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Byrd's heroic 1926 North Pole failure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2009

Dennis Rawlins
Dennis Rawlins
Affiliation:
DIO, PO Box 19935, Baltimorez, MD 21211-0935, USA
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Abstract

Richard E. Byrd's record of the 9 May 1926 flight on which he claimed to have reached the North Pole was unsealed several years ago by the archives of Ohio State University. A close examination of Byrd's writings, calculations, and erasures in this diary shows clearly that, although he and Floyd Bennett achieved a farthest-north-seen and made a heroic attempt to attain the Pole, they never reached that destination. Despite efforts by some organisations and individuals to pretend that there is still a serious controversy, Byrd's own diary data variously confirm the belief long held by most polar experts: that the expedition on the dirigible Norge—led by Roald Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth, and piloted by Umberto Nobile — was the first to attain the Pole, on 12 May 1926.

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Articles
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Polar Record , Volume 36 , Issue 196 , January 2000, pp. 25 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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