the war, he petitioned the Navy again about a cross-Atlantic voyage, and was given permission to go over to England and sail the ZR-2 back to America. How tragically this may have ended for Byrd you can see. The ZR-2, on a trial flight suddenly burst into flames and crashed into the Humber river. Forty-four of the passengers were killed, among them friends of Byrd. It was Richard Byrd’s task to investigate the wreck that might very easily have claimed him for one of its victims.
“In 1924 his hopes seemed about to be realized at last. He was assigned to the dirigible Shenandoah, and was to fly it across Alaska and the North Pole. But the Shenandoah, too, met with disaster, and Byrd’s hopes were again dashed. The Navy rejected his petition to go with Amundsen on the trip that he planned over the Pole, and all hope seemed gone. In fact, as a final blow, Byrd was retired from the aviation service altogether.
“But he was as undaunted by this setback as he had been by his retirement from the Navy. He set about immediately to organize his own Polar expedition, which was to be climaxed by his flight over the Pole in 1926.
“Floyd Bennett, whom Byrd often said was the best man in the world to fly with, helped him plan his expedition which was to be the realization of all his boyhood dreams and visions. It wasn’t easy to plan, and the foresighted planning, they knew, would mean the success or failure of their project.
“They chose a three-motored Fokker monoplane, with 200 horsepower Wright air-cooled motors. It was 42 feet 9 inches long, with a wing spread of over 63 feet. It was capable of a high speed of 120 miles an hour.
“That was the plane, the Josephine Ford. Their ship was the Chantier, given him by the Shipping Board. The crew was made up of picked men, and Byrd knows how to pick them. Not one of them failed to live up to his expectations on that trip.