Remembering Daring Trek to South Pole, 75 Years Later

Dec. 2, 2004 — -- On a clear November afternoon 75 years ago, Navy Rear Adm. Richard Byrd and three companions climbed into their Ford tri-motor plane and trekked to the South Pole.

It is literally the end of the earth. The sun does not rise there for six months at a time, and it has an average temperature of 60 degrees below zero.

By 1929, only two teams of men had attempted the feat, and one had died on the way back.

Byrd had previously flown over the North Pole; there was only one left to conquer.

"He was a man who was driven to explore, driven to do things, driven to do deeds," said historian Lisle Rose.

Rose says Byrd was something the world no longer has: a professional hero.

"He was a man of a different time," she said. "He was a man of a time when the world was a lot bigger, transportation was a lot slower, and there were still these enormous gaps in our understanding of the world. And he did his exploring."

The trip from Byrd's base on the Antarctic coast was 800 miles each way, over some of the most rugged mountains on earth.

There were no reliable maps and no weather satellites at the time -- even a compass was useless that far south. They were instead steered by the sun.

Upon reaching the pole, they dropped a flag out the window and turned north. The entire trip took nineteen frozen hours.

"He had done it," said Rose of Byrd's achievement. "He was the first person to fly over both poles, and nobody else could ever do that again. Nobody else could be the first to do both."

Byrd went for the glory and the money, but also, he said, for the science. He pushed the technology of the airplane -- more than that other aviation hero, Charles Lindbergh.

Today, there is a research station at the South Pole, partially made possible by Byrd's efforts.

"Byrd should be looked at as the pivotal figure in moving exploration from the heroic age to the mechanical age," said Raimund Goerler, a Byrd archivist at Ohio State University.

A few weeks ago, to mark the anniversary, airmen of the New York Air National Guard's 109th Airlift Wing decided to retrace Byrd's route.

There was no fanfare when they reached the pole; they were the fourth supply flight of the day.