“Maybe you don’t realize what wonderful navigating this was. But anybody who has navigated a plane by dead reckoning knows that it was a feat that called for great skill.
“Nobody was prouder of what Byrd and Bennett had done than the men who had worked so hard to make the trip a success, and who had stayed behind at Spitzbergen, without glory or reward except in knowing that they had been a necessary feature in the success of that journey. The whistle of the Chantier blew a shrill whistle of welcome. The men ran to greet Byrd and Bennett, and carried them in triumph on their shoulders. Among the first to greet them were Amundsen and Ellsworth, whom Byrd had beaten in the race to be the first to cross the Pole by air. But they shook hands with vigor. They were glad that it was Byrd who had beaten them, if it had to be anybody. Byrd affects people that way. He’s just as well liked after successes as before them. That’s the sort he is.
“They were pretty glad to see him when he got back to the United States, too. There were plenty of whistles blowing, plenty of ticker tape, and parades for the returning hero. But Dick Byrd stayed modest through all of it. In the first place, he never gets fussed. He isn’t a southern gentleman for nothing. And in the second place, he realized that the shouting wasn’t so much for him as it was for the thing that he did. He had brought the United States the honor of sending the first men over the Pole. And the United States was applauding the deed, not himself. But he seems to have forgotten that if it hadn’t been for his years of planning, striving and struggling the deed never would have been accomplished.
“Well, Dick Byrd had accomplished his life’s ambition. But it didn’t mean that he was ready to quit. There were new fields to conquer. How about flying the Atlantic? He’d always wanted to fly the Atlantic. Anything that was all adventure appealed to him. So when they hoisted anchor at Spitzbergen after the flight across the Pole Byrd said to his companion Bennett, ‘Now we can fly the Atlantic.’
“The plan to fly the ocean had its origin in the same motives that the North Pole flight had. Byrd wanted to make America aviation conscious; and he wanted to make American aviators conscious of the benefits of careful planning. Dozens of lives had been lost in unsuccessful trans-oceanic flights—the lives of young men full of the love of adventure, who made hasty plans, or no plans at all for spanning the ocean—who had no qualifications except a great ambition to see them through the great grind that was before them. Byrd wanted to show all fool-hardy young flyers that care, care, and more care was needed in their preparations. He had to prove to the United States, too, that if care were exercised in these flights, they were not necessarily dangerous. All this Byrd had to prove. And in the meantime he’d have the time of his life, steeped in the adventurous sort of work that he craved.
“So Byrd and Bennett started their plans. The first step, of course, was the choosing of the plane. Opinion was in favor of a single-motored plane for a cross-Atlantic flight, since a single-motored plane would have a greater cruising range; offer less resistance in the air; and be less complicated to handle than a multi-motored craft. But Byrd held out for the tri-motor, the same type of plane as the Josephine Ford, which had carried him over the Pole. There was this to say for it: if one motor stopped, the other two would still function; and it might be the solution to the problem of what kind of plane would cross the Atlantic in the future, when planes ran on regular schedule. They wanted a bigger plane than the Josephine Ford, though. So they had one designed with a wing spread of 71 feet, which meant that they got an increased lifting power of about 3,000 pounds. That enabled them to take along about 800 pounds of equipment above what they actually needed, to show that a pay load could be carted across the water in a plane.
“They needed plenty of equipment, though. There was a special radio set, rockets to shoot off as signals if anything went wrong; two rubber boats for the crew; and emergency food and equipment of all sorts for forced landings; and even a special apparatus for making drinking water out of salt water so that they would not go thirsty. In fact, they could have survived for three weeks in case of an accident. They? Why, Byrd decided that besides himself and Bennett, they would take along passengers, also to prove something—this time that passengers could be carried across to Europe by plane.
“They successfully petitioned the Weather Bureau to make predictions for the trans-Atlantic flights, and for the first time in history regular weather maps for aviation were made of the North Atlantic.
“At the end of April, in 1927, the plane was ready for its factory test. Byrd planned to make his flight in May, which he figured was a good month. It happened that there were at the time several other planes preparing to cross the ocean. Byrd was in no race, however. Of course, it would have been nice to be the first man across the Atlantic, as he had been the first man over the Pole—but he encouraged the others who were preparing and made no effort to be the first to start. However, his plane was ready before the others.
“Byrd, Bennett, Noville, who was going with them, and Fokker took her up for her first flight. Fokker was at the controls; the other three, passengers. Everything went smoothly. She took off well; her motors functioned perfectly. But as soon as the motors were turned off for the glide, they felt her nose dip. She was nose-heavy. When they tried to land, they knew definitely that she was nose-heavy, and zoomed into the air again to plan what they should do. However, they couldn’t stay up indefinitely—they hadn’t much fuel. Down they glided again. The wheels touched the ground. Fokker jumped. But the other three were caught.