BYRD'S OWN STORY

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 134, 3 December 1929, Page 11

BYRD'S OWN STORY

GMAT DIFFICULTIES CAREFUL ORGANISATION (By Coa mander Byrd.—Special to "Mi '.w York Tunes.") Unlteo Press Association—By Electric Tclea -aph— Copyright (Received 3 rd December, 9 a.m.) BAY OF Wi Ist December. Flying down h ere with a cloud-cover-ed sky is like fl. ving in a world that h s turned to milk >". There is nothing to check on the hi irizons and there is no way to tell whei c the snow begins, how rough the surfat © is, nor even how high we are above it . Tho altimeter records inaccurately oil account of the rapid changes in. jthe sea level barometer and there ane bigger barometric changes in the Antarctic than anywhere in the world. With such weather navigation would lie uncertain and landing impossible. Visibility down here is like the little 4^irl with a curl, "very good when it is good and terrible when it is bad." 's*O have sunshine for eight hundred milts in this country of changeable weat Uo.r is more than ono can expect, but f .* the success of our flight in, it wotVd b° absolutely necessary that the Lii^untains around the plateau should noi* be cloud-covered.

In flying across the ocean ono ca a fly through clouds and even stornn with impunity, but when the course goes over mountains whose peaks tower higher than the 'piano can fly, good visibility is required to got between the peaks over the glaciers. Wo have long felt that we might have to make several attempts before we could get a proper combination of circumstances.

ARCTIC MEMORY RECALLED.

When we took off with our heavy load, clouds partly covered the sky. There was, however, a rim of green on the horizon to the South and we knew it would be clear beyond. As the skis left the snow all I could.see in that whits bowl beneath us was the little group of my shipmates throwing their hats in the air wild with joy that at last we were headed for the Pole. A warm glow of affection for those fellows went through me. They had given us our great opportunity and they were unselfishly glad. . My mind shot back to an exactly similar scene in the Arctic spring, 9th May, 1926, when Bennett and' I rose from the snow of Spitsbergen and headed for the North Pole. Many follows who were in the cheering crowd at Spitzbergen were below me now. It had been three of us, Bennett, Balchon, and myself, who had set out on this job two years before, and the three of us would bo together at the finish, for we knew that Bennett's spirit flew with us. He had selected the Ford 'plane, prepared it and flown it and had helped with our early plans, so that his genius and his friendship were with us, helping us to reach our goal. The last thing we put in the 'plane was a stone that came from Floyd's grave at Arlington. "We weighted with it an American flag we proposed to drop on the South Pole. OUT INTO THE SUNSHINE. In a few moments we emerged from the confusing bowl of milk over the take-off into the sunshine that stretched ahead to the horizon. A thousand feet beneath us we picked up the dog team trail. It is only with the sun in certain positions that the trail can be seen from the air. Now it was a faint broken thread that we ilost time and again, but managed to pick up each time with the sun compass. A strong easterly breeze forced us to head ten degrees left of the course to allow for this wind and so the 'plane crabbed along towards tho South with its nose pointed well to the left of the trail. We had constantly to cheek the course by the drift indicator instrument through which the ground is sighted to ascertain the amount the wind has caused the 'plane' to drift from the true direction. Wo enjoyed the first few hours' flight, when we had time to look around, i'or flying over this mysterious Barrier never loses its fascination. Shortly after wo passed the c.rcvassed area, 150 miles from Little America, we sighted mountains to the westward.

MAJESTY OF MOUNTAINS. Again" I was struck -with the. majesty of these ranges. We saw one great mountain mass end and another one unaccounted for on the maps begin to the south and running toward the Beardmore Glacier. Great white glaciers flowed into the Barrier, and about a hundred miles off were some alpino snow-covered peaks towering high over the Barrier that glistened like fire from the sun's reflection, so that they looked like great volcanoes in eruption. Soon the great mountains ahead loomed up and an hour afterwards we sighted the trail party 300 miles due South of Little America. There could be no doubt that so1 far we had come South straight as an arrow. PACKAGE FOR GOULD. It was well for we had messages and photographs to drop for Larry Gould and his gang. We planned to leave food and fuel at our mountain base for them and in order to enable Larry to locate the cache, a little speck in those great spaces, McKinley had located the spot on the photographs ho had taken on our base-laying flight of the surrounding mountains. We dropped these in a bag attached to a parachute. We could see two or three of the boys dashing after it, for . they knew it contained also radio messages from home, letters from friends at Littlo America, cigarettes, and various other things the trail party had requested by radio. We enclosed many photographs of the mountains taken from the air so that Larry Gould could best judge where to make his geological investigations. Wo are expecting great results from his work, for, geologically speaking, these mountains should tell things of great importance to science. Those fellows are a long way from Little America and they must be hitting the trail liko veterans to make good as they are doing. Seldom have men undertaken so difficult a trail journey for purely scientific investigation. They will have many weary weeks of hiking before their job is done. THE LONG CLIME. Immediately upon dropping the package, wo started our long climb to get over the hump about a hundred miles ahead of here. It was a great uncertainty. For many months our minds had concentrated on the knotty problem of getting over this rampart without having to leave behind our mapping camera, without which the geographical value of our flight would be grentlj' lessened. Neither June, ■Balchen, nor I could manipulate a hundred pound camera, as aerial surveying is highly specialised work. McKinley, with his three months' food, Polar equipment, and surveying outfit^ weighed about six hundred pounds. This cut down by about a thousand feet the highest altitude at which we could fly. Wo had made very careful tests with the 'plane, and had checked and rechecked our figures for weeks. Finally -sve decided that we could just

stagger over the hump with the extra 6°o pounds. Bernt, Mac and Harold were glad to take the chance on account of the value of the results that might be obtained. However, there must be no mistake about our load, ■kvery ounce of food, every piece of clothing, everything that went into that 'plane, including ourselves, had to be weighed carefully. George Black, our supply officer, did the weighing, and when he told mo that the totaJ weight of the 'plane was around 15,000 pounds, I knew thero was no mistake about it.